Is it better to have your anus near your mouth, or far from your mouth?
In electronics, you should keep outputs away from inputs. You don't want the stuff at the output going back into the input.
this "moderator" needs to be taught how to speak to people..
No offense was intended to anyone Floyd. It's simply a strong mental image that communicates the general rule in a way you'll always remember. My "problem" is I usually give long, technical answers.
That long answer is that electric current and voltage sets up a field around the conductor carrying the current/voltage. Output tube plates have the highest-voltage a.c. signals in the amp, where speaker jack wiring carries the highest-current a.c. (aside from some portions of heater wiring). So the output section wiring also has the largest fields around its wiring.
Preamp signals are low-voltage/low-current. They are also high impedance. The stray fields around output section wiring easily induce signal currents in that high impedance, and the resulting induced signal voltages can be big compared to the intended guitar input signal at that point in the preamp. The result is output signal fed back into an earlier stage, and oscillation.
This is the long way of saying what Sluckey in the 2nd reply. If you were able to build a human from scratch, you might intuitively know that placing the human's anus next to the human's mouth is a bad choice. The rule might be less obvious in an electronic device. But I guarantee now you'll never forget.
