High Wattage amps - why

[PaulWarning]

there's watts and then there's watts, my 200 watt Trace Elliot is just as loud if not louder than my 500 watt Fender Rumble, whether it's to do with the Rumble being a class D I haven't got a clue, hell I don't even know how they manage without a bloody great power supply

[Chienmortbb]

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1484339101' post='3214875']
there's watts and then there's watts, my 200 watt Trace Elliot is just as loud if not louder than my 500 watt Fender Rumble, whether it's to do with the Rumble being a class D I haven't got a clue, hell I don't even know how they manage without a bloody great power supply
[/quote]Trace heads were conservatively rated using a well proven Class A/B mosfet output stage. Fendet have a big marketing department.

On a serious note, mosfets have a very musical compression at high power, not dissimilar to valves. It will probably sound louder in relative terms. I have only heard Rumbles at low volumes but the size of them suggests that full quoted output might be optimistic,

[3below]

I suspect my early bass playing career was improved by using a Vox AC50 and 2 Vox 2x15 foundation cabs. I would have not been audible against the Hiwatt 100 and Marshall 100 with 4 x 12s, my mistakes went unheard. Add to that the Premier pounding drummer. I always wondered why the vocals on the 100W PA amp were only just audible. Did some fun gigs though

These days.... BF Dubster, Peavey Tour 700 (real not class D watts). Adequate for small singer / guitar duet lol.

Edited January 14, 2017 by 3below

[deepbass5]

Those were the days when people could listen to the band and still be able to order a pint and a packet of crisps at the bar without having to point

[deepbass5]

I remember doing the Queens hall Dunstable with a pair of Wem column speakers and a Wem 6 channel mixer, Don't think they heard us

[chris_b]

My Thunderfunk has more watts than my first 3 bands put together.

I love it.

[gjones]

I've played too many packed gigs, with a power mad guitarist and a gorilla on the drums. I don't want to be in the situation where I have to put everything up to 11 just to hear myself. It's nice to know, that if I need to, I can drown them both out

Edited January 15, 2017 by gjones

[Twincam]

Power is cheaper than ever so why not.
I'm also slightly dubious about some class d ratings.

What I dislike is when a company charges significantly more for nearly the same amp with more watts. It will cost them more money here and there fair enough, but they whack the price right up. And if your lucky they throw in an extra knob or two if your lucky.

[jezzaboy]

I have a Trace Elliot 600 watt amp so thats like 1200 ordinary watts then

I like the look and the sound of the amp, the power doesn`t mean much.

It has green lights on the front panel as well!!

[markstuk]

I had a loud guitarist once. I took along my tecamp 810 and qsc plx2402 with a sansamp to a rehearsal.. I will never forget the look on his face :-)

[deepbass5]

I am just picturing you switching on your amp last, and all the venue lights dim and the fruit machines re boot up and his valve amp jumps back into standby mode.

[markstuk]

[quote name='deepbass5' timestamp='1484476539' post='3215646']
I am just picturing you switching on your amp last, and all the venue lights dim and the fruit machines re boot up and his valve amp jumps back into standby mode.
[/quote]

Yup 2.4 kw into a 2400 watt RMS cab which does 105db@1w@1m :-)

[deepbass5]

I agree with all your sentiments as Bass players we need headroom and so should have special dispensation from the environmental lobby to pack a reserve amount of wattage over and above the Guitar and Keyboard.
On the grounds of enjoyment (need to feel the Bass). So maybe we limit guitarist watts to 30. I feel another thread coming on.

[Dan Dare]

A guitar player I used to play with had volume issues, so we took it in turns to turn down his master volume whilst he was not looking or away with the fairies on one of his solos. He spotted us one night and there was an almighty row, after which we agreed to part company due to "musical differences" :-)

Edited January 15, 2017 by Dan Dare

[chriswareham]

I've spent most of my playing time in bands with two guitarists running full bore on big Marshall stacks, and really needed the big speakers and high power amps I used at the time. Now I play in a band with one guitarist who has a tendency to leave his master volume very low at rehearsals to clearly hear how he's interacting with the rest of the band. In this situation 100W is totally sufficient, albeit still into bloody big speakers. So if more guitards could overcome their belief in running amps flat out we'd not need these Class D thingies - my solid state head weighs little more than a 1000W Orange Class D I tried (Terror Bass I think), and is hardly an awkward size.

Edited January 15, 2017 by chriswareham

[chriswareham]

Interestingly, I checked the Orange site to see if I could spot the Terror Bass I tried and it looks like they've stopped making Class D bass amps entirely. It's all solid state stuff apart from the classic all valve monster, which is now the standard professional touring amp according to John Henry's (the big hire and leasing firm).

Edited January 15, 2017 by chriswareham

[markstuk]

[quote name='chriswareham' timestamp='1484488129' post='3215799']
I've spent most of my playing time in bands with two guitarists running full bore on big Marshall stacks, and really needed the big speakers and high power amps I used at the time. Now I play in a band with one guitarist who has a tendency to leave his master volume very low at rehearsals to clearly hear how he's interacting with the rest of the band. In this situation 100W is totally sufficient, albeit still into bloody big speakers. So if more guitards could overcome their belief in running amps flat out we'd not need these Class D thingies - my solid state head weighs little more than a 1000W Orange Class D I tried (Terror Bass I think), and is hardly an awkward size.
[/quote]

Could not agree more.. All of my current guitarists use 50w or so valve amps.. One is a little too quiet, the others tend to be a little loud on lead, but fine otherwise...

[FinnDave]

[quote name='deepbass5' timestamp='1484477526' post='3215658']
I agree with all your sentiments as Bass players we need headroom and so should have special dispensation from the environmental lobby to pack a reserve amount of wattage over and above the Guitar and Keyboard.
On the grounds of enjoyment (need to feel the Bass). So maybe we limit guitarist watts to 30. I feel another thread coming on.
[/quote]

Our guitarist uses a 20 watt valve combo and can still drown out the bass (and drums!). Maybe 15 watts is a sensible max for guitars?

[Twincam]

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1484489399' post='3215818']


Our guitarist uses a 20 watt valve combo and can still drown out the bass (and drums!). Maybe 15 watts is a sensible max for guitars?
[/quote]

I actually think 15w valve watts for guitar can cover an awful lot of ground.
I had a wem dominator bass combo 15w which I replaced the driver for a modern full range job and did a few little mods to the circuit it made it better for bass. But used with guitar you could really crank it without the driver breaking up, and in a smallish space it was ear splitting loud.

[gjones]

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1484489399' post='3215818']
Our guitarist uses a 20 watt valve combo and can still drown out the bass (and drums!). Maybe 15 watts is a sensible max for guitars?
[/quote]

I play with two guitarists, in two different bands. The first one had a VOX AC30 which was insanely loud and incredibly heavy. The second one had a Fender Deville 410 combo, which was (yes you guessed it) insanely loud and incredibly heavy.

They have 'seen the light' and both have got themselves a, 15 watt, Blues Junior. They are more than able to keep up with a loud drummer, sound great and won't give themselves a hernia.

If they play bigger venues they can just mic themselves up through the PA.

I'm happy, they're happy, everybody's happy. It's the way to go.

[deepbass5]

So we now have agreement we can gig happily with our old 1960's / 70s combo rigs at 60 to 100 watt if we can get the guitarist ('s) to play to a reasonable level. Keyboard players will also be limited to a mono 60 watt combo with left hand cable tied behind their back. Now we need to do something with that Kw of fold back.

[3below]

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1484489399' post='3215818']
Our guitarist uses a 20 watt valve combo and can still drown out the bass (and drums!). Maybe 15 watts is a sensible max for guitars?
[/quote]

Last band I played in that used any 'volume' comprised two guitarists with 20W and 30W valve combos. More than sufficient, Having a 'Keith Moon' style drummer OTOH ....

[stingrayPete1977]

The guitarist in one of my bands has a Vox simulator thing, it's fed back to him along with his vocal monitoring, I use a 1x12 cab and the drummer keeps to a sensible volume, we can talk during the songs if we need to and my earplugs haven't come out in five years.

[Chienmortbb]

This goes back to the old problem of watts versus acoustic output and frequency. Our ears are highly attuned to the frequencies put out by electric guitars. a very large part of the bandwidth is the same as the human voice whereas out ears do not hear bass so well. Guitar speakers are efficient in getting those tones to us many giving well over 100dB 1w/1M in the area that guitars work. Most bass speakers are very inefficient so need a lot more power than guitars to sound loud. Lets look at two examples, The Fane Ascension F70 guitar speaker and the Eminence Legend B122.

Thye Fane hase a sensitivity of 100dB in its useable response for guitar. The Eminence has a quoted 94dB sensitivity but its sensitivity at 50Hz is approx 85dB. Even at the published spec, of 100 and 94.1, The Bass speaker would need three times the power to give the same power at low mid frequencies. As we go away from the dusty end of the fret board and get down to low E our sensitivity is 82 dB and at Low B about 77dB. So to compete, sorry, blend wth a 20 watt guitar amp with the Fane, you need 60 watts. Oh but there is another guitar so you now need 120 watts add a drummer-240 watts, noisy drummer 480 watts, loud vocals? You can see where this is going.

Of course you can buy a huge PA and put most of you sound through that. It needs to be huge though as PA speakers are not usually as efficient as guitar speakers and even our little guitar band would need thousands of watts to replace or just reproduce those electric instruments and mic up the drums.

Now of course you also have to remember that the old bass cabinets were really guitar cabs and did not really reproduce the low notes until brands like Ampeg, Acoustic and Trace started make cabinets designed for bass. If you want to gig with 50W, build one of Bill Fitzmaurice's Jack speakers. They are horn designs and incredibly efficient.

[deepbass5]

Yes yes and yes Chienmortbb my man spot on

Edited January 15, 2017 by deepbass5