Tube power stage vs Class-D (effective power)

[Phil Starr]

5 minutes ago, Paddy Morris said:

The trouble comes when I'm playing slap upright against a drummer who has had a bad day and is taking it out on his drums.   The transients from the slapping play absolute havoc with the amp headroom. 

 

Just a thought, with slap on an upright you are really whacking everything much harder than would be the case on electric bass a lot of the time. Electric bass doesn'tactually have much content below 80Hz but using an upright bass as a percussive instrument might be creating a lot of subsonic peaks. Ported speaker cabs will go into extremes of excursion just above and below the resonant frequency of the port. If that is the case when slapping (and this is just a theory) then an HPF on the amp might reduce the problem and less audibly than a really sharp limiter.

 

Is a castrated bass a viola?

[Paddy Morris]

1 minute ago, Phil Starr said:

 

Just a thought, with slap on an upright you are really whacking everything much harder than would be the case on electric bass a lot of the time. Electric bass doesn'tactually have much content below 80Hz but using an upright bass as a percussive instrument might be creating a lot of subsonic peaks. Ported speaker cabs will go into extremes of excursion just above and below the resonant frequency of the port. If that is the case when slapping (and this is just a theory) then an HPF on the amp might reduce the problem and less audibly than a really sharp limiter.

 

Is a castrated bass a viola?

Hiya.  Yes, I'm HPF'd to within an inch of my life.  Apart from any other reason I can't really hear my intonation on a loud gig unless I have rolled off all that LF junk.

 

I suspect I need to just take my rig (and my poor credit card) to some dealer who keeps a good stock of all-valve amp heads.

 

 

[agedhorse]

12 hours ago, Tech21NYC said:

Tube amps have more "useable" wattage when compared to most solid state designs. It's the reason a lead guitarist can gig with a 50 or 100 watt tube amp in most situations but a 50-100 watt SS bass amp is more of a practice amp. A tube amp will start clipping once it exceeds its RMS threshold but the resulting sound will not be perceived as distorted. Most SS amps become unusable once they exceed their RMS rating for any length of time. The last thing you want to do with any SS amp is run it close to it's max RMS wattage. Power is cheap. For some reason since Class D amps have become so popular many bass players seem to be going in a counterintuitive direction. Lots of power and minimal speakers. If you look at dUg Pinnick's bass rig, he's using his signature 1000 watt bass head but he's also running four 410 cabs rated at 2000 watts. That gives him a lot of headroom. 

 

 

That’s not really the reason why lower powered guitar amps sound louder. The biggest three factors are that the guitar signal resides in the most sensitive portion of our hearing, guitar speakers are very efficient in that range, and that when distortion is used (common for guitar), the THD is often 30-40% which often is part of the desired tone and this increases average power delivered to the speaker.

[Phil Starr]

16 hours ago, Tech21NYC said:

For some reason since Class D amps have become so popular many bass players seem to be going in a counterintuitive direction. Lots of power and minimal speakers. If you look at dUg Pinnick's bass rig, he's using his signature 1000 watt bass head but he's also running four 410 cabs rated at 2000 watts. That gives him a lot of headroom. 

I'm not sure this is counter intuitive.  A lot of what is happening is I think down to improvements in PA. Even fairly modest bands can carry a fairly capable PA system with no need to reach the audience with back line amps, bass goes through the PA for FOH just like the rest of the band. Increasingly people are using digital mixers with multiple aux sends and individual monitor mixes, often through in-ears. If there is back line then it only needs to reach the band on-stage so you don't need he same volume that a few years ago you used to reach the back of the venue. The other technical advance is the gradual development of long throw loudspeakers with extremely temperature resistant voice coils. They aren't efficient and need a lot more power than the 4x10's but amplifier power is so cheap nowadays that small speakers and lot's of power has become a practical option. Portability is an issue too for a lot of us. I can turn up with a SansAmp and a set of in-ears for most gigs. I have a 1x10 600W AES thermal and 800W amp for the odd occasion when I need backline.