preamp to amplifier?

A

anselm

New member
I want to use my preamp with a live setting, as opposed to direct through the board. What is a really good power amp to run it through? or should I run it through a fully packaged head?
 
I agree...a little vague...seems to me there are two questions here;

1. Can you run a pre-amp into a head amp
2. If you can't run it through a head amp, recommend a power amp

Is this correct?
 
does that just add effects? or does it have amp sims as well? if its just effects, then maybe you should run it through the effects loop of an amp.
 
I never saw one of those, but the google results indicate that it's pretty flexible. *If* you run it into a "traditional" guitar amp (which will almost certainly have its own built in preamp), then you want to make sure to bypass the Rocktron's built in preamp, or you'll be pushing too much signal into the traditional amp, and it seems possible that you'd damage it. And if the amp has an effects loop, like tom18222's saying, yeah just use that (again without the preamp of the Rocktron). The only substantive reason to use a traditional amp is if it adds something to your sound over what the Rocktron provides - maybe it would. I've been playing through a Vox tonelab, which seems like a similar concept, and I think it sounds better when I run it through the clean channel of an old Marshall (*without* the preamp).

Otherwise, it looks like you could take the "line level" (preamp'ed) signal out of the Rocktron and either (a) put it into a power amp which goes to a speaker cabinet which gets mic'ed into the main board, which will have its own preamp and output to a power amp, then to the mains, or (b) skip the middle man and just run the Rocktron straight into the main board, and let the sound person take it from there (setting you up with a stage monitor, of course). You could have a cardboard cutout of a really big amp. Or not.

If you go the power amp route (option a), hopefully someone here can recommend a good one. Option b is a lot cheaper, obviously, and since in almost every live situation the sound the audience hears is what comes through the mains (whether via a microphone or not), it seems worth considering first.
 
There are a bunch of different choices.
1. Mesa simulclass series power amps
2. Marshall tube power amps
3. VHT


Go with a Tube power amp, it really makes a difference when running that sort of preamp. It makes it sound more real.
 
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