Where have I been? What's with all the small low wattage heads these days...

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Wireneck said:
At any rate, I have to put my two cents in for larger amps. It might be the genre of music I typically play (metal/hard rock) but I like to use at least a 4x12 cab with a 50-100 watt amp head. I am not one of those retards turning a Triple rec wide open 3 feet from my face but when I get on stage there better be some air moving behind me. Call me crazy but for me playing isn't just about hearing but also "feeling" what you are playing.
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Well if that's what you want, it's what you want, and you know how to get it.

When I saw CAKE in DC, John McCrea had a tiny little guitar amp sitting on a wooden chair with a mic in front of it... running to 10 billion watts of PA. I doubt he was feeling the air move, but to the audience, he was a hell of a lot louder than a 100W Marshall full stack. Hell, his little 4" speaker was probably louder than the super groups of the late 60s.

In my opinion, it's absolutely AWESOME that these days there is a market for QUALITY practice/recording amps and QUALITY gigging amps. Even a few short years ago when I finally had the money for a decent guitar amp, I was deciding between things like a 25W Zinky Blue Velvet, a 50W Mesa Boogie, and a 30W Peavey, and they were ALL TOO LOUD for my apartment.

But on the other side of the stupid coin, I went to an audition last week and these idiots had 2 separate 100W half stacks in a single bedroom, and then I showed up with my bass equipment. The only thing I have ever experienced that was more deafening was standing 2 feet from the stage at the end of an Indigo Girls concert (22,000 girls screaming at the top of their lungs for 15 minutes straight :eek: ).

I guess everything on the internet reduces into a banal question of which thing is better. If that's the question, my vote says "that which does not leave me deaf is best." Crank the 100W on stage, crank the 5W at home.
 
ggunn said:
That all depends on how you define "small". I consider my Deluxe Reverb (22 watts into a single 12) and my Blues Jr (18 watts into a single 10) to be small amps, and they are both class AB.
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I think this thread was referring to the new crop of small amps that have come about in the last couple years. They are all predominately Class A. There are exceptions, but most are.
 
I own a 30Watt Sovtek, and a 100W Spetel head.

Both have the same characteristic, somewhere past halfpoint in volume, they suddenly get LOUD! ..on a very steep curve....I'm guessing that that's the point when the powertubes start working properly. :D Also, this is where they start to sound good.

At the rehealsalplace, I had to mic up the drummer to hear him, even with the 30Watter... At, lets say 70% of it's clean headroom.

And where I think the stagevolume is way too much, is when the drummer gets drowned.

In anycase, I hope I can gig with the 30Watter, I just love the sound of it SAGGING as I throw a low B at it from a LP baritone through a distorted preamp.
..Kinda like the howling of a jet engine, as the sound just don't fit through your ears!! :D
 
What I was trying to say:

I like to portray a picture of the Man punishing the amp. Not the other way around.
Easier to make it sag, moan and feed back as a 30Watter, a 100Watter will crush you.
 
Texsunburst59 said:
5 watts is TOO much in the studio.:D All you need is a 1/2 watt amp to record with. Here's some clips of my clips of my Marshall MS-2 I recorded using it's own stock speaker.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=633883&songID=5832503
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=633883&songID=5814298
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=633883&songID=5780211
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Awesome man. Awesome.
castlerock said:
wanna really get right down to it? nobody cares. use what you like. ;)
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707 900d 1 c45710ck
laughings.gif



But seriously, why has no-one mentioned Laney yet?

I have a VC-15 with an excellent 10" Jensen that kicks for just about all styles. I don't feel like I have to stuff a sock down my pants to compensate for having such a tiny amp, hell, my bass amp is like 40lbs and 18" square but it's louder than my 1x15, 4x10 stack that I used to haul around and it sounds much better too.

But then, I'm the sort of guy who wears earplugs and stands away from the FOH at gigs because I don't see the glory in killing yourself for a couple of hundred pub gig-goers.
 
Got to play one of these a while back through some 1x12, don't remember what, and I fell deeply in love. Looked in my wallet, decided to go with a Blackheart. Why did I decide to be a teacher instead of a lawyer!?:mad:
 
Amps with tube rectifiers produce a very noticeable sag, but I am unaware of an amp with a solid state rectifier that will produce any noticeable sag from the output transformer.
The power tubes could saturate when cranked, so it no longer produces volume. But actual sag? I must have missed something.
 
Outlaws said:
I think this thread was referring to the new crop of small amps that have come about in the last couple years. They are all predominately Class A. There are exceptions, but most are.
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If you look at the examples the OP posted, most of them are small class AB amps.
 
Outlaws said:
Amps with tube rectifiers produce a very noticeable sag, but I am unaware of an amp with a solid state rectifier that will produce any noticeable sag from the output transformer.
The power tubes could saturate when cranked, so it no longer produces volume. But actual sag? I must have missed something.
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Sovtek Mig-30.
It was intended a 50Watter as designed by Tony Bruno, I've read, but the russians used an OT too small, thus outputting only 30W before the tranny sags, resulting in sort of compression in the sound.
Then again, me switching output tubes around without any biasing, just seeing they ain't redplating might end up in a world of sag of it's own. :D
 
But seriously, why has no-one mentioned Laney yet?
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There you go. I had a VC50 that kicked ass...then it died.:D

I love the sound of some small wattage amps (sure badager/marshall etc) but on stage live they don't have the feel to me..I need some air kickin my ass. Give me a 50/100 watts live any day.
 
I'm not the guitarist in the family, my wife is. We play mostly smaller rooms right now...a couple of our services are around 50 people tops. Sound reinforcement is small box powered mixer (Mackie w/ a pair of 12s at one prison, Behringer with a pair of 15s at the other). Mel plays into a Fender Frontman 25R, and we don't even put that thing in the system; it's plenty loud. We've been looking at switching to DI with effects, because we're just running too loud on stage.

The other monthly gig we've got is in a larger auditorium, usually around 100 people. I provide the sound for this one, and we use a Peavey M-2600 power amp (260 W stereo) into a pair of 15s. I mic her into the system on that one, because the ladies get loud enough that you can't hear anything that's not up in the mix.

Would I like to put her in front of the Marshall 100W half-stack? Sure, just for the "coolness" factor of walls of sound. Do we need it? not in a million years.
 
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My frustration with smaller amps is that I can't find a reasonably priced small watt tube amp with any real features. I know you pay for what you get, but are things like an FX loop really that much more expensive to put into an amp? I mean that question honestly because I really just don't know. It's like if I want a decent recording amp I have to buy a seperate amp to play out with. I just wish that was't the case.
 
I think the bean counters just figure that few people will actually use an FX loop on a 5W amp.

But in reality, things like a tone stack (i.e. Blackheart Little Giant) are a waste of money (I use a preamp that cost more and does more than the entire Little Giant amp) and an FX loop would be downright useful.

An electrical engineer armed with a schematic can easily modify something like the Valve Jr. to have an effects loop. Just jack in/out the signal before it goes to the power stage.
 
Roguetitan said:
but thats another thread
I guess the point I am trying to make High watt amps are really not needed all that much this day and time.
not to mention the weight VS bad back ratio is drastically diminished by using small amps for gigging:)
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Not singling you out here, just picking one comment that's pretty indicative of the argument against larger amps.

On one hand, you're right, a smaller amp is more portable, and while I've been gigging with "large" amps for years, I've never even come close to needing the full output - back when I owned a MArshall TSL-100, I used to give with it in the 25-watt "VPR" mode, and only once (at an excruciatingly loud show) did I have to use more than that.

On the other... I for one am excited to see the market for low-powered amps is taking off, but here's my fundamental problem - how many high gain amps with either three independent channels or two channels plus a footswitchable clean boost are out there, with fully independent EQ (and full EQ - treble, mid, bass, presence, and more than just a "tone" knob), channel switching, and effects loops?

I play a Mesa Rectoverb 50-watt combo. It's excruciatingly loud, probably unusable without a Hot Plate in my bedroom, and even with only just so. I play it becase I haven't found a 10-watt head that provides that kind of tone, has two or more channels, switchable reverb, and an effects loop. I've enjoyed a number of "small" amps I've played, but most of them are made in the "old school, single channel, no EQ, crank and stand back" school which works wonderfully if you're into, say, AC/DC, but not so much if you're more after John Petrucci.

If Mesa ever made a 10-watt Recto, I'd buy it (and yes, I've played the Express, and wattage notwithstanding I didn't care for it). As it is, I'm planning on eventually selling the Rectoverb (and my Nomad, which has just been gathering dust) for a Roadster for the extra channels and greater flexibility, though the new Mark-V (which has low power settings, to boot) has me seriously tempted.

So, long story short - yes, I agree, judged solely on power, smaller amps are more practical. However, thus far amp makers tend to target smaller amps to the "minimalist" player, while for guys like myself who want multiple channels and greater flexibility, we have no choice but to go with 50 or 100 watts.
 
You're asking for a lot of features in a low watt amp, and few people are willing to spend lots of cash for a low watt amp.

I run my Line 6 Pod XT Live into the Epiphone Valve Jr. for practice and recording. Sure, sure, it doesn't sound exactly like I completely copied a famous guy's sound. :rolleyes: It does give me 32 banks of 4 channels ranging from massive clean headroom to massive gain with all the tone shaping you can handle, and that all gets shoved into an all tube 5W final stage and speakers of my choice.

If they sold a low watt amp with all the features you described, I wouldn't buy it. Boutique is boutique and the majority of the current low watt amps are not boutique products. On the other hand, I love my Peavey Delta Blues 210, but 30W is insanely loud when it sounds good. Would you pay $400-$500 for a 5-10W practice/recording tube amp with a full featured tone stack? (Maybe that's a good poll question...)
 
Yup, the only reason I ended up with an 80-watt tube amp when I don't ever play outside of my own basement is the features offered on the Traynor YCV80 versus the YCV40 or YCV20. The scoop switch, effects loop, brightness and expander switches, independant EQ, simulated speaker out, speaker defeat switch...I couldn't find all of that on the lower-wattage models. I'm definitely a proponent of the low-wattage tube amp craze, even though I play through a monster 2x12 myself. It might even make me a hypocrite. Oh man I need to go wash off the shame!
 
OK...what I don't get is amps without a line out. YES, I know you get better sound miking the cab than with a line-out, but I'm just looking for simple convenience. Mel's little 10W Marshall had one, but the 25W Fender Frontman does not. Granted, as I said, we rarely have to put her in the system, but would the extra 1/4" jack have killed them to put in?
 
RejectionNinja said:
You're asking for a lot of features in a low watt amp, and few people are willing to spend lots of cash for a low watt amp.
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Yeah, but that's the rub - for me, the low wattage WOULD be a feature. At the very least, the ability to switch the wattage down - I think the basic idea of the Express series Mesa just introduced is brilliant (25 and 50 watt amps that can be switched down to 5 watts), and I was all fired up to sell my Nomad and buy one when I first heard about it. That lasted until I played one, and absolutely did not get on with the preamp.

It's a problem, for me, that amp builders seem to view low-wattage amps as "toy" amps or "practice" amps, or "minimalist" amps. I happen to like power amp saturation - I want to be able to mate that with three channels and a high gain pre. So far, there really aren't many options...

FWIW, I suspect Mesa will eventually deliver on this. They've done some VERY interesting things with poweramps lately, ever since the Road King's Progressive Linkage, and most new Mesas have channel-assignable poweramp wattage now. The Mark-V can be cut all the way down to 10 watts I think, between channel-assignable half power switches and a pentode/triode control. I'd probably grab one just for that, but while I loved the clips I heard from the 3rd channel, the problem for me is that you're not really left with a good high gain rhythm or "contemporary" lead sound from Channel 2. If I could get the Mark IV mode on channel 2 and the Mark IIC+ or Extreme modes on Channel 3, I'd be one happy puppy. :D Either way, I'll definitely want to play-test one.
 
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