No High Wattage Amps For Me

Even at lower volumes there is a thump and as mentioned, authority in a larger powered amp.
With a band, it's nice. Speakers affect it too. My Traynor YCV 4050 is 40 watts and even at low volume has a nice thump. Creamback G65.
Some of my amps were not available as lower power so... still compact and effective.
 
I built a little 18 watt watt amp EF86 channel one Marshall channel two never used the Marshall channel the EF86 channel blows it away
single 25 watt greenback played a bunch of gigs with it and it's light to carry when the little clubs bitch about the volume I just turn the speaker at the wall.

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About a year or so ago, I acquired a 13-watt Fender Excelsior Pro, and I’m shocked at how loud it is…it easily keeps up with a second guitarist, bassist and (an even-handed) drummer. That 15” speaker might have something to do with it.

I’ve loved my 35- or 40-watt (the wattage depends on who you ask and what you read) 63-reissue Vibroverb for 30+ years…truth be told, I don’t see myself ever needing more wattage than that—and if I did, I’d be mic-ing it anyway.
 
Been playing to kick drum level since way back when. If i look at where running, my guess am between 12-20 watts being used no matter what amp on Guitar & def need 100 watt minimum on bass.
 
gball said:
One other thing that needs mentioning is Solid State watts are NOT tube watts. They just are not equal, no how no way. I've had 15-watt tube amps absolutely crush 50 watt SS amps in volume and projection.
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There's an old saying that watts is watts and that's true from a technical standpoint, but I get what you're saying and I agree: perceived loudness is not the same between the two, whatsoever.

It's been said that while there is no true exact formula for the perceived loudness difference, a fair and common belief is 3:1. It takes 3 watts of SS to equal the loudness of 1 watt Tube. So in other words, taking a 50w SS Combo and setting it beside a 50w tube combo, both using the same 1x12 speaker, the tube combo will sound roughly 3x as louder than the SS at the same volume. For the two to be roughly equals, you'd need a 150w SS going against a 50w Tube.

I good proof of this is I have a 350w Hybrid amp ( tubed preamp, SS power amp). While it's indeed , no questions asked, truly 350w it doesn't mean it's 7x louder than my 50w Tube heads. In fact, it's only about 3x the loudness. To prove it, I took a decibel meter and conducted a lil test at almost 10ft from each of the same cabs, one being powered by the 350w SS, the other powered by the 50w tube

What I found, cranking them both to the absolute max, no pedals and just straight was:
The 50w going into a cab with 4 T75s was about 109.2dB.

The 350w going into an identical cab was at 116.8db.

That's roughly 7.6dBs difference. The human ear perceives a "double" in loudness by roughly a 3dB increase. At this, we would be sitting at just over 3x the loudness, which, is pretty accurate in this particular case. But compare that same amp against say, a 100w Tube head and the loudness is closer together with the SS MAYBE still being a lil louder. But take it against something like a 120w Tube head? Nope, the 350w SS suddenly is no longer the louder of the two although it's close.


Weird huh? Lol
 
Clockworkmike said:
What I found, cranking them both to the absolute max, no pedals and just straight was:
The 50w going into a cab with 4 T75s was about 109.2dB.

The 350w going into an identical cab was at 116.8db.

That's roughly 7.6dBs difference. The human ear perceives a "double" in loudness by roughly a 3dB increase.
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Gonna jump in here.

That information is close, but not entirely correct. A 3 db increase does represent a doubling of sound pressure. That much is correct.

But, you need a 10 db increase to be perceived as double the loudness by a listener. It's easy to think that an increase in sound pressure must mean a proportional increase in perceived volume, so the confusion is very understandable.

To get that increase of 10 db, you need to increase the wattage by a factor of ten. So, it would take a 500 watt amp to sound twice as loud as a 50 watt amp - all other things being equal.

One of the reasons "tube watts" sound louder than "solid-state watts" is that tubes naturally compress the audio passing through them, so the resultant sound has more audio content within the waveform - creating the sense of loudness. Of course, this is only true of a pure solid-state amp. Once you add DSP to the system, it's not quite so cut-and-dried.
 
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