Tube Amp Forum: The Ultimate Tone

hey dudes

I was wondering how much power you think is good for guitar?
how much for bass?

A couple of bass players I know think 100W is good enough for jamming and small gigs. I also know a guy who insists he needs his SVT. Ugh all these guys are using old ampeg tube heads but the 100watt guys have way lighter amps than the SVT. I can see why they like the lower power just on the basis of weight  lol

bass seems to need a lot o power to sound as lloud as a guitar with a lot less power.

i was at this outdoor party last summer. The band had all small amps one guitar had a 20W openback tweedy lookin thing but you could hear him a couple of km away. Not sure how much power the bass had but he was using a tiny cab and everyone was keeping up with the drums which fortunately werent too loud.

My 100w Marshall was way to freakin loud so I got power scaling kits from KOC and now it is a sweet amp to play. sweet like rippin but not rippin my head off. I havent tried to measure how much power I use but it probably isnt even 20W with a drummer. just on my own its probably way on the down low man

So whaddaya think/ how many watts do you have?

peace (so we can hear the power chords)

Well, it all depends on the type of sounds you looking for. My experience is that most players need much less power than they think. If you want to involve the power section in clipping, you need less power and probably Power Scaling---many players can get away with 20W for guitar or less with the right speaker setup. Some guys just like the sound of the bigger amp and that's more of subjective a choice; they don't need the power

However, some circumstances and tonal requirements require high power. These basically any style that requires high volume and cleanly run power section. Some examples I can think of include:


A. high gain in which the pre-amp generates all the distortion, and you need high volume without the power amp clipping
B. Bass when you need clean headroom and no clipping
C. A player who wants very neutral pedal platform.