When would you ever use the full power of a high powered amp?

TheDarkLord

I hear some people say that the don't get the best out of their guitar amp unless they are really cranking it.

Which begs a question.  If you have a very loud amplifier, when would it ever be appropriate to crank it?  I'm taking about an AC30, a Fender Twin, a Marshall 100W full stack etc.

Thing is, one of those, at full chat, is deafeningly loud.  So, you can't do that at a small to medium pub gig.  If you're at a larger venue, a big club etc, then you'll need to mic up the amp anyway for the audience - so no need for earth shattering on-stage volumes.  In fact, any time in experience of being on a stage of any size, the other musicians start to complain when you turn up your own back line too loudly.

Also, if you're doing a larger gig on a larger stage, your going to have monitors and quite probably in ears too - so why the heavy back line?

Also, also ...... when doing a larger gig, the people in the mosh pit will get a confused sound from too heavy a back line if it is already coming though the PA.  Won't they?

PS: I'm not trying to be controversial here.  I'm genuinely asking if it is ever possible/appropriate to crank massively loud amps.

monquixote

There are two answers to this question

1) Yes it can: if you play big gigs, or if you play out of your backline which plenty of bands still do. I depped with a band recently who were playing a big pub with vocals only out of the PA. If I'd have had a Blues Jr or similar I'd have been knackered. 

2) That's not the point: You simply don't have to crank valve amps to get the best out of them. Lots of people don't really like that sagging mids boxy small amp about to explode sound it's really a blues thing. You can't imagine a  country or metal player wanting that sound in any way shape or form, they want amps with masses of headroom that are nowhere near running out of puff. 

Also a Blues Jr never sounds like a Twin even when it's at the same level and a 20 Watt Marshall doesn't sound like a 100 Watt JCM800 into a 4x12. Big amps sound like big amps at every volume. 

Let me put it this way, you don't need a car with a top speed of over 70 miles an hour, but would you want to drive one.

TheDarkLord

The headroom thing I get. It's just the cranked thing that I don't get.

ICBM

I've used the full power of my 100W amp when playing a big room, without going through the PA... but that's full power as in the maximum strictly clean volume. You can't go even as high as half power without distorting the transients, and probably not even that much… maybe even as low as a quarter (6dB below peak volume). Maybe very slightly more for a solo, but certainly nowhere near fully cranked. In order to get that clean sound with the volume and full tone I wanted to reach out into the room, I *needed* the full power of the amp. "Why not just mic up?" - because the PA we used was just a little vocal job and it wouldn't have had the reserve of power to handle the guitar as well or sounded any good. Why make things more complicated, anyway? Everything sounded great the old school way - a big amp set at an angle to the room so it isn't too beamy fills the space very well. A little cranked amp might be as loud, just in front of the stage - or even louder - but it won't have the clean sound or the fullness of tone and it will be much more directional.

Anyway, my amp just sounds better at *any* volume than almost any small amp I've ever played, so why does it matter that I don't normally play it even that loud? Contrary to the popular belief of guitarists, amplifiers have volume controls and you can turn them down as well as up - some don't sound as good like that, some do. Sure, it weighs a lot… that's my problem! If I can't be bothered with that (I can't always) I'll take something lighter. But I do at least know that if I do take it it doesn't matter if there's a decent PA or monitors or not.

As monquixote said about cars… I used to drive a Citröen 2CV. They do have a maximum speed of 70mph, and one of the great joys of driving them is that you can push them to the limit without breaking the law (much ), on country roads. But they're damn hard work to get anywhere quickly in over a long distance on the motorway - you literally drive with your foot to the floor the whole time, and you have no chance of getting past if you come up behind a slow lorry when there's fast traffic in the outside lanes... there's almost no acceleration above 60mph.

bigfuzz

My 2 cents.. nothing worse than a boxy sounding 15w combo..

Cirrus

It's so simple. People choose amps that sound good at the volumes they use them at. Might be cranked or clean, big or small, it all just depends. You'd be surprised how often I can push my ac30 all the way to its maximum output at small gigs - the trick is not doing it all the time, and only doing it when it makes sense musically. People complain when they think you're being needlessly loud.

thermionic

When I had an AC30 it was often cranked, at largish pub venues when we only had a vocal PA. The drummer hated us those nights...

Smaller pub back rooms not so, and ironically larger gigs with a full PA I had to turn it down quite low when it was miked up. We used to buy the sound guy a pint and give him a cassette to record the performance - my guitar always sounds very low in the mix on those tapes, I guess the volume from the amp (even when turned down quite low) was enough that the mike signal into the desk (and out into the PA speakers) didn't need to be very high.

Maxi

If the question is when then the answer is rarely .

On a lower powered amp the answer is more often .

Ive noticed that spl's on an open air stage get lost even with side fills and angled monitors , take two steps in any direction and your monitoring from a different box .

Theres also the issue of how driven is too driven ? You might not want your power stage to be above 50 % but if your sound check reveals a problem theres power on tap if the guy behind the desk cant speak english or is being a twat .

bertie

bigfuzz said:

My 2 cents.. nothing worse than a boxy sounding 15w combo..

cant think of any myself

 

ecc83

Just my non-player observations....

A 100W fixed biased amp is going to have a very different dynamic response from a 30W cathode biased one. Up to about 12-25W the 100 is going to be almost pure "class A" and have very low distortion so your "core" sound, middle dynamic is going to be very clean and 20W is still very loud thru 100dB/W/mtr speakers. The 30W CB'er on the other hand is getting pretty grimy.

Then, getting a good low end "wooumf" takes juice and big OPTraffs. Big amps also TEND to be better built and, to take the car analogy a step further, being less stressed (for a given SPL/mph) tend to be more reliable.

Dave.

ThePrettyDamned

With all this said, and I'm a lover of powerful amps at low (even whisper) volume, there is something madly satisfying about playing an 18 watt circuit with a low output humbucker, driving the balls off it and getting great classic rock sounds, and even a 5 watt amp can be great fun.

I'll always love big amps though.

martinw

bigfuzz said:

My 2 cents.. nothing worse than a boxy sounding 15w combo..

Minor point, but boxiness, or lack of, is nothing to do with power output.

There are boxy 100W combos too. Boogies , IMO of course, sound boxy, and Marshall made some 100W combos in tiny 1x12 cabinets that sound boxy. Conversely, a 5W amp driving a 4x12 can sound huge.

Van_Hayden

You may also find that rather than needing less power in smaller pubs you need more. I once had to buy a 100w head to keep up with a loud drummer playing small rooms. The SPL gets very very high in those circumstances.

Although it's very rare you'd buy a high gain head and crank it. Amps that have very harmonically rich preamp designs don't need to be up at full (actually very few amps should be turned up full, if you get up full you've missed the sweet spot) to achieve the desired tone, one of the reasons I don't like low power high gain amps, especially with EL84s.

The point is a 100w head responds and sounds in a certain way, a 50w version of the same amp sounds different and so on. I like the sound and dynamics of a big amp into a big can at modest levels, personal taste and all....but then combos I like a smaller amp in a bigger cab.

And as has been pointed out an amp isn't boxy sounding, it's the cab.

ICBM

martinw said:

Minor point, but boxiness, or lack of, is nothing to do with power output.

There are boxy 100W combos too. Boogies , IMO of course, sound boxy, and Marshall made some 100W combos in tiny 1x12 cabinets that sound boxy. Conversely, a 5W amp driving a 4x12 can sound huge.

Much as I love 100W amps and *Mesa* amps, I agree - it's one of the main reasons I don't like *Boogies*… the original small-cabinet Mark series combos. Extremely boxy and directional. A minimum-size open-back front-loaded single speaker cabinet is most of the problem, but the amp voicing doesn't help.

A low-powered amp certainly can sound big and not boxy through a 4x12". It just still doesn't have quite the same 'authority' as a bigger one, to me - it's not just the frequency response, there's something about the punch of the low notes that seems to be very difficult to get with anything less than about 50W.

dafuzz

Sound-proofed studio? I think Slash did this - he was actually playing in the mixing room. Can't remember if it was AFD or Illusion.

Richardj

I agree about the boxiness thing.  Simply because it now has a larger better quality cab with 2x10s my 15w Pro Junior actually has a bigger sound than my 50w 1x12 Koch Twintone.  I'm guessing that because it is moving more air it has plenty of volume (even clean) for domestic use.  For me the difference is the amount of clean headroom available when you up the ante.  

Remember the Guitarist test where a cranked Fender HRD had more db volume than a cranked 100w Marshall head and 4x12?

It isn't volume that's the issue, it's the ability to fill your chosen space with a clear, definable sound.

guitarfishbay

dafuzz;129269" said:

Sound-proofed studio? I think Slash did this - he was actually playing in the mixing room. Can't remember if it was AFD or Illusion.

Having the cab+mic in a separate room is pretty standard practice in any studio with the capacity to do so. It is also why heads are useful in the studio as you can keep the head in the control room to tweak EQ/gain.

I find you reach a point of diminishing returns when you get to a certain volume for higher gained sounds. Beyond a certain point (with a certain amount of preamp gain) the amp doesn't really get louder but it will compress more.

martinw

ICBM said:

A low-powered amp certainly can sound big and not boxy through a 4x12". It just still doesn't have quite the same 'authority' as a bigger one, to me - it's not just the frequency response, there's something about the punch of the low notes that seems to be very difficult to get with anything less than about 50W.

I agree, but there's 2 things I'd add. Firstly, obviously not everybody wants that 'authority' or directness, or immediacy, or however it's described. But then that's a given that we all have different tastes, and different musical styles.

The other thing is though that I'm not sure it's the power output per se that gives those qualities. I think the incidental effects of having a stiffer power supply and bigger output transformer are doing some of the things you describe. So, if you were to build a lower power amp (say 20-30W) with a larger, hi-fi style OT, and stiff power supply, and a lowish gain preamp, you get some of the same qualities of punch and authority.

There aren't many valve amps like that around, but I think that it's the reason Matamps have a reputation for being louder than their power output, for instance. Hayden might agree.

Danny1969

I remember playing Highbury College in the eighties with my Marshall 100 watt Jubilee fully cranked, the thing was turned up full pelt into a 4 x 12" cab. That was in the common room, we were so loud

At big gigs you can turn up but it generally causes problems due to the relatively slow speed of sound. You get a delay between hearing the FOH stacks and the backline ........ which can be 20 metres or so further back. If your gonna crank it to get your sound then it's generally better to have the amp mic'ed up back stage rather than on stage. I've been at FOH when a Hendrix trib guy used a 100 watt on full pelt in a 350 cap venue, made the gig pretty much un-mixable within council limits

57Deluxe

(In your head) Woodstock... but (in today) you'd be there all on your own, with the wind wapping your flare bottoms around a bit...

koneguitarist

Bigger the gig smaller the amp, smaller the gig bigger the amp. Simples !