The Wattage Conundrum - My Take

[László]

Also, Les, I see you wanting that DG 50. Do it!

If my ulnar nerve problem can be treated, I will get one to celebrate. If not, I'll have to stop playing guitar altogether very soon, because the fingers on my fretting hand are losing their coordination and strength. Quickly.

So...I guess we shall see.

But for now, there's a moratorium on gear shopping.

 

[andy474x]

If my ulnar nerve problem can be treated, I will get one to celebrate. If not, I'll have to stop playing guitar altogether very soon, because the fingers on my fretting hand are losing their coordination and strength. Quickly.

So...I guess we shall see.

But for now, there's a moratorium on gear shopping.

There will be no such talk here. Be positive!

 

[sergiodeblanc]

Dude, I got stuck on Lake St. sometime in the late '80s wearing a suit and driving a new Mustang GT. Wish I could have heard you then instead of fearing for my life.

Ha! You would've still feared for your life if we would've run into each other. I ran with a rough crew of emaciated vegans and skinbirds back then, not to mention my hardline straightedge guitar riffs.

My 5 is the modded Valve Jr that I've mentioned before - it had a weak low end prior to putting an oversized Hammond output transformer in it. Now it has balls, for 5 watts. By no means does it have the chest-thumping power of a 100 watt amp, but it can keep up with a band that's keeping things relaxed and at low to moderate volumes, and it fits in the mix perfectly. .

Is that the Epiphone amp with one knob? If so that lil' thing is killer. My boy who worked for HARPO and was the bassist for the PBR&B band I played with had a modded one of those and it wowed me!

Back then Mesa had Road Ready bass cabs, that were like rack gear, with extruded aluminum trim, doors to protect the fronts, and formica-covered cabinets. You couldn't destroy them. I had a matching rack for the head, too. The rig looked like it was ready for...well...much more than my studio.

A crapload of glass, very expensive to re-tube, but so totally worth it.

I loved that sh!t. I still do. I occasionally look 'em up on eBay and then move on 'cause they're mostly on the left-coast (shipping) and I would lose a nut moving 'em in and outta the car.

 

[László]

There will be no such talk here. Be positive!

Dude, I'm a Viking! I was working in the studio ten days after open heart surgery! I was born 847 years ago, I can handle being cut in half by a chainsaw.

But if the fingers don't work, I have to accept whatever the outcome is with strength and dignity.

"But Les, you're rolled up in a ball on the floor, whining uncontrollably."

"Oh, don't worry. That's what we Vikings do when we think we might not be able to play guitar any more."

"No, Vikings don't do that."

"How many wounded electric guitar-playing Vikings have you met personally?"

 

[alantig]

But if the fingers don't work, I have to accept whatever the outcome is with strength and dignity.

 

[squirrel211]

Multiple open tunings = a reason to purchase more axes! One for each tuning

PRS Private Stock Lap Steel!!!! PEDAL STEEL!!! 12 pole 58/15's!!!

 

[László]

I've never liked playing slide guitar. Heck, I don't even like listening to slide guitar.

Sigh.

 

[pac90]

In general, can a good master volume amp be turned down enough to get a good quiet in house sound ie not bleed through the house

eg I have 2 different fairly cheap small watt amps and one of them needs a little more 'oomph' to sound good at quiet room levels than the other, the 15w tweaker versus the 4watt vox



I just saw the new AC15 head with the attenuator, which piqued my interest, will be interesting to see the reviews on that

 

[Blues Trucker]

Well, since you put the line at 30 watts I guess I can be included in this discussion at 40 watts.
Having one 5 watt amp, which is great, and just recently gotten a 40 watt amp, I can attest that it was way cool when I turned it up, and not even all the way, that day it arrived at the door and I could hear the windows rattling.
It sounds better than the little amp at lower levels too, where Im at most of the time.
I am keeping the little amp as a traveling amp, and as an amp my wife can plug into if she ever decides to follow through on her threats to start learning how to play.
And Les. My sincerest hopes for a full and quick recovery go out to you. Its kinda cool being able to talk to and learn from someone who actually earns a living playing the guitar.

 

[László]

And Les. My sincerest hopes for a full and quick recovery go out to you. Its kinda cool being able to talk to and learn from someone who actually earns a living playing the guitar.

Thanks! Most of my living is earned on keys, but guitar is a close second, and I actually like playing guitar more. It's kind of become an addiction...

 

[Kazz]

The HXDA 30 is an amp I mainly use fairly overdriven, so I can record with it quite happily and it's easy to get signal to "tape." I love my HXDA 30.

But the 50 Watt version of the same amp definitely had a more flexible dynamic range.

That was a trade-off I knowingly made, and I did it to have what it does for recording because I did tend to shake the room with the 50 Watt HXDA. However, I still would get another 50 Watt amp, maybe a DG50 just to have something with a little more dynamic range and "give." In fact, if PRS still makes a 100 Watt HXDA (it's a little unclear), I may add one down the road.

The PRS web site says that the HXDA 50 is 100 watts, switchable to 50. Is that wrong? Or new?

Since you switched from the 50 to the 30 I guess you don't think the master volume on the HXDA does a good enough job of keeping the sound you want while lowering the volume? Is there another way to deal with it? A volume control between the amp and cab maybe?

The HXDA is one of the amps I'm most interested in, but while I'd like to be able to get the "big iron sound" I'm also only playing and recording at home right now, so I don't want to rattle the windows out of their frames.

I've never actually had a decent sized tube amp (just a small solid state practice amp and simulations), so it's hard for me to judge. I get the feeling that the 30 watt would be more than enough power for a bedroom studio, but I'd rather not buy a 30 and then try to sell it and get a 50/100 down the road if I could tame that and get the same or better results out of it right now.

I'm also interested in the Archon, which adds another level of the same questions for anyone familiar with the different wattages in that range.

 

[aristotle]

For me there are two applications that an amp ideally satisfies. The first is that it has to generate the right range of tones live in a small club environment. The second is that it needs to be used at home for practice and figuring out songs. Some amps, like the 100W Marshall 2466 is fantastic down to about 6 on the master for live work. They make a 50W 2266, but to me, it doesn't work as well at any MV setting. Still a great amp, but it just misses something in comparison. Oddly though, if I have the 2466 at home, it sounds great to my ears with the master dialed way way back. I can say the same thing about the DG30. It wants its master up fairly high in live situations, but sounds great at home down low.

Something like the Archon is a different thing entirely. It's the best bedroom amp ever, even at 100W (I never hit the 50W switch because it doesn't make it sound any better at any volume.) To me, it's the same amp all the way down to a whisper except that you can't feel your pant leg move. I attribute this to the fact that the tone comes more from the pre-amp.

Some amps, like the KT66 cathode biased Marshall Astoria come out naturally at 30W just due to their topology rather than a desire to have it be particularly low-power. Again, sounds great at any volume.

Cost and weight are generally better in low power versions of high power amps though, so I can that side of the equation. In fact, to me, cost and weight left out of it, I just don't see where a low power amp delivers better than their equivalent high power versions. I'll admit I like playing around with my JTM-1 at home because it can be shoved anywhere. But it doesn't sound any better than the 2466, regardless of the volume selected to me...

 

[Dusty Chalk]

In general, can a good master volume amp be turned down enough to get a good quiet in house sound ie not bleed through the house

In most cases, no, you lose the speaker distortion, and it's a case of compromises. There also is a matter of "it just sounds better louder" that affects most guitarists, so the amps are not usually designed to sound best at certain volumes.

There's also the problem of drummers -- rarely, even in a small club environment, are anyone else expected to be any less loud than the drummer, since there's no volume control on a drummer.

As an apartment dweller and night owl (and therefore the group of people known as "musicians who share buildings with people who don't necessarily appreciate musicians tendency to play the same thing over and over again"), I am still wishing someone would create something just for us. I mean, it's kind of arbitrary that speakers break up the way they do at the volumes they do, they should be able to theoretically "under engineer" the speaker so that it breaks up similarly pleasantly at lower volumes. Kind of like what Avantone did with the mix cubes (studio monitors designed to mimic real world listening situations such as car stereos, boomboxes, and the like, although they did more of the frequency limiting thing than the speaker breakup, but you get the idea).

The closest I've come is the digital modeling amps. I also imagine recording the amp in an amp isolation box and listening on studio quality headphones would be a solution.

 

[László]

The PRS web site says that the HXDA 50 is 100 watts, switchable to 50. Is that wrong? Or new?

Since you switched from the 50 to the 30 I guess you don't think the master volume on the HXDA does a good enough job of keeping the sound you want while lowering the volume? Is there another way to deal with it?

My HXDA 50 was bought not long after they first came out. It was only 50 watts, not switchable to anything else. So I don't know if the new ones are, or not. At the time they did have a 100 watt HXDA, but I don't know if it was switchable. I'd call PRS and ask.

I switched from the 50 to the 30 thinking it'd be a bit easier to control for recording with a smaller speaker cab. It does produce less of a low-end roar, and so maybe t's a little bit easier to record, but at the same time, there's a tone tradeoff. That low frequency thing also gave the amp some extra syrupy, buttery sauce.

Do I miss that? Certainly! Where do I hear an advantage with the 30? It's a little easier to get mic levels for crunchy chords, etc. Where was the advantage with the 50? It sounded a little richer for solos.

The 50 had a terrific master volume. So I didn't really need to make the switch! Of course, these are hand wired amps, and each one sounds a little bit different, anyway. And tubes matter. Sticking an NOS Mullard 12AX7 in the V1 made a sweet difference with the HXDA30.

Still, I had a hankering to try the 30, and that's what I did. It's a keeper. So is the 50, but I didn't keep it. My loss. If I'd used my head, I'd have both now, and be switching between them to get different tones for various things.

In a way, the idea that I could make the switch from the 50 to the 30, and everything would be pretty much the same, but with lower volume, is one of the incorrect ideas that inspired this thread. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my HXDA 30. The 30 is its own beast, with its own kind of tone.

But I do miss the 50.

 

[BMiller]

In general, can a good master volume amp be turned down enough to get a good quiet in house sound ie not bleed through the house
/QUOTE]

A well designed Master Volume can sound very good at those levels (depending on the amps top wattage), but you will be missing two things - speaker breakup and air movement. I like to build amps and I add post phase inverter master volumes (PPIMV) to all of them. This allows you to run the pre-amp really hard and push the phase inverter into distortion without sounding thin and wimpy (ie early Marshall MV designs). The design I implement sounds like the amp at the same settings, just lower in volume and of course, without the air movement and speaker breakup. I like that I can dial in a huge tone, roll back the master to fit the mix, and tweak the eq if needed.

 

[Kazz]

Thanks for the info! I think I'll pick up a 50 if/when I can get the money together for it...and a piezo-equipped PRS (P24/P22/P245?/SH?)...and eventually something more single-coil...man, this is getting expensive. >_<

My HXDA 50 was bought not long after they first came out. It was only 50 watts, not switchable to anything else. So I don't know if the new ones are, or not. At the time they did have a 100 watt HXDA, but I don't know if it was switchable. I'd call PRS and ask.

I'll double check before buying, but currently this page: http://prsguitars.com/hxda50/ says "
Watts 100W/50W (Half Power Switch)" and no other 100 watt HDXA is listed, so I think at some point they just combined them.

 

[László]

Thanks for the info! I think I'll pick up a 50 if/when I can get the money together for it...and a piezo-equipped PRS (P24/P22/P245?/SH?)...and eventually something more single-coil...man, this is getting expensive. >_<

The "disease" gets worse. Trust me.

I'll double check before buying, but currently this page: http://prsguitars.com/hxda50/ says "
Watts 100W/50W (Half Power Switch)" and no other 100 watt HDXA is listed, so I think at some point they just combined them.

Very possibly, and that wouldn't be a bad idea, to my way of thinking! You'd have the headroom of the 100 watt for when you needed it, switchable down to the spongier feel of the 50? Cool beans, IMHO.

 

[Kazz]

The "disease" gets worse. Trust me.

I know...it's been progressing faster than I'd anticipated. Now I just need to find ways of funding crazy amounts of spending on gear!

If you ever happen to need help on the film side of your ads or anything, let me know!

 

[squirrel211]

Kazz, you only need 1 kidney....

 

[Boogie]

I'll double check before buying, but currently this page: http://prsguitars.com/hxda50/ says "
Watts 100W/50W (Half Power Switch)" and no other 100 watt HDXA is listed, so I think at some point they just combined them.

There's some confusing mismatch of details on the website. The HXDA 50 is a 50w amp with no power scaling feature. It uses a pair of EL34s to get that rating. The HXDA 100 was a different model released later, with a quad of EL34s, that had a 100w/50w switch. Two of the power tubes were put in standby for the power reduction. The website has the description of the 50 but the specs of the 100, so If they've condensed the line, we can't tell from this.