I hope this isn't the stupidest question of all time...
I'm looking into buying a vintage tube amp - two, actually...they're the same model and have the same features but one is 50w and one is 100w.
Here's what I'm wondering:
Will both amps sound the same, except one will be able to go louder? Or will the wattage affect the crunch/gain factor? Or will i be able to get a better clean tone out of the 100W since there's more headroom?
Besides the overall volume, what is the advantage/disadvantage to getting the higher wattage? How does wattage affect the tone? And how many times can i ask the same question in one post?
At the gigs you're playing 50 watts should be a plenty! 50w will breakup into that sweet saturation at levels you can still play at without causing your patrons ears to bleed. If you're only looking for clean then yes, the headroom of the 100 should give you louder cleans before it breaks up, but what's the fun in that?!
Technically, the difference between 50W and 100W is only 3dB.....basically, in terms of how loud the amp sounds, 100W does not sound twice as loud as 50W.
what rich said... there's more headroom, mostly for clean channels. I'd go with 50w for the ease of "driving" the amp to clip and distort naturally ...glen
So i plugged in my friend's 50w today and played around with it with my Boss ME-33.
The tone is killer, but there's one drawback...no f/x loop. plugging in direct is all fine and good on the clean channel, but once I kick on the amp distortion, my delay/reverb get buried. Not enough to destroy the sound, but I know i'd be happier if they were looped.
The 100w version of this amp has an f/x loop...but i don't have one at my disposal to try out.
So my options are:
Choice A: Get the 50w and get the tone that I know I like, but not have an f/x loop, thus having my f/x buried.
Choice B: Get the 100w and maybe not quite get the tone (because I'm not usually at liberty to turn up so much), but be able to juice a little more out of the amp since I have an f/x loop.
maybe you should consider an amp which has a 'half' power switch option. by this i mean that the amp's power can be halved like my Peavey. a 120W halved to 60W. very useful at home & at gigs...
doubt it... i spent a lot of time with a Marshall TSL one night, set for 25 watts... and believe me, if you began to push it even at 1/4 power, you could TOTALLY have held your own in a moderate-sized club.
-Drew
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