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Author
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Topic: How many watts are enough?
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Dan Tyack
Member From: Seattle, WA USA
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posted 28 January 2006 08:10 PM
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I use a 30 watt amp for most of my gigs. My tolerence (or preference) for distortion is very high. If I need to play really loud and clean with no miking, I have a little Stewart transistor power amp (about 1-200 watts or so) as am emergency backup. It powers one of the speakers in my stereo 2X12" cab in that case. I play plenty of really loud gigs with just the 30 watt amp, but I rock quite a bit more than most pedal steel players would be comfortable with. ------------------
www.tyack.com |
Jon Light
Member From: Brooklyn, NY
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posted 28 January 2006 08:42 PM
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To address a specific part of your initial post, Doug, I learned the hard way at a particular show that even though I was being mic'ed to the front of house, the monitoring was poor and my Deluxe Reverb which can fill a small room nicely was inadequate for my monitoring needs. To hear myself well I had to raise the volume but this is an amp that has a fairly narrow band of clean sound for steel (clean but growly)--in other words not much headroom. To push it beyond that narrow band for monitoring purposes means feeding the house an overdriven sound. This was a big lesson for me in factoring in stage monitoring as well as venue and/or sound system size when selecting what rig to carry. |
Doug Jones
Member From: Canby, Oregon USA
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posted 29 January 2006 08:20 PM
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Well here's the scoop from my experiment: With my trusty old '92 Emmons LL (18K single coils), a Walker Preamp, TC Elec. M-300 processor, a PV CS 200-X power amp and a Marrs cab with a BW 1501-SB, I played a 200+ seater Thurs night and another equally sized room Fri & Sat nights (Jan 26-29). With running only one channel at 120W into 4ohms, I got plenty of gain, clarity, reponse without breakup. I had the intial gain structures up as high as I could go on the Pre and input of the M-300 without overdrive. I had the Power amp on full, the channel volume full on the Walker and the Master of the Walker at about 75%. Sounded great with plenty of headroom. Was able to gut with the volume pedal with plenty of oomph. Was able to lay a huge train whistle on Folsom Prison and a bigger diesel horn on Truck Drivin' Man. Conclusion: Maybe 120W is enough if the combination of gear and speaker is there. For instance, with my Evans I'll have my volume on 4.5 and master on 3.5. The Webb; sensitivy on 10 and volume on 3 or 4. FWIW, this seems to work for now. -DJ- | |
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