How many watts is a good speaker?
HelloOf course, no one makes a 32-watt amp, but a 40- or 50-watt receiver or amplifier should do fine. If the amp or receiver you want puts out, say, 100 watts, don't worry about it. Remember, at average listening levels with typical speakers, any amp is putting out only about 1 watt, anyway.Motivational Speaker indian
Can I use a 20W amp to run an 80W speaker?
Short answer: Sure, why not?Longer answer: An 80-watt speaker will handle 20 watts with no problem. In fact, it might not work at its peak efficiency with only 20 watts!An 80-watt speaker will probably be happiest with around 40 to 60 watts; that'll be enough to drive it effectively, while retaining some capability before it reaches its limit. You can go up to 70–75 watts, but it's a good idea to leave a little bit of a 'fudge factor' just in case…Also, make SURE that the amp and speaker impedances are matched! If your speaker output is 8Ω, make sure you're using an 8Ω speaker. In a pinch, you could use a 16Ω speaker - it won't be quite as loud, and the added impedance will likely affect the tone to some degree - but it'll work.NEVER use a 4Ω speaker with an 8Ω output, though! The speaker needs to be at LEAST the same impedence as the output; you can easily damage the amp otherwise!
20 watt head vs 100 watt guitar amp?
I'm considering the jet city 20 watt, orange tiny terror 15 I think, and a 100watt (I think) b-52 at-100. I need to be able to be heard through loud drums and loud enough for small gigs of maybe less than 50 people capacity venue. I also hear that tube amps sound best when the volume is blasted. so would a 20 watt blasted sound just as good as a 100 watt at a lower volume or will that depend on the watt rating of the amp? In other words, can a 20 watt head sound better than a 100 watt at lower volumes due to the fact that the lower volume head is being blasted? or will the low watttage have an effect? Also, I need a sweet lead tone yet crunch rhythm for alternative metal and mainstream rock and even metalcore. I have pedals so I really don't care what these amps can do cause I could just set it on clean but still, give me some details on that. Most importantly, how loud do these get? loud enough for what kind of situations? I'm not playing huge stadiums but I'll probably be playing some local venues here soon of 20-50 people hopefully and band practice.
How loud is an average guitar amp (in decibels), at 30% or 50% volume?
Let’s compare a Vox AC15 and a Marshall JCM800 50 watt half stack.The 15 watt (actually 18) Vox came with a 12″ Celestion Blue speaker that produces 100db at 1khz, at one meter with one watt.To increase the volume by 3db requires 10x more power (log 20). So at 10 watts (of 18) the Vox makes 103db. The amplifier cannot make 100 watts, so at maximum, it could only produce 103.2 db.The Marshall, while called a 50 watt amp, actually makes about 67 watts. It feeds 4 12″ Celestion Greenback speakers each making 97db at one watt, at one meter.One speaker gives 97db, doubling that to 2 speakers gives you 3 more dB and doubling again to 4 speakers gives you 3 more. So, that adds up to 103db at 4 watts. Ten times more power, 40 watts, gets us to 106db. The amp cannot produce 400 watts - 10 times more. So the max is about 107db.
Do I HAVE to match amp and cab wattage?
While the other answer was very acceptable, let me supplement it. The general rule is that if you have more amp watts than speaker watts, then you can't turn push more watts from the amp than the speakers are rated for. A 100w amp can totally power a 10 watt cab... just don't turn it up very loud! The converse is also true - you can have more speaker watts than amp watts, but it's a little harder on the amp, and it won't be as loud as the appropriately powered amplifier. This makes it more likely that you'll want to turn the amp up, and the harder an amp is pushed the more likely it is that the power amp will hiccup or fail, which may result in a blown speaker and/or damaged amp. I have a 300 watt Marshall 1960a cab. It's a beautiful thing. I normally play through it with a 100 watt Mesa Boogie trem-o-verb. Unfortunately, when I was pulling the power tubes one day I accidentally cracked one of them, and the only replacement I could find on short notice was a pair of matched 6L6 tubes, not a quad. Using only two tubes reduces the wattage I have available by a certain percent... yet it still powers it just fine. In fact, I can still shake the room with it! I also have an Epiphone Valve Jr, which is only 5 watts, yet it powers the amp just fine as well. Caveat: It is about half the volume of the mesa when the Epi is close to maximum, which is what I would expect, since wattage to volume is logarithmic and not linear. (quick aside - most of the volume your hear is in the first 10 or 20 watts of an amp. the rest is headroom. It takes a tenfold increase in wattage to sound twice as loud, so a 100w amp is only twice as loud as a 10 watt amp, and a 5 watt amp is only half as loud as a 50 watt amp!) As long as I don't push the 5 watt amp too hard, which sometimes I want to do, I should be in the clear. Tubes have a lot more ability to cope with things like different wattage than solid state amps, partly because of the way they're rated, partly because of their output impedances... oh, never mind. Anyways, that's me and my experience. 100 watts to 100 watts is safe, but it is perfectly okay to go a little under or a little over, as long as you understand what you're doing (and don't let someone who doesn't eff with your amp). Good luck! Saul
Are guitar amplifiers and cabinets redundant? A Vox AC15 is too loud for home or apartment use past 3 on a scale of 10 for volume and gain. Everything live or recorded can be done by a DI or a PA. Most will require that. Why bother with buying amps?
As Nevi points out in his answer, an attenuator will allow the tubes to get hot enough to give the full amp sound at low volume and Vox now have their Reactive Attenuator built in on some AC30’s.You’re making a good point though, and, for most of us, DI-ing through some kind of amp simulator will do. It’s convenient, the desk can control the sound more easily in a live venue and most DAW’s have amp, speaker and pedal simulators which we can permutate and tweak to our hearts’ content after the track’s laid down. The only amp I own is a 2-watt Microcube and that’s got simulators representing a good few grand in real amps.However, when we see pro guitarists on stage, there’s usually a stack of 1960’s technology smouldering away in the background. In their studio sessions, we again see these audio dinosaurs pumping it out. Now, those amps, whether live or recorded, still go through the desk. So why have them?The reason is very simple: a simulator is exactly that. It’s good enough for most things but it never has the edge of the real thing, it just doesn’t produce the raw material in front of the driver like the amp itself does. There may come a day when the chip triumphs and we see Brian May in a blindfold test unable to say which is his AC30 and which is the laptop but, at the minute, he’s still having those old Vox’s lugged around the world.So, regarding your final question “Why bother with buying amps?”, I’d personally say buy them if that edge really seems worth it, or if it makes ad hoc jamming more convenient and if not, stick to simulation.