Phil Starr

Hi again Andy, Just catching up to see if you've found 'your' amp yet and no I don't think you are being picky, you have identified your particular needs and are homing in on the best compromise. I think there may be a stumbling block though. The problem with micro amps in particular is heat. Class D amps are efficient but 200W is a lot of power and a lot of electricity still ends up as waste heat. Without a big case and lots of aluminium fins you really need forced air flow through the amp and you can't really lose the fan. I think this creates a problem if you want something to fit in a gig bag. You might need to be looking at amps with the quietest fan or one that only switches in when the amp starts to get too hot.

The Stagepas looks a good bet if you need the controls on the front and the compact size. If you are going to drive it from the PA I've used the RCF ART 310 as floor monitors for years and they are great with oodles of power.

Good god, one of those Mullard valves in working order is worth money on it's own and a working Treble and Bass....... Please don't take it to just any old repairer, this needs proper restoration and the choice of components used will affect the value of the restored amp, so money saved on a cheap and cheerful fix is going to be money lost. I'd be hoping to keep the amp and speakers together. Any sixties band is going to want that look. What a find:)

Listen to the man. It's a very long time since I had to calculate the size of a heatsink for a power amp but every component in your amp comes with detailed notes about the heat produced and needing to be dissipated. Look at the back of any 70's/80's power amp and you'll see huge finned aluminium heatsinks and these had to be carefully calculated to keep the internal temperature of the power transistors down below the temperature at which they would fail. You now have more power packed into pocket sized amps and thought the class D amps are more efficient huge amounts of heat have to be handled by those tiny fans. Every step from the internals of the component to the surface then across the surface to the internal heatsink and out to the fan has been calculated by someone. In a way dropping a new fan into an amp is like dropping an engine into a car, have you checked that the transmission, supension and brakes are up to the task of a bigger engine? Without the calculations I think the question is "do you feel lucky?"

I don't normally contribute to questions like this, I'm not a user of exotic amps and tend to go direct to PA at gigs and use in-ears but I do have a Monza as my back up and a couple of micro amps so here's my 10p worth. The Warwick Gnome and the Trace Elf 130W into the Monza give me plenty of volume for medium sized gigs and as a stage monitor for the whole band. I don't play full throttle bass for a rock band but that isn't what you are looking for. Either of them fit the easy fit criterion. The Gnome in particular sounds hi-fi a really clean sound, the Trace is more err... Trace, with a good dollop of midrange suckout. A really appealing sound out of the box but not neutral. As it happens I also have the Bugera BV1000M. I wonder what "Hi fi " means to you? For me it is that clean open sound, not overwhelmed by bass or worse the boost around 120Hz you get from underdamped speakers. It should also sound light and airy. My initial feeling with the Gnome is that it was just that. We did some frequency response measurements on these amps and it turns out that 'hi fi' and flat aren't the same thing . The Gnome has a quite pronounced boost at higher frequencies and the low bass is largely absent. The Bugera has an almost flat response with the tne controls set flat but sounds 'neutral' rather than 'hi fi' to my ears anyway. On my amps the fan is quieter on the Gnome thatn the Elf. DI on the micro amps is post though so not ideal for you. The last thing is the Monza, it's got a great horn and driver and is crossed over really accurately. It's also designed for you to hear those mids and tops with the clever radiation pattern. Are you just hearing sonds that were therebefore but inaudible from your playing position? I wonder if you could just filter out the unwanted high frequency elecctrical noise and let the Monza concentrate on giving you just the bass sounds you need from that wonderful mid range

Welcome to the club. I bought mine way back way before Covid for the simple reason that Andertons were selling them off cheap and I couldn't resist. They started life as floor monitors and immediately gave me way more headroom before feedback down to a truly flat response. I quickly adopted them for rehearsals and the vocal sound was so good I started using them for gigs. They've become my go to speakers for small gigs and for my semi acoustic duo and my duo partner bought a second pair for his solo gigs and for us to use as floor monitors. I now put everything through them including kick and bass and my best ever live sound for bass has consistently come from these up on poles. They are completely unspectacular, they just put out the sound you feed in to them, reliably and at volume. They aren't exactly light but the compact size means they are completely manageable and oh, that vocal sound from what is really a budget speaker.

It's interesting how difficult it is to be really sure about the power calculations. The manufacturers don't help much either. Advertising the RCF speakers as being 2000W being a case in point. Firstly that is some sort of peak power and the RMS power will be half or a quarter of that depending upon which brand you are talking about and what level of distortion it is measured at. Secondly the speakers like most modern speakers are managed by DSP. The bass unit it the 932's will probably handle only 3-400W thermal and less than that at low frequencies due to excursion limits. The speakers are protected by the DSP computer so they never go beyond their design spec so 300W peak is more reasonable other than something that lasts a few milliseconds. The limit on the compression/horn driver is going to be 50W at most. There's also an expectation that the speaker is for music not test signals and music has quiet and lout bits and it is probably designed for something like a duty cycle of around 15-20% with the design assumption that that is worse case and the real usage will be well below that. I'll give some examples: my RCF 310's 400W RMS 800W peak are marked on the back as 230V 200W maximum power. My 745's have a 3amp fuse and a maxumum draw of 700W. Those are maximum ratings under worst case. My TE Elf, 180W into 4ohms is rated as 20W average power. That's a 15% duty cycle into 8 ohms and 12% into 4ohms Another way of looking at this is to consider sound levels. The average sound level at a drummers ears is just over 100db. If you are operating with everything balanced to the drums then your PA would need to be around that sort of level too, maybe 6db higher if you are all going through the PA. From memory those speakers give 98db/W so 9W would be needed for them to produce 106db at 1m. That's loud enough to cause instant, permanent hearing damage if you are only 1m from the speaker. Even 90db can cause permanent damage after 1/2 and hours exposure (RNID) It's unlikely that your speakers are using more that 10's of watts in normal use. What this all means is that your 2000W PA is only going to consume 100W per speaker and your backline probably something similar even with a worse case 20% duty cycle. That's well under 4 amps. I doubt many of you use more than 400W of led lighting and this too has a duty cycle, because it does colours, not white light and because it flashes, so unless you run continuous lighting or old fashoined incandescent bulbs you'll probably be running the lights on 2amps current. Your single 13A fuse is never going to blow and there is no way you will disturb a 30A ring main. You probably won't blow a 5A fuse but I don't think I'd try that. I haven't blown a mains fuse in 15 years since I moved to plugging in to a single socket for everything.

The Deltabass is roughly the same power as the Gnome/Elf which I use regularly and is also why I don't really need the Peavey. The Gnome does the job. If I think the amp is going to struggle to make the volume I'll trim the bass a tiny bit and boost the mids to make the amp cut through. Hope the gig goes well.

If you are completely stuck and have a gig coming up I have a Peavey Minimax I could lend you for a couple of weeks. Depends upon where you are in deepest Devon. PM me if you want to take this up, you'd need to drive up to Chard.

Distance trading regulations mean you don't even need to prove there is a fault. You have 14 days to return the amp for a full refund but you will have to pay postage unless they offer free returns in their ads. Distance trading regulations in the UK are primarily governed by the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, which replaced the earlier Distance Selling Regulations. These regulations require sellers to provide clear information about goods and services, including cancellation rights, and give consumers a 14-day period to cancel their orders after receiving the goods. which.co.uk autotraderinsight-blog.co.uk Overview of Distance Trading Regulations in the UK Distance trading regulations in the UK are primarily governed by the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. These regulations replaced the earlier Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 and provide essential rights and obligations for consumers and sellers involved in distance selling. Key Features of the Regulations Consumer Rights Cancellation Period: Consumers have the right to cancel an order for goods within 14 days from the day they receive the goods. For services, the cancellation period starts from the contract formation and lasts 14 days. Information Requirements: Sellers must provide clear information before the contract is concluded, including: Description of goods or services Total price, including taxes and delivery charges Payment methods and delivery details Right of cancellation Seller Obligations Pre-Contract Information: Sellers must communicate essential information in a durable medium (e.g., email or paper) before the contract is finalized. Delivery: Goods must be delivered within 30 days unless otherwise agreed. Refunds: If a consumer cancels, sellers must issue refunds within 14 days of receiving the cancellation notice. Exceptions to the Regulations Certain contracts are excluded from these regulations, including: Goods and services valued at £42 or less Financial services (e.g., pensions, mortgages) Contracts for the construction of new buildings Regularly supplied food and drink These regulations ensure that consumers are protected when purchasing goods or services at a distance, promoting fair trading practices. which.co.uk Wikipedia

You guys are going to get so much more pleasure from the cake than you will from my little demonstration. I've decided to try and catch you all out this time, you have to guess what you are hearing and get marks out of 10. I'm hoping to puncture some myths and demonstrate some truths on the way. I'll not say more in case it gives it all away. It'll be fun for you if you get everything right and hopefully informative if you don't. Maybe I should bake a cake for the winner

OK I've decided on a little demo/shootout for the SW Bash. We've never done a proper blind test before, because we've never managed to totally hide the speakers This time I've realised my band's banner is big enough to hide a good number of speakers so I can re-purpose it and do a properly blind test. I won't say more because then it wouldn't be a fair test

Glad it's not the proctologist

This isn't right or OK. Something electrical is going wrong and needs fixing. It isn't static which will discharge once and go away and doesn't ususally build up on properly earthed equipment. The most common cause is a floating earth. We all trust the central pin on our plugs but it is connected to earth by many metres of cable in the walls and under the floor via loads of connections which may have been wired by the apprentice last thing on a Friday 30 years ago. You'll have some resistance between earth at the entrance to the building and this will be greater with any corroded or poorly made connections. A voltage will devlop between the earth on the plug and if the supply in the room is on spurs or two different ring mains then there may well be a voltage dfference between the earths on the two circuits. You can often measure a difference between two earthed appliances as they are both 'floating'. I run all our electrical gear off a single socket whenever I can, much easier nowadays with LED lighting and more efficient amps and speakers. That means the earth may be floating but if every earth is at the same potential you won't get shocked. The highest difference I've measured is 47V between earths in the same room. Mostly it's less than 10V which gives only a tingle. There can be other problems with the mains wiring. I've had cables shorting within walls and problems with buildings with circuits within rooms on different phases. Not every electrician is a genius unfortunately. Obviously the floating earth is a problem with the room so it should only happen in certain venues or practice rooms It could however be that something is shorting within a faulty bit of gear and that needs checking if you can find what it is

Mine had horrendous electrical noise on it. It may have been faulty. I didn't really manage to get a setting I liked either and preferred the sound I've been getting from the settings on my mixer. The plan was that the Critical Mass would fil out my bv's but would make it possible to mute the effect when talking between songs with the stomp pedal. I thought it would be a quick simple solution but I wasn't prepared to spend time getting it replaced or setting it up to get a sound I didn't like as much as the one I already have.