Why weak wattage?

[Downunderwonder]

8 hours ago, la bam said:

That's too loud / needless for home and just not practical for gigging and to be honest not much different in price. 

Horses for courses and you don’t send your highly trained trotter to the galllops.

 

Most of the gigs I have done in the last 10 years have been done with 200w'ers.

[Downunderwonder]

4 hours ago, TimR said:

I blame the "keeping up with the drummer" mindset. Even I have fallen into that trap in my post.

 

The drummer should be playing at the appropriate volume. Too many non-musical drummers playing at one volume. But that's another thread. 

A drummer that is a little OTT wouldn't be too much of a problem. When Sir Guitard has to OTT the drummer instead of telling drummer too cool his jets you got problems.

[Downunderwonder]

1 hour ago, la bam said:

It's no problem at all

 

Its not a dig at anything, just a genuine question.... Just light hearted. If it works for you, then great. 

 

Why build a weaker powered version of something that works well, and produce something that may not (in certain circumstances)? 

 

Why build a practice amp that is too loud for a house, (I'm all for more power and a volume knob) but not suitable for the majority of gigs? 

 

Its properly also to do with the YouTube over enthusiastic rave about anything presenters as well who help shift these to people as amazingly loud gigging amps, who then find out that they need something else.. 

Why? Because people that don't need to blow the doors off the joint buy them to use on gigs.

[Dan Dare]

2 hours ago, LawrenceH said:

I wish I could find a good lightweight 8" driver (or even 6") optimised for high power handling, low resonant frequency, medium Q and low sensitivity.

 

Have a look at Volt drivers. Nice, but not cheap, though.

[Norris]

1 hour ago, Downunderwonder said:

Most of the gigs I have done in the last 10 years have been done with 200w'ers.

Most of mine have been done with 500W but with the master volume turned down to 4 🤪

[TimR]

Sensitivity.

 

My 500W amp spends much of its time set at 3. If I adjust it to 2.5 its far too quiet, 3.5 too loud. 

 

I guess a 200W amp might give more range. 

[Wolverinebass]

I remember trying an Elf into a Vanderkley 2x10 at a SE Bash a few years ago. It was total and utter crap. To get any form of volume out of it you'd either be red lining it the whole time or using it with an 8x10 which defeats the entire point of such a small amp.

 

Fair enough, coffee shop gig. For anything loud, it wouldn't work at all. Zero headroom. 

[knirirr]

200W is plenty for me (with a 1x12 cab), but I'm playing jazz and if guitarists are present they're going to be playing clean and at a sensible volume. 

[LawrenceH]

I like reading people's different subjective preferences, makes me question/analyse my own.

 

I don't think it's just a matter of volume per se, rather the EQ balance you want and where there is space in the mix for the bass. 100w is ample in some cases and woefully inadequate in others.

 

Bear in mind that speaker/cab design philosophy changes a lot depending on how much power you have available. The right 15" driver and cab will let you gig a 50w head, but to scale that up even a bit requires a lot of boot space.

[gjones]

I did buy a 100 watt Fender Rumble when I joined a country band. It was definitely loud enough for the quieter type gigs I did with them. I also used it with a blues band, that I would occasionally gig with. Both of those bands had sensible drummers. It was extremely light and easy to cart around and had more than enough output for that type of music.

 

I've got 500 watt heads and a cupboard full of cabs for the bigger gigs, with shed builder drummers and power mad guitarists.

Edited 10 hours ago by gjones

[tauzero]

8 hours ago, la bam said:

My point is I don't see what the middle ground serves..... They're too loud for home practice, so they haven't been designed for that, and as I've said imo on their own not really upto the majority of gigging, so they can't be designed for that, they're not far off but they run out of steam or get driven that hard it's not good for them, when the same chassis could carry a more power amp for hardly any more money to build. 

 

Which 200W amps have you used for home practice and found too loud? The volume control is effective on most, if not all, amps, and will reduce the sound level considerably when correctly applied.

 

8 hours ago, la bam said:

Now... The elf from trace I understand. Ground breaking, good sound, and can be used as a di or Di to foh, and you can fit it in your pocket.... But heads and combos the same or similar size as larger powered ones, that have to be really pushed just to do the job? I just don't get it. 

 

Maybe I'm missing something? What specific use would a 200w amp have over a 500w or 800w have? 

 

If you're using a 100-200W speaker, it means you're less likely to accidentally blow it. I use my 200W TC BAM200 head in preference to my 900W Tecamp when I'm using a small cab (house jam micro cab, and, when I've finally completed it, BC 8" cab). Still managed to blow an Eminence Deltalite 2510 mk2 with it (poxy "Made in USA" rubbish, give me reliable Chinese stuff any day).

 

[Phil Starr]

15 hours ago, DGBass said:

If we are talking modern class-d amps, I suspect that someone in the industry, probably an accountant, has decreed that 200w gives the best bang for your buck in an entry level bass head ( or combo).

 

Given some of the earlier comments I ought to say I'm not being critical at all just that you made an interesting point

 

The theoretical maximum power of an amp is determined by the operating voltage, the power in practice by heatsinking. If you are buiding a 60V amplifier than a lot of your components need to be 60V rated particularly in the power output stage. Running at 30V saves you a lot of money. Most Class D amps are complete amplifiers in a chip though there are also class D driver chips where the processing goes on in a bog standard chip and manufacturers can add the output devices of their choice. Designing and fabricating the first chip is an expensive process but then mass producing them costs pence. Nearly all of the high power chips are manufactured as stereo chips and many as quad amps. Power is proportional to the square of the voltage and you can use a stereo amp module in bridge mode to get four times the power. The same chips are used in domestic hi-fi electronics and things like in car entertainment systems. If you have a car stereo with a sub it's probably running one of the 50W quad amps with two of the amps running each side and two others bridged to drive the sub. It was these chips that stimulated the whole 2.1 phenomenon.

 

So there are a few manufacturers of these chips who make ones of the right voltage to produce 200W into 4 ohms given the limits of their power supplies and heatsinking. Guess what is in the Gnome ,Elf,BAM  at their heart they are car stereos with a bit of bass orientated EQ. It's also how they can be so cheap. Bass amps aren't really a big market so a lot of innovation is piggy backed upon what happens elsewhere in the market especially at the bottom end of the market.

 

It also makes sense for amps to go up in 3dB steps which is doubling amplifier power. So, 100,200,400,800 does make sense both for the bassist and the manufacturer.

[Leonard Smalls]

10 hours ago, Wolverinebass said:

I remember trying an Elf

Our other bass player in the punk band uses an Elf - at rehearsal into my large Precision Devices 15" cab and for gigs into a 4x10 with Celestion speakers. *

He uses a Sansamp as well, but we constantly have to tell him to turn down - and the rest of us are quite loud...

And I use a 1200w Crown power amp into Markbass 2x10 and 4x10 for home practice. It goes loud as well as quiet!

 

 

*both cabs have a sensitivity of around 100dB/W@1m. So that's 100dB of racket for 1W going in, 103dB for 2W, 106dB for 4W, 109dB for 8W, 112dB for 16W, 115dB for 32W, 118dB for 64W, 121dB for 128W.