Ashdown Ant ………

[Stealth]

I used one of these once with PA support liked it.

The question is do they have enough power to drive a decent cab to use without for small to medium pub gigs ?

 

 

[Pea Turgh]

200w in to an efficient cab would do me, but lots of people swear 500w is minimum these days.

[Lozz196]

I had one for a while, never used it with a band but did use it at home connected to a Barefaced Big Baby, imo that set up would have been ok-ish for stage use but nothing more. 

 

[Downunderwonder]

4 hours ago, Pea Turgh said:

200w in to an efficient cab would do me, but lots of people swear 500w is minimum these days.

It's funny how there are two camps which never usually acknowledge the existence of the other.

 

6 hours ago, Stealth said:

small to medium pub gigs ?

 

Not enough information. If punters can order drinks without leaning over the bar screaming, might be quite ok, night not.

[Stealth]

Sounds like a maybe then lol

 

[Downunderwonder]

Yep. There are too many definitions of reasonable volume for a pub.

 

Ime 200w works fine. I still don't know what kind of band ypurs is or if they are the kind that crank stuff.

 

What cabinet? You put 200w through a 810 and you're going to need to turn well down for most pubs around here.

 

I never heard anyone not call their drummer a rowdy bastard. A little bit rowdy or a lot rowdy? 

[Stealth]

Rock Covers two band a trio and a five piece 2 guitars loudish drummer but not animal 

Cab to be determined just looking at the option of a power amp on the pedalboard are there any others 

[Merton]

FWIW I play in a stupidly loud pub rock band and have happily used an Elf and Barefaced Super Twin at a couple of gigs, no PA support, and I’ve kept up with a heavy drummer and two loud guitars who don’t know the meaning of volume controls or indeed EQ (as in they have way too much of my sonic space in their tones too).

 

I am having a discussion with them all next week about being more sensible going forwards, we’ll see how it goes 😆

[ezbass]

13 minutes ago, Merton said:

I am having a discussion with them all next week about being more sensible going forwards, we’ll see how it goes 😆

Good luck with that. I imagine that at least one of them will channel their inner diva.  

[LawrenceH]

This was discussed a lot on a recent thread. I made a point that is largely ignored but that I still think is relevant:

 

TLDR version: the lower the amp power for a given volume requirement, the more speaker you need. So an Elf is more than you'd ever need into a 2x12. But the smallest possible setup will want a power amp whose power is limited only by the thermal and excursion capabilities of the best high-powered drivers.

 

Long version with example: If your ultimate goal is the whole rig including speaker cab being as small and light and loud as possible, the best way to achieve this is a premium driver being pushed near its (reasonable long-term) limit. That usually means a single-driver of either 10 or 12", with a power handling between 400 and 600w RMS, because that's what top-end drivers are capable of nowadays. And mostly they're 8 ohms.

 

If you drive something like a Monza (probably the best single 10 cab on the market) with a 200w/4ohm amp, you'll be driving it with ~130w at max output (8ohm). Meanwhile that driver will take 600w AES and has very high xlim, so you're probably near 5dB off its true capability which is a significant amount. You could make this up by adding a second cab/driver (+6dB at the low end), or by using a higher powered amp.

 

Now it might be that one cab is loud enough, and indeed the Monza is likely pretty good in that respect because it's relatively large for a single 10" cab which buys you more volume in the power-hungry bottom octave. But it might not as the efficiency of this otherwise exceptional cab is pretty standard for a 1x10. Or indeed you could make an even smaller, lighter (no comp driver/horn, lose 10-15l volume) cab with an equivalent driver and make up for that low-end volume loss by driving it harder.

 

The difference in weight and size between 200w and 800w class D amp is modest, maybe 1kg at most and a few cm either way. Adding a second cab or even just a second driver adds a lot more volume and weight than that. You pays yer money etc.