Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

[Rainmaker]

I don't know to phrase my questions as search terms, so here they are...




What is the tonal consequence of a low wattage speaker in a high wattage amp?
What is the tonal consequence of a high wattage speaker in a low wattage amp?
Is the issue more complicated than can be answered by the above?

 

[Rainmaker]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

Oh, and how do you decide whether 8 or 16 ohms is the one for your amp?

 

[muttonchopsrule]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

On the ohm's question, it depends on what your amp is rated for. If you have an 8 ohm amp, then a 4 ohm speaker is not good.

+1. the impedence of the speaker should be matched to the output of the amp. in the most extreme cases of impedence mismatching, you can fry the output transformer in the amp and possibly other parts of the circuit, or more likely just fry the power tubes. many amps allow you to choose the output impedence, and some people say that it can effect the sound (8 ohms might sound different than 4 or 16) but personally i haven't tested that at all, so i couldn't tell you for sure.

as far as power ratings, obviously you don't want to drive speakers with an amp that puts out more power than the speakers can handle. but you'll tend to get more breakup from the speakers if they have a lower wattage rating. but you'll always want to make sure everything's running within specifications.

 

[Rainmaker]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

Thanks for the replies, fellas. You've been very helpful!

Do you have to be very careful with a 30 watt speaker in a 1x12 50 watt tube combo?

 

[SirJackdeFuzz]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

Thanks for the replies, fellas. You've been very helpful!

Do you have to be very careful with a 30 watt speaker in a 1x12 50 watt tube combo?

. . . sounds like you want to drop a Greenback into a ValveKing.


Or a Vintage 30 ?

You might know this but the Vintage 30's are not rated at 30W - it is just part of the name ! I think they are 70Watters . . .


OK, so not much help from me then !


GOOD LUCK !

 

[Rainmaker]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

Sorry, Sir Fuzz!

I've got a great job and I'm now seriously considering purchasing a Traynor Blue. I'm planning where to go from the stock tone, because I'm only gonna earn a certain degree of familarity with it in the stores - I'm going to have to take a gamble and go for the purchase, unless it sounds like pure crap on first crank!

My plan was to replace the Vintage 30 with a GH-12 Anniversary, and throw a beam blocker on it. I'm looking for fat and thick, rather than very present and cutting.

Does the amount that the speaker is driven contribute to power amp distortion?

Also planning to replace the EL-34s with KT-77s and throw in 2 Svetlana 12AX7-LPS tubes and a Svet. 5751 tube in first position to reduce the pre-amp gain.

For an amp I have next to no experience with, I feel like a complete fool having it all planned out. LOL

 

[Lake Placid Blues]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

I feel that speaker ratings and amp output ratings shouldn't be too far from matching. When the speaker handling is like six times the amp rating, you usually end up with a weaker tone. Usually you want the speaker handling to be at least equal to, or slightly above the amp output. If the speaker handling is between equal and about twice, it's probably okay.

You usually don't ever want the speaker handling to be less than the amp output, although I accidently ran 50 watts through a single greenback once, and it lived. It might depend on how high you crank the amp, and how much distortion you use.

If you want to run a single G12H voiced speaker behind a 50 watt amp, then use the Eminence Wizard rated at 75 watts.

 

[SirJackdeFuzz]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

Sorry, Sir Fuzz!

I've got a great job and I'm now seriously considering purchasing a Traynor Blue. I'm planning where to go from the stock tone, because I'm only gonna earn a certain degree of familarity with it in the stores - I'm going to have to take a gamble and go for the purchase, unless it sounds like pure crap on first crank!

My plan was to replace the Vintage 30 with a GH-12 Anniversary, and throw a beam blocker on it. I'm looking for fat and thick, rather than very present and cutting.

For an amp I have next to no experience with, I feel like a complete fool having it all planned out. LOL

Just pulling your leg.


Sorry but i know nothing about the Canadian made Traynors.

Why do you want to replace the V30 sp ?
And why the extra clean headroom ?

 

[Rainmaker]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

I feel that speaker ratings and amp output ratings shouldn't be too far from matching. When the speaker handling is like six times the amp rating, you usually end up with a weaker tone. Usually you want the speaker handling to be at least equal to, or slightly above the amp output. If the speaker handling is between equal and about twice, it's probably okay.

You usually don't ever want the speaker handling to be less than the amp output, although I accidently ran 50 watts through a single greenback once, and it lived. It might depend on how high you crank the amp, and how much distortion you use.

If you want to run a single G12H voiced speaker behind a 50 watt amp, then use the Eminence Wizard rated at 75 watts.

Thanks for the tip The stock Vintage 30 is 60 watts. I'll see if I'm content with that. Is there a tonal reason for those rules or is it merely a matter of parts blowing?

Just pulling your leg.


Sorry but i know nothing about the Canadian made Traynors.

Why do you want to replace the V30 sp ?
And why the extra clean headroom ?

I've heard the Vintage 30 has a lot of highs and upper mids... I'm looking for something larger in the lower mids area.

If the amp gets a bumblebee fizz on lower gain settings, the tubes might solve that problem. This will affect the interaction with the power amp, won't it? I'm not sure how tube amps work, but I'm seeking power amp saturation - which means I'll have to turn up. But will lower gain pre-amp tubes encourage this at slightly lower volume levels than as usual?

 

[aleclee]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

I think the idea that speakers shouldn't be capable of handling much more power than the amp is very overrated. I get great results running a 10W amp through a 200W EV and cut a bunch of tracks on my band's CD using that same amp into a 160W cab (2x12 w/CL80s). An even more extreme exampls was the great tone I got playing a 1.5W tube amp through another 2x12 w/CL80s.

YMMV, but it just goes to show that a lot of those "rules" aren't universally applicable.

 

[Kommerzbassist]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

Ok now the high wattage amp - low wattage speaker is kinda obvious: it'll blow the speaker

The other thing is that if you are running a speaker at it's limit... like a 50W amp into a 50W speaker the speaker itself will start to distort and compress more or less depending on the speaker (one example would be the Celestion Alnico Blue 15W speaker... some people live how its compression)

So... if you want to get those effects done by the speaker aswell you have to get one that is about the rating as your amp but not lower if possible, because you could kill the speaker when cranking the amp.

You should also take into consideration that tube amps often put out more wattage than they are rated... ie. I've heard 100W Plexis can put out ~140W when cranked (although I'm not sure if this figure is 100% correct, but you shouldn't forget about that either)

 

[More-Gear-Than-Skill]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

yeah, i have a 1x12 cab that i use for my homebrew tube amp (5 watter), and it sounds great. But i know that I'm not harvesting any speaker distortion "character" when cranking the amp. Because this would only happen once you're getting in general range of the handling capacity. But had i been running a 6-7 watt speaker, and fed it the 5 watts signal, then i could get some "speaker-distress" sound. Now all i get is a "pure-listen" to the amp.

And i think that distress-speaker is importantish, so don't go too high/conservative when matching up amp/speaker. Look at the Vox AC15, that pushes 15 watts into the 15 watt alnico celestion blue.

Also you say you want some "dark, fat thick" stuff, you might want a "slow" speaker... one that "struggles" to reproduce high freq, and instead gives a distorted warmer approximation. swamp thang? big ben? 15 inchers mostly have silly high max ratings, so you're going to struggle to get speaker distortion.

 

[Gr8Scott]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

Personally, I'd go with the G12H30 and not worry about the beam blocker. You can always turn your highs eq down if you want to achieve a similar effect. The G12H30 isn't a super bright speaker. It's refined and mellow with silky highs.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Amp Wattage and Speaker Wattage relationship

I've played a number of the Traynor amps when I was looking for mine . . . first of all, the blue amp is a little less bright than the red one so I'd wait until I got the amp before I decided to order speakers. Next of all, if you can . . . GET THE EXTENSION CAB. By itself the Traynor YCV amps sound pretty good, but when you add the closed back extension cab along with the amp you get much more bass and lower mids which will help the sound out a lot. If it's still bugging you after that, then I would recommend that you replace the speaker with a G12H30 or something similar (you can always get a decent price on ebay for a V30 anyway, so you won't be out too much cash).

Something that not a lot of people know that's pretty cool about these amps is that there's only a single resistor difference between the YCV40 WR and the YCV50 Blue . . . so you can actually go from EL-34s to 6L6s in them just by resoldering a resistor.