Watts?

[aescully]

I know this question is going to be so easy it bores most of you but for some reason I can't find the answer to it anywhere, so thanks for putting up with me.
I am looking to put a new speaker in my amp, My amp has an 80 watt power rating, but what does that exactly mean as far as putting in speakers.
I know it seems pretty self explanitory, but does that mean that the speaker needs to be of the same rating? what happens if i put in a speaker with a higher or lower rating?
Thanks again
-Arthur Scully

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: Watts?

I know this question is going to be so easy it bores most of you but for some reason I can't find the answer to it anywhere, so thanks for putting up with me.
I am looking to put a new speaker in my amp, My amp has an 80 watt power rating, but what does that exactly mean as far as putting in speakers.
I know it seems pretty self explanitory, but does that mean that the speaker needs to be of the same rating? what happens if i put in a speaker with a higher or lower rating?
Thanks again
-Arthur Scully

You'll need to put a speaker in that is rated for 80 Watts of power handling or greater. It's a "greater than or equal to" situation.

You'd probably be OK with a 75 watt speaker (a more common rating), but you didn't hear it from me!

Hope that clarifies it for you entirely. If you have any other questions, everyone will be happy to help.

-Hunter

 

[aescully]

Re: Watts?

Thank you so much, I thought as much but I needed to ask!
-Arthur Scully

 

[JacksonMIA]

Re: Watts?

You can increase or decrease the power rating of the speaker to give you more or less headroom, depending on if you want speaker distortion. If you stick with the same power rating on your new speaker you'll be golden. Beyond that, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with the new speaker.

 

[CaughtLikeFire]

Re: Watts?

if you have a tube amp, it's probably rated for clean power. when cranked up into overdrive, you'll put out much more power. for example, a 50W Marshall can put out 80W+ when the volume is maxed out. A 15W EL84-powered amp might be capable of 35W when cranked.

if you have a solid state amp, go by the 80W rating. I'm going to assume it's a solid state amp for now.

as far as speakers go, you want speakers that have an RMS rating of a combined 80W (for example, 2 speakers rated at 40W RMS each).

once you have the power handling figured out, you need to look at sensitivity. the higher the number, the louder the speaker for a given amount of power (for example, a 103db speaker is twice as loud as a 100db speaker given the same amount of power.) Higher sensitivity may be good or bad depending on your amp/guitar setup and playing situation.

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Watts?

The general eule is this...if the amp says 80 watts use a spekaer (or speakers) that total 160 watts...Im not saying you have to do that but thats in the general rule.