What's the watt vs tone connection?

[Osensei]

It seems obvious to me that more watts make for more volume. Maybe more watts can allow you to run more speakers as well. But how does wattage effect tone? Is less wattage sweeter in tone? Does less wattage afford less headroom for cleans? How does that work?

Also if an amp head says its 350 watt @ 4 ohms and 400 watt @ 2 ohms what method would you use to figure out which speakers/cabs could handle the load? Could someone give me a general formula for matching cabs based on any given heads output specs?

 

[shredaholic]

Re: What's the watt vs tone connection?

Less wattage means less headroom for cleans because (if I remember correctly), wattage is not actually calculated for amps at it's maximum volume output, but at the point in which it starts to distort. Therefore a 100w Marshall Plexi can put out 100w RMS clean power before it will distort.

 

[jeremy]

Re: What's the watt vs tone connection?

i hate when i type a whole long post and then fat finger it and it disappears :grumble:

there are always exceptions and this is a complex thing but...

like shred said, more wattage means more clean headroom

more wattage thru the same speaker/s will be louder. 20w thru a cannabis rex (102db sensitivity) is louder than 30w thru a p10q (95 db).

more wattage doesnt mean you can run more or less speakers but will effect the tone. consider a 15w amp cranked thru a 15w speaker, part of the tone that youre hearing is from the speaker being pushed hard. to get the same thing going on with four 15w speakers or a single 60w speaker, youd need 60w. in the guitar world you dont usually want to overpower your speakers. so if you have a 50w guitar amp you dont want to put a speaker than handles less than 50w rms. for bass and pa applications you actually want to overpower the speaker cabs in many cases. if you have a 1000w speaker cab you could use a 1600w amp if you wanted, the idea with bass and pro audio is to send a clean clear signal so you want to be able to hit the 1000w speaker cab with 1000w of clean power. youll hear the speakers start to fart out if youre hitting the cab too hard, in which case roll back the volume a notch or two.

matching speakers and amps is tricky, what i think rocks you could think sounds bright and shrill and some one else might think is too bassy, there are lots of things to consider.

 

[esandes]

Re: What's the watt vs tone connection?

jim marshall describes his 50W SLP (1987x) as smooth and creamy. he said it's attibuted to the 50W power stage, in comparison to the 100W SLP.

 

[Stevo]

Re: What's the watt vs tone connection?

100w amps will usually have more headroom and pump the bass response more efficiently (like Jeremy said).

From my experience, 100w Marshalls have more bass push than the 50 watters. Of course, that depends on speakers too.