Cab Power Handling (solid state vs. tube power)

*punches self*

 

Alright, just being dramatic.

The long and short of it is that a watt is a watt, regardless of the medium used to produce it. The natural progression of tube amps into compression and overdrive as they increase in volume gives the illusion that they can push more power before distorting. In reality, the distortion is just more pleasant. Distortion is defined as any change to the signal that was pumped into the power amp, so the natural tube nuances (even when clean) still count as "tube distortion." Solid state distortion is just a lot more noticeable and crappy (generally).

Most cabs, on the other hand, will generally blow up if they're actually driven with their rated power wattage.

 

To suppliment what SpankyPants said...

Due to tube compression, tube amps sound louder than transistor amps of equal wattage, the same way the compressed audio in TV commercials sounds louder than the sound track of a broadcast movie, even though the audio in both cases is peaking to 0 dB.

When it comes to cabs which are to be used with all-tube heads for over-driven rock bass, I became a big fan of overkill power handling after frying a few speakers.

BTW bishop55. An 8x10 can handle more power than a 2x15 because it has four times as many voice-coils to dissipate heat.

 

If you're planning to stay clean with it, a 215 cab that can "handle" 800w should be fine (power handling is one of the most bogus specs out there). It would also probably take some distortion, maybe not turned up all the way, but a good enough amount for most. Just remember an SVT can put out over twice as much wattage as its RMS wattage on peaks. Won't be much of an issue if you play clean, though.

 

When a speaker starts to fart, you've reached its power handling limit. No way to know where that is until you try a given cab with a given head as the manufacturers don't list mechanical power handling.

Thermally, you have 300w of heat generating power going into a cab capable of displacing 800w worth of heat from a continuous signal. Even distorting the tube amp you would have to have peaks in output over 1600w to overheat the voice coils, and you will hit mechanical limits before this. The thermal limit in this situation (2x15 vs 8x10) is a non issue.

 

Don't y'all just love our Virginia accents?


(Props and respect to Beefkake!)

Peace.

 

Cher, I'm frum sout louisiana. Our accent so flat y'all. compro mais la?

 

That Fender 300PRO is a POWERFUL beast of an amp... I think I could EASILY 've blown UP my old SVT410HLF EASILY with it... SUCH a loud amp!!

 

Solid state or tube, it is the same amount of power regardless. ​

I've been hearing a lot of younger musicians lately make statements about the power rating of amps (i.e. 100 watt tube amp is more powerful than 100 watt SS amp). Back in the late 60's/early70's, some of the older musicians in my area were saying that the British (or European) amps were more powerful than they're USA distributed versions... in particular reference to the Vox AC-30. I speculate that they were somehow equating line voltages instead of watts!

 

Bunch of what makes valve heads louder is the more limited bandwidth, the output transformer filters out lows which keeps cabs even happier.

 

And this thread is three years old.

 

You ain't kidding bassman paul, after all its quite a long time since Victor Wooton looked like this.

 

what is this cab? I'm very curious.