Carvin Tube 100 power amp

[tomd999]

Hiya,

I have a chance to pick up a Carvin Tube 100 all tube power amp from a friend. It's been in a studio since new and has never been opened up.

I was thinking of using it to drive a 2x10 cab with an SVP pro tube pre for small club work. It sounds really nice and has enough volume and that wonderful tube growl but I'm concerned if it will hold up with a bass setup as carvin sold it as a guitar amp.

If anyone has experience with this let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Tom

 

[MAMMOTHvolume]

not a huge amount of difference between guitar and bass power amps per say, if you can check out how big the caps are in the power amp section and if it has a nice big choke

 

[T-Bird]

Hi Tom.

The main difference between a guitar, bass and Hi-fi tube amplifier, exept for the voicing, is the size of the OT.

As a rule of thumb, halving the low resonating frequency of the OT when transforming the same power, the cross sectional area must be doubled.

So if a 100W guitar (80Hz) amp OT has the cross section of, say, 7cm2, a bass cabable (40Hz) amp OT would have 14cm2 and a Hi-Fi cabable (20Hz) amp OT would have 28cm2. Since the window is obviously larger too, a bass and Hi-Fi OT's have enough room for "cleaner" sounding interleaved windings too if desired.

Other thing to consider is that OT saturation and distortion is desired with low guitar frequencies, but not with low bass frequencies. Making the OT smaller than it should mathematically, obviously increases distortion and lowers the saturation treshold.

Now, if any of this really affects You, one way or another, is entirely up to you.
Your ears will tell if the sound you're looking for with the volume you're looking for is there.

Regards
Sam

 

[Bofee]

I used one of those power amps on the dirty side of a two amp setup for a while driving an Eden 212XLT. It sounded great. I never had any problems, still have it and will probably never sell it.

 

[bobcruz]

I use one for low-volume gigs into a single Eden 112XLT at church, or into an Eden 212XLT and 112XLT for big band concerts. It gets surprisingly loud and is clean until almost full volume, which I never approach. It's my favorite amp--clean, crisp pure tube tone.