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clipping

J

jjl5590

Inactive
Mar 28, 2008
406
0
London, UK
#1
Hiya,

my amp has a clip light for the preamp. Am I damaging the amp itself my clipping it, or just the speaker?
Because i put the amp on mute when i plug in or unplug my bass, which makes the amp clip but the speakers are muted...


Cheers
 
#5
billfitzmaurice said:
Neither. It's just a warning lamp that says you've run out of headroom.
Click to expand...
So say i'm turning up the imput volume, and the clip light comes on, thats basically telling me to stop turning up the preamp, right? I once turned it up all the way, then turned the master up to almost full and the speakers nearly jumped out of the box! that was with a 100W amp going into a 400W capable cab...
 
#8
Exploiter8 said:
Excuse me, Bill, but do you have any opinions on a 70 watt amp driving a 300 watt speaker, both rated 4 ohms? If this is a wrong forum, I apologize. The clipping topic caught my eye!

Thanks!
Click to expand...
i've driven 800w rated cabs with a 25w head before. not a problem as long as you don't need to be screaming loud.
 
#9
jjl5590 said:
So say i'm turning up the imput volume, and the clip light comes on, thats basically telling me to stop turning up the preamp, right?
Click to expand...
Right. Here's what to do: Turn the Master off. Turn the volume(s) on your bass up all the way, then increase Input volume on the amp till the light lights, then reduce until it doesn't. Now (carefully) bring up your Master until you are as loud as you'd like to be. This way you can't distort the preamp.
 
#10
Thanks to all! My Peavey BASIC 112 combo is rated 50watts at 8ohms and 70watts when connected to an external 8ohm cab, thus being 4ohms. I replaced the stock speaker with a MESA/Eminence Neo 4ohm bass speaker from their Powerhouse line. It sounds FANTASTIC! I'm using a Tech 21 Character Series VT pedal with emphasis more towards clean sounding highs and no muddy/boominess...IT'S LOUD! There is no clip light but it does have Peavey's DDT circuitry, and email correspondence with them seems to suggest I should be fine to a degree; just trust my ears and listen to any developing distortion, then simply back off. I'm 50 years old and never realized there could be such a thing as too high rated a watts-rms speaker!

Thanks again to all.
 
#11
The clip light indicates that you have run out of headroom - the signal is at 100% and you are asking for more. Your nice sine wave is now becoming a square wave.

If it comes one more than once in a while, you take the chance of blowing something. One of the first things to go is tweeters, because the clipped wave is all high frequencies, so you are putting the FULL power of your amp through the tweeter. After that, it can possibly damage output devices.

DON'T ignore the clip light - back off a little.
 
#12
Gio S said:
The clip light indicates that you have run out of headroom - the signal is at 100% and you are asking for more. Your nice sine wave is now becoming a square wave.

If it comes one more than once in a while, you take the chance of blowing something. One of the first things to go is tweeters, because the clipped wave is all high frequencies, so you are putting the FULL power of your amp through the tweeter. After that, it can possibly damage output devices.

DON'T ignore the clip light - back off a little.
Click to expand...
This does not apply to the preamp clip light, which is what the question is about.
 
#13
dmusic148 said:
Right. Here's what to do: Turn the Master off. Turn the volume(s) on your bass up all the way, then increase Input volume on the amp till the light lights, then reduce until it doesn't. Now (carefully) bring up your Master until you are as loud as you'd like to be. This way you can't distort the preamp.
Click to expand...
Assuming i've set the preamp volume correctly, why do I need to worry about the master volume?

Also, i'm getting a GK 1001RB-II which apparently does not have a preamp clip light, or a clip light at all for that matter. How do i know when to stop increasing the imput volume?

cheers
 
#15
Exploiter8 said:
Excuse me, Bill, but do you have any opinions on a 70 watt amp driving a 300 watt speaker, both rated 4 ohms? If this is a wrong forum, I apologize. The clipping topic caught my eye!

Thanks!
Click to expand...
There is perhaps nothing as meaningless as a cab's wattage rating, except an amp's power rating.
Your nice sine wave is now becoming a square wave.
Click to expand...
No, it isn't. Square waves only exist on oscilloscope CRTs and in the imaginations of would be engineeers. But the caution against feeding tweeters lots of distortion is valid. It will sound really bad if you do, and that should serve as sufficient warning to turn it down, but people do have a way of ignoring warning signs.
 
#16
It feeding tweeters lots of distortion only bad if you are playing with a loud volume? Because i sometimes turn up my compression a lot which makes a kinda synth sort of sound out of the tweeters, but it doesnt sound too good for them
 
#17
jjl5590 said:
It feeding tweeters lots of distortion only bad if you are playing with a loud volume? Because i sometimes turn up my compression a lot which makes a kinda synth sort of sound out of the tweeters, but it doesnt sound too good for them
Click to expand...
When you use high distortion levels you can be boosting high frequency power content by as much as a 10:1 ratio over normal, so it doesn't take much to blow them. That's why guitar amps don't have tweeters, they wouldn't last through one gig, if they even made it past rehearsal.
 
#19
jjl5590 said:
would it damage them even if the tweeter volume (adjusted via the back of the cab) is on the bare minimum? Could it also damage the crossover if they were muted completely?
Click to expand...
Turning the LPad below 1/4 volume raises the possibility of burning it out. If heavy distortion is your thing you're best off with a tweeterless cab.
 
#20
jjl5590 said:
Assuming i've set the preamp volume correctly, why do I need to worry about the master volume?

Also, i'm getting a GK 1001RB-II which apparently does not have a preamp clip light, or a clip light at all for that matter. How do i know when to stop increasing the imput volume?

cheers
Click to expand...

The G-K 1001RB II does have a clip light, it is only affected by your basses volume and the "pad switch". the master volume (or woofer and tweeter controls on the G-K) determine how much volume you will get from the poweramp. If you don't turn up the master controls, it will not drive the speakers. If you use a G-K SBX,RBX,RBH or Neo speaker cab with the 1001RB II the tweeter control on the amp will control the horn in the cab when you use the G-K speakon cable. The Boost control (adds grit/grind/growl) does not affect the signal to the tweeter amp to protect the cab horns.
 

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