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How many watts does your guitarist need

#41
AGCurry said:
Umm, the Fender Deluxe Reverb is a tube amp, has been since the early 1960s.
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If you read the OP, the amp in question is the Tone Master Deluxe Reverb. That version is a solid state amp.

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Using a high-performance 100-watt digital power amp to achieve the headroom and dynamic range of a real vintage Deluxe tube amp, paired with the pronounced sparkle and clarity of a single Jensen® N-12K neodymium speaker and a resonant pine cabinet, the result is tubeless Deluxe Reverb tone, volume and dynamics virtually indistinguishable from the all-tube original. And with all these features, the Tone Master Deluxe Reverb is in fact about only half the weight of an all-tube Deluxe.
 
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#44
In my rock band years, I mostly played guitar. (On bass, I mostly did jazz or back up acoustic players). I gigged for many years with a 40W Marshall combo. I did bar gigs and festivals with it. It’s amazing how loud that little amp could go. One bass player loved to stand behind it because the open back bled off all kinds of low end that blended with his sound. He said it freed him up to play more. We had a good chemistry. In the Seventies, I played an amp made by EMC. It was a 2x12 combo with 165W. That amp was ungodly loud. We did Black Sabbath and Zeppelin covers and, with a Maestro Fuzz and a MuTron Phasor, it sounded like total doom! Nowadays I use a rack with a tube preamp, a few effects and a little mini-PA. I can feed that signal straight to the house.
 
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#45
Old Fart said:
A Fender Twin Reverb can kill everyone in the first ten rows. Hands down, for nightclub work, the best guitar amps I have seen are tube amps making perhaps 20-30 watts and using one 12" speaker. These amps are the size of a small suitcase. The musician can drive those tubes to distortion without killing anybody.

Bass players need to bring WAY more watts and also more speaker surface area. Still, a 100-watt amp like a V4B can get the job done with different total speaker cone areas depending on how loud the rest of the band (drummer) is. Lots of us like to bring 800W amps, which is great, but they are not twice as loud as a 100W amp. Technically speaking.
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The Twin Reverb is indeed so friggen loud if your guitar player is trying get it to break up. My guitar playing friend got one when we were in highschool. He had it set up in our music classroom and he was playing it so loud that we could hear it hundreds of feet away in another wing of the school from the "sound proofed" music room.
 
#48
Old Fart said:
And get off my lawn. ;)
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#50
Decades ago, I chased the power wars as a guitar player. I spared nothing. I had an original 1975 first year issue Marshall 2203 100 watt 4x6550 (American market, EL34's in the UK & I changed them to 6CA7) Master Volume. I ran that through a converted 4X12 angled baffle Fender Bassman cabinet with Jensen Concert speakers (so you could actually stay on stage with it), which are a brighter version of Celestion Greenbacks, similar paper cones not quite as grindy, originally used in early "hi-fi" or stereo systems, with about the same power handling. It rocked. I even had the triple-triode adaptor that plugged into the 2nd preamp tube socket to make it into an overdrive monster when I wanted to.

It was uncontrollable. First, I pulled one pair of the power tubes and discontinued using the triple triode. Then I went to a 2X12. Then after all the abuse of the decades by prior owners then me, the output transformer started to die, so I sold it. I didn't know what to get, until Marshall recently released its Origin head. This is the modern version of the Marshall 2204 head, 50 watts, one pair of power tubes. It has one great feature: a three-way power switch so you can have 1 watt, 15 watts, or the full 50 watts. I run it through a custom cabinet with one Celestion Neo speaker that has a tone between the Greenback and the Jensen. I also changed it from EL34's to 6CA7's, which give me a little more clean headroom, but can still rock when pushed.

OK - why this digression - I usually run it on the 1 watt for personal practice, and most jams and small gigs on the rare occasion I still play guitar, I use the 15 watt setting. So I can stay in front of it, I rarely, if ever, use the full 50 watt power setting.

Also, remember that Eric Clapton recorded Layla on a 6-watt Fender Champ, and Brian May recorded with the Deacy 1-watt amp.

I forget to which second tier British Invasion band this is attributable to, but when they went on tour and needed new equipment, they actually discussed whether they really needed the full 17 watts of a Vox AC-15, one pair of EL-84's.

Epilogue: the two electric guitar players in my party band that I play bass in have, respectively, a Fender Blues Jr, power just like the Vox, 17 watts from two EL-84 power tubes, and the other has a 50 watt Boss Katana modeling amp. They are both older than I am and should know better, but our bandleader, also older, after thirty years still has to constantly tell them both to turn down so they don't overwhelm the mix, which is run through a Behringer digital board and tons of wattage, subs, and mains that can support an outdoor gig or a small stadium (which is why I only run a direct box - no bass amp on stage).

So - how many watts does a guitar player really need? One and a good microphone to a good PA.
 
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#51
"Consider the Fender Twin Reverb. It does only one thing: reproduce the guitar, and it can ruin the experience for everybody because it’s so freakin’ loud. So how do those two twelve-inch speakers out-do our whole $100,000 PA? It’s an object device that only streams a single channel, while [the sound system] is reproducing 32 channels or something like that. "
-Bob McCarthy
 
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#52
Cory rich40 said:
I know, it’s a bass forum. For years, our gospel group has consisted of a lead guitar player, a rhythm guitar player that is the main singer, the bass player who is me, and various other singers throughout the years and an occasional drummer. The guitar player got a fender tone master deluxe reverb amp around Christmas of last year. He also has an ultimate chorus amp and a Princeton reverb amp. He favors the deluxe reverb though. Recently he has been wanting our lead singer to go electric and let him use the ultimate chorus amp and use one of his telecasters. The lead singer has used acoustic all these years. The guitarist is wanting to really turn his volume up as close to its full potential as much as he can get away with and thinks with the lead singer going electric it can really transform our sound. I’m not worried about my sound and being drowned out or anything, but I’ve done my research. My concern is that the ultimate chorus will drown out the deluxe reverb, and the singer is a far weaker guitar player. Sometimes I wonder if the guitarist should have gotten the tonemaster twin reverb amp. He doesn’t take his Princeton out, and I think the reason is because it is a collector’s item. It is a limited edition amp. Any advice for our group as far as this goes?
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1w and a microphone

Where it's at?
 
#53
As a bass player and a guitar player, there are two sides to this. In terms of wattage as it relates to volume, needs vary depending on the stage requirements. As many have said here, suitable wattage can range from very low to very high. I’ve used a 5 watt head through a 4x12 cab and it was monstrous. The other side to this issue that I think a lot of people maybe don’t understand is tone. Tube Guitar amps and their tone are definitely affected by not only how hard you push them, but also by their components. There’s no question at all that more powerful amps have bigger transformers and different components, and you can hear that in the sound. To my ear, smaller lower wattage amps , especially tube amps, tend to make a guitar sound like it’s made of plastic, with a very thin sound. If the guitar player likes the authority and tone of a larger amp but wants to push it more, then it might be time to invest in a pedal or two, or a power attenuator. This should get them the tones they want without massive amounts of volume
 
#55
Holy cow...Fender has the tOnE MaSter Deluxe Reverb listed as 100 Watts! That is assi9

I have the same '56 Deluxe that badinage posted, 12W. Played it for 10 years in a 13 piece band w/no mic and I had to reign in the volume. I was never asked to do so.
 
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#56
None. We run everything through FOH, both guitarists use some kind of fly rig. I'm the only guy who uses an amp and I can usually get by with my 1x12 combo, which I basically use as a monitor. Don't need much onstage with those 18" subs out front.
 
#57
Ampslut said:
However many watts a fender blues Jr is all guitar player needs
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Those are 15w, and yep, they get plenty loud for most stage volumes these days, . Same with the Vox AC15, the Supro Blues King I have, and quite a few others---15w is kind of the sweet spot for these tube amps, unless you want a really clean sound the whole time. Actually I just played w a guy with an AC10 and it was plenty loud for our onstage sound. Everything DI'd or mic'd going to FOH.
 
#60
How many watts do they need to have good tone? Zero. All of the guitar players at my church moved away from amps even though they are allowed to use them mic'd in an isolation room should they choose to use one. Kemper and Line6 rule the stage now. Beyond that, a 15w tube amp is the last one I heard mic'd live with a group I help out with and that was PLENTY. He even had it turned away from the crowd (open back, so there is obviously still sound coming out) and it was still more than enough. The PA did all the work anyways, but dang I forgot what those little amps can do at gig volume. :eek:
 

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