How much wattage do I need for band practice?

[TheMantis]

I’m looking to put a band together. Which means I’ll be travelling to rehearsal spots and jamming with other musicians. Which is something I don’t have much experience with.

How much amp wattage do I actually need to keep up with an acoustic drum kit and other instruments? I’d like to get something a little more portable than my half cab that I could manage a little easier for practice. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Wasnex]

How much amp wattage do I actually need

Let's say your target SPL is 124dB like mine.

The mount of power you need is determined by the sensitivity of your cab(s).

Cab Sensitivity and Required Usable Power For 124dB

• 95dB requires 794W
• 96dB requires 631W
• 97dB requires 501W
• 98dB requires 398W
• 99dB requires 316W
• 100dB requires 251W
• 101dB requires 200W
• 102dB requires 158W
• 103dB requires 126W

The way to calculate these figures is to determine the required decibel change.

Let's say you need a 124dB and the cab is rated 100dB 1W/1m. You start with 100dB at 1W and you need to know how much power is required to produce 124dB (Decibel change calculated as 124 - 100 =24dB)

Divide the decibel change by 10
24/10 = 2.4

Now raise 10 to the 2.4 power.

Same as in the table above.

Here's the formula

 

[lowfreqgeek]

All of them. You need all the watts.

 

[gumtown]

I use a Fender Rumble 800, which on its own is 2 x 10" neodynium speakers and 400 watts.
Very lightweight (pick it up with one finger).
I use it for practice sessions and gigs D.I to the PA system.

 

[Ostie]

If you are young and able, get a Peavey TNT or TKO combo. They’re loud, reliable, and affordable. But they aren’t light.

 

[DuluthDank]

In my experience, a 200 watt 112 can be the bare minimum with a loud rock band.

 

[mikeswals]

According to all these people, you just need to use your gigging amp for rehersals, so yeah, just use that.

 

[Tim Skaggs]

You don’t know what you need and we don’t either.

To find out what you need, you first need to sit down with everyone who will be in the practice, and preferably in the room where you will practice, and discuss volume. You don’t need gig level volume to practice.

Suppose you will be in a 180-225 sq. ft. room (12’x15’ to 15’x15’). A small bass rig (1x12” with 100 watts / Fender Rumble 100), will be able to be heard in that room with almost any other instrument, but if you have to really crank in up (gain and master vol. both past 12:00) to hear any detail, you’re too loud. Everyone has a volume control except the acoustic drummer, so you have to get him or her to play lightly or mute drums & cymbals. If you can get the drummer to work with you, you can get by with a lot less bass rig, and everyone can play at a lower volume.

Also, keep in mind you can set your amp in places in a practice room you won’t set it on a stage, like up on a shelf in a corner behind the drummer pointed to the middle of the room where you and the guitarists are standing.

Heed the warnings about hearing damage / tinnitus, because it’s real and with current medical science, incurable.

 

[KidAmnesia]

Every time I see one of these threads makes me appreciate more being in a band in which a 60 w 1x12 combo is loud enough.

 

[drumvsbass]

300 tube watts into 2x810 cabs at 2ohms is the bare minimum at least.

 

[Bill Whitehurst]

Heed the warnings about hearing protection.

If your budget is really tight, that may determin what you get.
There is plenty of good used gear out there that still works just fine, but has gotten too heavy as the owner got older.
If you have a rehearsal space that you can leave your amp in, it can be pretty heavy.

 

[robert_stuart]

Warning: my opinionated point of view.

I feel bad for you! But I'm also addressing the younger me: "Just bring only the loudest bass amp you feel comfortable standing in front of at full volume. Without ear pain. Without discomfort. Still having the ability to talk to your bandmates while playing. Don't bring anything louder to a **practice**."

I wish someone had said that to me.

In 2026 this means for me, I'm bringing 100W max. Like a used Ampeg BA115. Lots of nice low-end. Still gets pretty "loud".

And when (not if) guitars and drums get so loud you can't hear yourself, and they can't hear you, ask them to turn down. There's just no effing reason to continuously practice at "full stage volume" in 2026. Especially now: check out what pro bassists do. Lots doing a "silent stage". Lots of others getting something like an Aguilar 350 or 500 *tops*. Why? Because if louder is needed, the house will have a PA system. Save your damn money.

If it turns out that you're playing outdoor festivals with no PA, then sure - look for a 700-1000W amp (or power amp). But that's the one case that you need "loud".

---

Finally, see if you can borrow or rent something from a local store or another bassist. See how you like it before shelling out money. If you were in the Denver area, I'd loan you a nice combo.

 

[Neck Diver]

Replace the drummers sticks with 7A sticks and burn those 747’s. Brushes would be good also.
Buy as much power as you can afford if you plan to play in groups. Anything under 100 watts with a very efficient cabinet is mostly for coffee house gigs. Make sure you obviously like the sound.
GC has no hassle returns. No I don’t work for them but return policy is easy.

 

[allanhearn]

500.. 500 watts. Its not technical. You want enough or more for any situation.

 

[wompwomp]

here we have a little music room (it's really a dining room) with a padded acoustic drum kit (we started kiddo on drums at 5 and got him a kit when he was 6, a nice used tama rig that again we pad out). he practiced for a couple of years but has mostly hung it up for now and is on other instruments but we still have the kit and it does get played from time to time.

kiddo never used any hearing protection he just plays with a soft touch, he was doing rudiments and learning basic genre figures like swingtime shuffle etc, he's got great touch on the ride etc. he used the typical sticks for his size and age and the jazz sticks, I don't know how heavy but again he's not a basher he's playing melodically. I worry more about his hearing from his headphone use than a reasonably volumed acoustic instrument tbh.

i'm not like music dad we do our own things most of the time, but every once in a while we do play together and so i'd crack out the deluxe reverb and play my guitar through it, if you don't know this is ~25 tube watts and mine has a nice alnico speaker that is pretty dark and not shrill. when we'd get going he'd prefer my amp to be up a bit but again we're not like freaking out we're playing actual music. i don't consider the DR to be a great rehearsal amp it's a bit underpowered to compete cleanly against even a light touch drummer. but we do make it work pretty well in our room.

when I play bass with him on drums I go through a rumble 150 it does a nice job of staying focused and toneful against kiddo's drumming at just a bit above 2 which I am really grateful for as I prefer to run the amp softer, like if it were a lower powered amp I might be at 6 like with the DR and that's not really where I want to live. btw kiddo has a weighted key piano that he runs into the rumble and it's very good at that and at nice low volume as well. it's heavy as heck but 150 is nicely powered for low volume situations.

anyway I think it kind of comes down to the drummer and where you want your tone to live. on a guitar amp it's nice to have it be a bit underpowered as tube b/c you can drive breakup but i'd actually rather have more clean headroom most of the time, I love my DR but I think something like a 50w bassman would be really nice here as well.

on bass I prefer more of a focused sound so I'd rather be a bit overpowered in comparison. 150ss watts seem to work well here.

fwiw I don't use pedals or anything I just go straight in and basically live with amps as I dislike headphones, as far as my own settings I usually keep the guitar pretty wide open and my electric is volume only. sometimes it's nice to flip the volume on the guitar and amp but I don't dime both I really prefer to live inside the envelope haha

 

[brianrost]

I’d suggest at least 350 watts

500.. 500 watts. Its not technical. You want enough or more for any situation.

OK, this is a common claim and I will agree that I have never run out of volume with solid state 400 watt amps I have owned. I also have played lots of gigs with much lower wattage amps.

It’s all relative to how loud you need to be.

To TheMantis:

What’s your “half cab”?

Keep in mind that power is NOT linear. Twice the wattage is not twice as loud, ten times the wattage is. So if used with the same cabinet, to be twice as loud as a 60 watt amp like you mentioned, you would need 600 watts and then hope the cabinet can handle that much power. Twice the wattage only increases the level by 3 decibels, which is noticeable but an increase of 3 dB or less is useless to me if I can’t get loud enough. My rule of thumb has always been four times the power which is still not twice as loud but significantly louder.

Using the numbers giving above, 400 watts is only 0.57 db more than 350 watts and 500 watts is only 1 dB louder than 400 watts. So if the ratings are honest, I would never buy a 400 or 500 watt amp if 350 watts wasn’t cutting it.

Exactly how much power an amp can really deliver compared to the manufacturer’s rating varies. Those Chinese “1000 watt” Bluetooth speakers you can find all over eBay for less than $100 are nowhere near that power in reality, for example. Bass amps are usually rated by the manufacturer for the power delivered at the lowest supported cabinet impedance, typically 4 ohms in some cases like old Peaveys 2 ohms. If you use a single 8 ohm cabinet, the delivered power will be much less.

As far as budget, buy used…period.

Portable + loud + cheap is basically impossible. You can have two of the three, like loud and cheap…but it won’t be very portable, at least in terms of weight. Here in the USA, if you throw portable out the window you can get used 80s era Peavey amps and cabs really cheap…a 2-15 cabinet with a 200 watt head for around $400. There’s only a few thousand photos of punk bands using Peavey rigs like that.

Portable + loud will strain your budget. How much are you willing to spend?

 

[MrWolf14]

In my experience, a 200 watt 112 can be the bare minimum with a loud rock band.

I agree: 1x12 is the bare minimum (2x10 can also work, but the cab/combo is then a bit larger).
An example would be the Mark Bass CMD112P - 350W + 1x12 in a small combo.

One very important point someone already made: EAR PROTECTION

At least invest ~30$ to buy decent ones from Amazon. They'll cut down some dB from the volume with a more-or-less flat response across frequencies.
You'll still enjoy your music while playing, but you may avoid permanent damages to your precious hears.

 

[Bassdirty]

If you are young and able, get a Peavey TNT or TKO combo. They’re loud, reliable, and affordable. But they aren’t light.

YES! Old Peavey Combos with a 15" Speaker.
This is probably the 'best' Least expensive option. I used many of these in the old days, they were always loud enough for any Band practice/rehearsal I encountered.

• Cheap (Inexpensive)? Yes.
• Heavy? Yes, (compared to today's offerings. But most things were heavy back then, nobody ever mentioned it at the time, except babies & girls).
• Reliable? Heck yes, (almost) indestructible. End of world, when all humans are gone, it will be only Roaches, and Old Peaveys.
• Volume? Plenty. Peavey TNT 130, 150, 160 (number refers to wattage), TKO 115 etc.. (Wattage varies, so keep an eye on which model you're looking at. (Freind had the TNT130, 130W, and it was Plenty loud for the band).
• Tone/Sound? Yes, you get tone & Sound. (Some folks may rag on em, bet the Tone is fine. Not bad at all).

IMO.
YMMV, but probably not.

 

[Gervais Cote]

The bare minimum is 200 watts with two 10" drivers or one good 15" driver IMO.

My bare minimum is 200 watts with two 112 cabs with a sensivity of at least 97 db. Oh, wait, my main amp head is 500 watts and my 200 is my backup amp !

Quite honestly, an old Ampeg BA 115 in good shape would be good enough for me…………..if they were not that heavy.

 

[FullumMusic]

There's no real way to answer this question without knowing what kind of music you're playing, knowing how loud everyone else is going to play, and to some extent the layout of the rooms you're going to be playing in.

If everyone else is playing too loudly, no amount of wattage and speakers will help because when it's too loud you can't hear anything.

If everyone plays as a nice low comfortable volume and there's room in the rehearsal space to stand across from your amps where the sound can travel to your ears (not right next to them where the sound gets blasted at your shins) you don't need much wattage at all.

Metal rehearsals are probably gonna be louder than jazz quartet rehearsals.

Medium sized rooms allow for everyone to stand where they can hear themselves without needing to be too loud. Tiny cramped spaces means you might be standing right on top of your amps, but everyone turning up to hear themselves will just overwhelm the small space. If the rehearsal space is a huge auditorium, you either need to be so loud you drown out the reverb and echo of the space, or so low it doesn't reverb or echo at all.



Worry less about how much wattage you need and worry more about everyone playing at a reasonable level that won't blow out your ears. If everyone's playing at a reasonable volume, and your amp is pointed at your ears, and you still can't hear yourself, then worry about more wattage and more speakers.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

If you're already in the band, just go to the first practice with what you have, feel out the situation and go from there. Keep an eye on FB Marketplace, Craigslist and such. The old rule of thumb was a 15" and 300W, you'll be looking for older gear since you're trying to hit a budget so that might be a good strategy. And wear ear plugs!!