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low wattage cab w/ all tube head?

Discussion in 'Amps and Cabs [BG]' started by jasonbraatz, Nov 29, 2001.

  1. Nov 29, 2001 #1
    jasonbraatz

    jasonbraatz Supporting Member

    Oct 18, 2000
    Milwaukee, WI
    ok...so i LOVE the sound of the henry, but i don't think it could cut it onstage by itself unless i start pushing it well above it's wattage rating. (i could either run it into one channel of my amp, giving it 350 watts and not being loud enough, or bridged, giving it 1000 and risking shredding it)


    so i was wondering - we all know that a 400 watt all tube head is alot louder than a 400 watt SS amp, right? lets say i ran an Aguilar DB728 into a henry. am i wrong in thinking that this wouldn't run any risk of damaging speakers, but would be really really loud?


    i guess what i'm asking is that if 400 tube watts is louder than 400 SS watts, does that make 400 tube watts more dangerous to a cab rated at 450 watts than 400 SS watts?



    jason
     
  2. Nov 29, 2001 #2
    MikeyD

    MikeyD Guest

    Sep 9, 2000
    No, not the watts themselves. A watt is a watt. However, what you're probably getting at is what happens when you overdrive one vs. the other. The tube amp will probably put out more power and not sound bad than the similarly-rated SS amp. In effect, a 400-watt tube amp might put out a LOT more than 400 watts before it starts sounding awful, whereas a 400-watt SS amp might sound bad when it puts out very little more than 400 watts.

    Then, there are the possible (related) differences in how these amps are rated. Maybe each amp is rated for 400 watts at 1% THD, but at 500 watts the SS amp is at 15% THD (including ugly odd harmonics) while the tube amp is at only 5% (with nicer even harmonics). This is just a guess, but I think there may be some support for this. I was hoping someone like Spacegoat would give us a complete distortion/wattage comparison!

    - Mike
     
  3. Nov 29, 2001 #3
    CrawlingEye

    CrawlingEye Member

    Mar 20, 2001
    Easton, Pennsylvania
    Is getting a second henry the 8x8 an option?

    You could always do that, then you could most likely handle 100 watts between the two of them. :)
     
  4. Nov 29, 2001 #4
    Mark Reccord

    Mark Reccord

    Nov 14, 2000
    Sunny St. John's, Newfoundland
    I am planning on putting the old SVT on the test bench eventually and trying to quantify some of this stuff, but I literally haven't had time with the workload I have right now. I'm finished exams in a couple weeks so maybe soon. I have access to the proper equipment. I just need to find a 4 ohm resistor that will dissipate 500 Watts.:D