"slave" amps in the modern world?

[lexington125]

Anyone else find their perfect sounding amp but its just not powerful enough for some shows?

Instead of looking for another amp that sounds close to my favorite 60 watt head, does anyone just add a slave amp for more power? the obvious advantage is that you get to keep your original preamp, settings, etc. - the goal is to keep the original sound, only bump up the volume.

The options today are cetainly more plentiful than back when 'slave amps' were a common setup. You can go all the way and try to recreate the power amp section of that favorite head, only bigger (with some knd of tube slave amp). Or you could just use the power amp section of a 5lb class D amp; you get the sound of your own preamp and the class D amp should have minimal impact on your tone, its just a power / volume boost and allows you to add more cabs or just send your current cabs several hundred watts instead of 60.

Any other options?

 

[Downunderwonder]

Mic'ing the cab and using the multi kW PA.

 

[xk49w]

Anyone else find their perfect sounding amp but its just not powerful enough for some shows?

I haven't, but there are a few ways to slave the reference amp to accurately increase its volume, if that is your goal.

 

[Mr. Foxen]

I go for really loud cabs instead.

 

[Jim Carr]

Yes. Get a Crest CA6 and take the effects out from the tube amp into it and drive other cabs. If there is no effects out, use a Countryman type 85 as shown for guitar below (you may not need a small mixer or a pre), and run the Crest through a fEARful 15/6 or send the DI out to a good PA.

 

[tbdonl]

Most direct boxes can take a speaker out and pad it down to an appropriate level. If you took that approach, you'd include more of your existing signal chain in the path.

I'm also a little frightened at the thought of putting a few hundreds watts into a cabinet that's normally happy with 60! To get more volume, you're generally better off starting with more cone area, and adding appropriate amplification to drive it. Pushing more power into the same cabinet usually hits the cabinet's limits before getting all that much louder. A 6dB increase will require going from 60w to 240w, all else being equal, and... it's usually not.

Another interesting element in "louder" is that the leading edge of a bass transient might be, what, 10dB stronger than the sustained note? That means that if the transient just clips the amp, the sustained notes will never be more than 1/10 of you're amp's power. (Think of your 60 watt amp spending most of its time at, like, 6 watts. That's just not satisfying!) One "pretty reasonable" approach to getting louder is to use a compressor; bring the transient down so you can turn everything up, including the sustain of the note, and the average level goes up. Find a nice balance between transient punch and loudness.

 

[Jim Carr]

Most direct boxes can take a speaker out and pad it down to an appropriate level. If you took that approach, you'd include more of your existing signal chain in the path.

I'm also a little frightened at the thought of putting a few hundreds watts into a cabinet that's normally happy with 60! To get more volume, you're generally better off starting with more cone area, and adding appropriate amplification to drive it...

+1 see above the Countryman type 85 in my post. The OP wants to amplify his amplifier and needs a PA or a slave with its own cab.