Stupid questions..

[Double Agent]

1. What does an ohm do? I hear about 4 and 8, but have no idea. I am looking into a new rig, but do not understand this

What is the purpose of the rig you are looking for? Jamming with friends? Playing small clubs? Playing in your bedroom?

What kind of music will you be playing primarily?

There are different size/power/cabinet requirements for all those situations. If we know what your situation is, we can probably give you an idea what to shop for, in terms of size and power. You'll get better advice here than you will from the sales rep at your local GC.

 

[Darkstrike]

Since we're on the subject of "stupid questions" does anybody have an answer to this one?

Search for "Tug Bar"

 

[mongo2]

Tubes are electronic components that resemble light bulbs. These days they are mostly used for amplifying signals. They need to warm up just because that is one of the mechanical limitations of their old-fashioned gas-in-a-glass-container performance. A "tube amp" is one that uses tubes for all of its amplification stages. Very often you'll see tube preamps or "hybrid amps" which are amps that just have a tube or two in the preamp stage. Those do not need to warm up necessarily, because preamp tubes don't have to handle as much power as some others.

Tubes need to warm up because the heater element has to heat the filament enough to express electrons which will flow towards the plate, the flow of the electrons is then controlled by the audio signal on the grid element. Until the filament heats up enough for the electrons to be expressed, the tube will not function.

My Eden WT400 is a hybrid with one tube in the premap. It has to warm up.

 

[mongo2]

Thank you! Okay.

1. What does an ohm do? I hear about 4 and 8, but have no idea. I am looking into a new rig, but do not understand this

2. What is the difference between this and a normal head?

1. An ohm is the name of the unit of resistance or impedance. Speaker cabinets come in different configurations and impedances. The most common are 4 and 8 ohm configurations. An amp will usually be rated as "so many" watts into "so many" ohms. For example 400 Watts into 4 ohms. The means if you connect the amp to a 4 ohm cabinet you will theoretically get 400 Watts of power. For a solid state or hybrid with a solid state power stage, if you connect the same amp to an 8 ohm speaker it will still work but you may get only 280 Watts, it depends on the amp and cabinet. However, be careful since solid state amps have a minimum impedance they have to be connected to or they will cook themselves rather quickly if the impedance of the speaker cabinet is too low, which is expensive to fix and can be dangerous, you may eve see the "magic smoke" escaping . There are also some cautions about mismatching cabinets and tube amps but they're a bit more forgiving of minor mismatches. Tube amps may have either a second jack or an impedance switch on the output to more closely match the cabinet load.

2. By normal I assume you mean a solid state head? Tube amps came first so I guess they were be considered normal when solidstate started way back when. The main difference is that the solidstate amp uses transistors instead of tubes. As mentioned before a hybrid amp uses both transistors and tubes. One tube in the preamp and transistors in the EQ and power amp sections is a not uncommon topology for hybrid amps.

 

[rockwarnick]

Since we're on the subject of "stupid questions" does anybody have an answer to this one?

i just wrote a 12-page paper on the bass guitar and i read that Leo Fender created the first p-basses with the "thumb" rest on the opposite side with the assumption that bass players would play with their thumbs and use the rest as an anchor.

 

[J. Crawford]

What is the purpose of the rig you are looking for? Jamming with friends? Playing small clubs? Playing in your bedroom?

What kind of music will you be playing primarily?

There are different size/power/cabinet requirements for all those situations. If we know what your situation is, we can probably give you an idea what to shop for, in terms of size and power. You'll get better advice here than you will from the sales rep at your local GC.

It needs to be loud enough to play small indoor club gigs, but double as my rooms rig because I gig like 2 times a month. I was thinking the Edan 2x12 in orange, with the Acoustic B200 head. Would this work?