thinking about a power amp, how would you do this?

more power is always better.


too much power for your cab and you can always turn down.


too little and you risk driving the poweramp into clipping and taking out speakers.



jason

 

Ideally, in a solid state power amp you want two to three times the rating of your speakers. This will give you lots of headroom and a reserve for difficlut conditions like low voltage.

Real deep bass, especially on an open stage outdoors, can eat up lots of watts. I play in a not-very-loud calypso band, and recently outgrew a 1200 watt Stewart World 1.2 when we were on an outdoor stage with low voltage. It's not fun when an amp goes into thermal protect even after you've turned way down to reduce distortion, in the middle of a gig.

Check out the QSC PLX units. They are light and bulletproof and sound great. A good amp will last you a long time.

Aloha,

Jonathan Starr
[email protected]

 

Amen to that.

Get the biggest amp you can find, and take advantage of all that clean power and head room.

 

I have a mackie 1400i and a carvin 4x10vt which is rated 400 watts peak. That means I run 1 channel of my mackie 300 watts at 8 ohms full power and not blow my amp. While my pre amp is set low as to not clip. The mackie your looking at is okay for bridged modes, but you lose the option of running in sterio with enough power. The 1400i or other larger power amps would be better for playing bass. The one thing I like most about the sterio option is running 2 different ohm rated cabinets.

frodinkb

 

If you run the amp in sterio you have 2 seperate channels. So the ohm ratings dont matter. Like they would for mono amp. The Mackie can run as low as 2 ohms which you shouldnt see with your set up.

 

Hey Jason,

How is that Carvin amp working out for you? I'm thinking about getting the 600 watt version.