Tone Hammer 500 into power amp

[Schleem]

I’m totally new to the power amp world of rigs but I need some guidance on how to put together a proper rig for it.
Right now I’m running a Aguilar tone hammer 500 into a fender rumble 4 x 10 and a fender rumble 115. I’m looking at buying and identical 4 x 10 so I can get closer to an 8 x 10 sound (without the hassle of the size). Tone wise, I love the tone hammer. It has a super unique warmth for a solid state amp and it’s a great pedal platform. Ive run into one problem though. I play in a super loud doom band (yes we use ear protection) and sometimes the amp has a hard time cutting through the mix in our practice space. I would love to get closer to the crushing earth shaking tone but turning the tone hammer up to the point where it peaks always makes me cringe (Am I wrong for worrying about the tone hammer peaking, I just hate to see that light go off and I’m worried about damage to my amp and/or cabinets).
Recently I’ve been toying around with the idea of running the tone hammer into a power amp to put out more volume without having to nearly dime my amp.
That’s what leads me to my main question, where would I start on putting together a power amp rig like this using the gear I already have. Assuming that I get that second 4 x 10 as well.

 

[Chris_will_do]

Effects send to your poweramp's return/input. Should do the trick.

 

[chris_b]

I daisy-chained 2 TH500's together. Each amp was powering 2x112's, with a cable between the send on the "master" amp and the return on the "slave" amp. So the pre amp on the "master" amp is driving both power amps. It was very loud. I didn't use it often, but when I did the next town knew about it.

 

[Sid the Kid]

I have a Tonehammer 350 and I read every drop of information about them on this fine forum prior to purchase. The red light isn’t necessarily a “peak” light it means that you are starting to push the preamp into the “red light zone” which is harmless to the amp. I can’t recall exactly where I read that tidbit but it came from the mouth of David Boonshoft, the designer of the amp. The power amp is made with the same module that other manufacturers use for 7-800w amps limited to 500w continuous so the power amp shouldn’t be peaking. Try running the master volume all the way up and use the gain control to find your desired level of sound and ignore the light.

The graph in the middle of this page has some handy info about what exactly the drive control does. It is counter intuitive a bit, and if you are running a lot of drive you might be robbing yourself of some deep lows.

The 15 is the weak link in your rig. I would start with grabbing the matching 4x10 and then deciding after if you really need more power.