Help about amps

[Benoit]

I'm looking into buying an amp and I really don't know the first thing about them.

I need an amp for home and band practice. I don't plan on doing gigs, I only play with a couple of people now and then.

I have a Roland DAC-15XD (15 watts) at the moment. As you can see if there's a drum involved, my amp doesn't have what it takes to stand out.

Could some of you help me out and suggest an amp.

[Raskolnikov]

Just about any 50-60 watt tube amp should do what you want.

I'm a fan of Peavey Classic 50s - they come in 2x12 and 4x10 models. Also, despite their solid state amps sucking, most Fender tube amps are pretty good. Their distortion channels are usually weak, but that's what pedals are for.

[Lordathestrings]

I've been pushing the use of small amps for better tone, but if you insist on something bigger than what you already have, I think you should check out the revived Traynor line of amps at Yorkville Sound http://www.yorkville.com/

They're available in 40 and 80 Watt models, which should be enough to drown out any two drummers!

[Benoit]

"I've been pushing the use of small amps for better tone"
-Lordathestrings


What do you mean by better tone. Should I consider trying to mike my small amp? I heard about this but never looked into the concept.

I love the clean sounds that comes from my small amp. If I had a choice I would rather have that sound.

How would I go by to acheive this?

[Lordathestrings]

First, a few basic points
The relationship between 'loudness' and power is not linear. To sound twice as loud, you need to drive the speakers with ten times as much power! That means you will need about 150 Watts driving similar speakers to sound twice as loud as your 15 Watt amp. :eek:

That lovely touch-sensitive distortion we all know and love, only happens when the output power section of a tube amplifier is pushed hard enough to saturate. That usually means a 15 Watt amp is very loud. A 100 Watt amp becomes a threat to your ears!

If you use a small amp, you can get the kind of tone you want, at reasonable sound levels, and then use a microphone or a DI (direct input) to feed your signal to the house PA system. You get the same tone everywhere you play because you always use the same settings.

Your sound can be mixed with the other musicians' in a predictable way at the mixer panel, instead of hit-and-miss attempts to balance several separate large amps.
You can experiment with different kinds of microphones, and different placements, but I've gotten very good results just by hanging an old SM57 over the speaker cabinet by its own cord so that it is near the edge of the speaker. :D