Originally Posted by: aschlemanThat is why... in the music industry... everyone pretty much knows that 2 solidstate watts equal 1 tube watt... That's why you see all these solid state combos that make 300 watts... or 350 watts... The highest tube amp you're going to find is probably going to be between 150-200... period. 50 tube watts are equally as loud as 100 solid state watts... I've read plenty of books that state the same thing.

i would like to disagree as i have read scientific publications about this, when you have a speaker cabinet full of speakers, it's output volume is solely going to be based on watts. so solid state watts and tube based watts are watts are watts. however tube amps can pass their RMS threshold a lot further then most solid state amps can and with a lot better results. therefor you may see a tube rated at 18 watts rms (that's without distortion) and then once you're driving the pre amp and power amp section that may be come 36 watts (not RMS) - and then you've got 36 watts going in to your speaker cabinet. a solid state amp rated at 30 watts RMS may only be able to drive to about 36 watts RMS or maybe only even to 30 Watts RMS and all the distortion is performed in the preamp stage.

however at the end of the day, watts are watts, and they're going in to the cabinet. My initial question was that because we're using this tube amp purely as a transparent modelling amp then wouldn't this power benefit of tubes be lost?

also tube amplifiers may sound to the human ear louder as they contain harmonic distortions and imperfections that create a rounder more natural sound that may add fullness and thus trick the human mind in to sounding louder however if you measure it scientifically the decibells coming out of the cabinet will be identical to that of the same wattage being pushed through by a transistor amp.