Mode Four and other "Xtreme" amps

What purpose is there to something pushing out 300+ watts? Is that just gratuitous?

Is that like the guy who buys a super dooper 10 foot tall 4x4 and leaves it out in the driveway to impress the neighbors, only to haul groceries with it or to come roaring into the parking lot of the local sports bar?

Or are there genuine advantages if you're going for the whole thrash/grind/metal/core bleedin' ears thing?

What advantage is there to having an amp like that... over a standard well-made 100watt head?

Also, I am, of course, a bassist. I heard a story once about how the Rolling Stones used big 350 watt Ampeg bass amps as guitar amps. I've also heard stories about bluesmen doing that back in the day.

What's the difference then?

What difference does all that excessive wattage make? :confused:

And if the guitarist is playing through something with the wattage of a bass amp...

...what would the bassist have to play through? :confused: Like, a custom souped-up 1,500 watt Eden or something?

A 300 Watt solid state amp is approximately as loud as a 100 Watt tube amp. So that puts a lot of amps into your category of "Extreme" amps... haha.

I think a lot of people buy these amps because they're the biggest and the baddest... Like you said... to impress. I know a few guys that have them basically only because that reason... Neither of them can play them... and niether half stack has ever left the bedroom.

However... I have a JCM 900 that puts out 100 tube watts... equivalent to 300 solid state watts... I have this because I use it on stage. and a 50W doesn't fill the room of a larrrrrrrge bar. 50W will do the job most of the time... but not when you play outside either.... I like the crowd to feel the sound not just get their ears pierced by it. With the high watt amps you get that extra dimension to your sound... where if you hit the open strings in drop d... you can feel it in your chest. The high wattage lets you get a lot of distortion at high volumes with other effects in the loop without the sound turning to mush.... That's why I have my JCM... I didn't buy that until I got all the use out of my little 50W 1x12 JCM 800. I wish I still had that amp though... it was a killer.

I have a TSL100 and can imagine I will ever need anything louder !

In fact I just can imagine anything louder !!

Jet planes taking off, atom bombs, Im just not bothered !!

100 tube W is handy if you have a drummer who likes to really belt his snare drum and it will get you in the guts every time !!

Saying that the TSL also sound reasonable at low volume which is very handy for recording !

The Rolling Stones road-tested the prototypes and the first production models of the Ampeg SVT on their 1971 US tour. Back in those days, PA systems were just stupid-useless. If you wanted to fill an arena, you had to to line the back of the stage with huge stacks of amps and speakers. The Stones had a couple of SVT's each behind them!

I have an Ampeg VT-22 2x12" combo that was rated at 120 Watts (clean) in stock trim. Fool that I am, I swapped the 7027A output tubes for a quad of KT88's and bumped the output closer to 140 Watts! When pushed into distortion, it sounds amazing, but there's nowhere I can do that anymore.

What I use now, is an Ampeg VT-40 that I salvaged as a flood-damaged junker. The amp guts were the only part I could save, so I built a custom 1x15" sealed-back cab for it. Again, being power-mad, I chose a Weber California speaker, which has the perfect, neutral, frequency response to bring out the best of this amp. 'Thing is, its also a very efficient speaker, so this 60 Watt amp actually puts out a higher SPL than my VT-22! :eek: I can still use this amp, only because it has a Master Volume control that lets me reduce the sound level to where no one gets hurt.

Do most pros use 100+ watt amps in the recording studio? That fact that tube amps sound their best when boosted to their max can blow the room up 100 watt head. Or do they use a small 50watt 212 and really crank it.

Originally Posted by: alucard0941Do most pros use 100+ watt amps in the recording studio? ....

You'd be amazed at what a lot of studios use(d) for recording. Like old Fender Champs. When I record jam tapes with my buddy's band, I use my Ampeg G-18.

The studio I most often work in uses low output boutique amps... My current favourite is a 6W Cordford Harlequin.... they're expensive though, so I probably couldn't justify buying one.

I had a mode four for about ten minutes, but in my opinion insane output is about the only thing in it's favour...

Originally Posted by: alucard0941Do most pros use 100+ watt amps in the recording studio? That fact that tube amps sound their best when boosted to their max can blow the room up 100 watt head. Or do they use a small 50watt 212 and really crank it.

studio's can opt to you power attenuators that plug in between the head and the cab and basically convert a lot of the watts coming out of the head into heat, and thus taking a lot of the watts away. you could crank a 100w tube head up to maximum and attenuate it to 10 or 20 watts.


I'm getting a 50watt tube head soon and for 2 or 300 aus more i could get the 100 watt but it's a known fact that tube amps sound their best when cranked, and it's harder to do that with a 100 watter.

One thing about solid state 300 watt amps that HAS NOT BEEN MENTIONED is that solid state amps reach the RMS with very little harmonic distortion, ie that's 300w of clean watts (hypothetically) where as a 100 watt amp, to reach the 300 watt power output level would have to distort. Watts are watts, and a 300 watt RMS solid state is 3 times more powerful than a 100W RMS Tube when running it at it's RMS, but tube amps shine when cranked beyond their RMS, when the imperfections and harmonic distortion come out to play. A 100 watt tube amp is more likely to crank to 200 watts rather than 300 but that also depends on your power tubes.

Originally Posted by: alucard0941Do most pros use 100+ watt amps in the recording studio? That fact that tube amps sound their best when boosted to their max can blow the room up 100 watt head. Or do they use a small 50watt 212 and really crank it.

You would be surprised how many use a line 6 pod !

Originally Posted by: alucard0941Do most pros use 100+ watt amps in the recording studio? That fact that tube amps sound their best when boosted to their max can blow the room up 100 watt head. Or do they use a small 50watt 212 and really crank it.

A lot of the time when recording (depending on the sound they want) pros may use small 15-30 W single speaker amps. It's a lot easier to control the sound on a smaller amp and they're generally a lot easier to mic.

I have a THD Hotplate attentuator for my JCM.

Welcome to Tube Tone 101... haha... here goes...

I'll try to keep this as short as possible... Tubes are different than solid state for a lot of reasons... and you can immediately tell. Especially if you just turn on a tube amp... You'll notice that it take a while for the tubes to really "warm up". Also... the tubes in a 100W amp won't really affect the tone until you really start to crank it up... This is when a lot of current is running throught he tubes... that allows the tubes to better "saturate" the tone. Basically if you buy a tube amp and never crank volume over the 4 mark... you're not getting your moneys worth... That's why most people use attentuators... These run the maximum amount of current through the tubes so that they can fully saturate the tone... while the attentuator allows you to adjust the volume of how loud the amp is. So you can still push your tubes as hard as you want... even if the volume is barely over 1. It gets you the most tone out of your amp at low volumes...

When tube amps are rated at... say 100 watts... that's 100 watts before the tubes start clipping. So, that's 100 watts clean. JerryP at FJA mods had a Peavey Triple XXX (rated at 120 watts) that got up to 190 watts, but that was well into the clipping stage.

Tube power clipping = good :D
Solid State power clipping = bad :mad: