Preamps

Do guitars have preamps built in them? I was wondering, because I am building 2 cabs and might not use my amp when going to them, so I was wondering if I needed a preamp before the cabs?

You will want both a pre amp and a power amp to drive your cabs
Most electric guitars dont have pre amps built in

Some do, but those aren't always the best guitars.

I see, so I could either use my amp or buy a preamp(POD), but what would I use for a power amp?(If I didn't want to use my amp)

a power amp like you use for a PA would do the trick. Check out Carvin power amps

If you use something like a POD as a preamp, you should use an accurate, 'stereo quality' power amp - probably a brute of a transistor job. PODs (and suchlike) simulate the sound of a tube power stage, so you want to feed that signal through a power amp that will accurately reproduce the sound, and then feed that to a set of speakers that will also reproduce accurately.

Tube amps do strange things to the signal they receive from a guitar, which is not the same thing as just making it louder.

If you use a simple preamp that doesn't add any amp simulation, then you should probably use a tube power amp, and guitar amp speakers. If you use a preamp that has amp modeling capabilities, then you want to be able to deliver that sound to your audience as cleanly and accurately as possible. That usually means a PA type transistor amp, and full-range speakers.

Just to clarify the above, don’t use a stereo amp, it will A, not be loud enough with out distorting and B color the sound and that defeats the object of the exercise of POD use.

A small transistor PA amp (100 w – remember transistors aren’t as loud as tube amps) will do the job. However, if you wan to stick a desk and some mics (vox for the use of) and may be a Bass ID, than shoot for 1000.

We used to use a twin 500 (two channels of 500w running simultaneously) Power amp as a vocal PA and would sometimes run the guitar through it via an SM57. The drums kept up with this no problem.