Loudness

"At home you could manage with >10watts tube easily"

I'm guessing a 10watt tube amp is alot louder than a solid state 10watt amp ?

"I've also played an arena show with 17,000 people using a 6 watt amp (miced of course). "

With a 6 watt tube amp wouldnt the quality not be that good or would it still be profesional quailty ?

My friends solid state amp is 10watts and i can turn it up to volume 10 and its not too loud but is really bad quality.

So basically i want to know if you really can get an amazing sound out of a small tube amp because it sounds like a big tube amp like the 5150II that i want to get would be far to loud for my house !
Do any small tube amps have the same gain and quality as a 5150, mesa or ENGL powerball ?

A 10watt tube is probably as loud or louder than a 40watt solid state.

For a relation example; my 40watt tube at 3 is louder than my friends 30watt solid state at 9. He uses a boost pedal to get the volume up there.

A small tube amp cranked would be distorted, but that is good. Generally clipping a tube amp is very useful and the sound is great, I think.

If it is a good quality small tube amp, then ya the sound will be great. I played on a 10watt Fender Blues Junior and thought it was one of the best sounding amps I've ever played on.

Its just after playing on a 10watt solid state marshall(my friends amp) i cant imagine a small amp ever giving that nice tone or gair that i want !

You can't compare rigs unless you take out some of the variables.

Speaker efficiency:
Unless you use the same speaker to compare amps, you can't be sure of the results. If a low-power amp has an efficient speaker, it can be louder than a more powerful amp driving an inefficient speaker.

Non-Linear Hearing Sensitiviy:
The perception of differences in loudness is logarhythmic. To sound twice as loud takes [u]10 times[/u] as much power. In other words, a 50 Watt amp at full power is only twice as loud as it would be when it puts out 5 Watts! And that doubling of loudness is the smallest change that most people can notice!

Psychoacoustics:
There's more to hearing things than just getting the sound to your ears. The brain does a lot of very complex processing on the signals from the ears. One reported effect is that the type of distortion produced by a tube amplifier is interpreted as being louder than transistor distortion at the same SPL!

Do some searching through the thread archives. Use the search icon at the top of the page. This stuff has been discussed here a lot. And there's a wealth of info on Amptone. Check it out.

sorry. I have seen lots on this topic but could never find exactly what i wanted to know.

Originally posted by Death55
Do any small tube amps have the same gain and quality as a 5150, mesa or ENGL powerball ?

Of course not , or else these big amps manufacturers would have run out of buisness long ago.

If you get a very good preamp , and a nice small tube amp , you may get the quality but not the volume.

Not having as much volume doesnt bother me and i find it would actually be better for using in the house. Its just i want all the gain and quality i can get. I really like having pleanty of gain... i mean, whats worse than having an amp thats got half assed gain. It might as well just have a clean channel ! If i'm going to use distortion i want it to sound good. Its even at the point where i'm having to have distortion on my effects and amp and even that amount of gain isnt good enough and sounds horrible.

If you want superior quality high gain , it doesn't have to be totaly coming from your amp.
Lots of guitarists use a boss pedal going to a little bit cranked tube amp to get their favorite distortion tone . Satriani , Vai , Zakk Wylde to name a few ... Although these guys use 100watts full stacks , but you can get close results with a small amp that have a good quality dirty sound and a boss pedal.

hmm, i suppose. But i prefer to just get a good amp and i because i find pedals just get rid of the amps tone. I would rather a really good amp.

Originally posted by Death55
...pedals just get rid of the amps tone.

Bad pedals su*ks tone from your amp , good pedals enhance your amp's tone .