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How Watts and Audio Amplifiers Work Together

By  Brandon Drury | Published  06/14/2006 | Technical Guides
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50 Watt vs 100 Watt Guitar Amplifiers Is A Crock

I've heard people say that they really want to cut the volume of their guitar amplifier, so they take out two tubes or they flip a switch which takes out two tubes via a switch. Well, guess what. These people are full of crap. If you can't take a 50 Watt amplifier with a 4x12 cabinet and blow everyone's ears all to hell, then something is wrong with your amp. 50 Watt guitar amplifiers are incredibly loud. Theoritically, a 100 watt tube guitar amp should only be about 3dB louder. 3DB is certainly louder, but it's not like going from a whisper to a scream...not even close!!! It's more like going from “really painfully loud” to “painfully loud”.

Actually the real reason that people prefer 50 watt or 100 watt amplifiers has a lot more to do with tone. 50 watt guitar amplifiers typically sound quite a bit different than 100 watt guitar amplifiers. 100 watt guitar amps tend to be thicker, but possibly duller sounding. 50 watt amps tend to be brighter and possibly a tad thinner. Enough about guitar tone, that's a whole other article.

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Comments
  • Comment #1 (Posted by an unknown user)
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    informative
     
  • Comment #2 (Posted by Professor Drew Daniels)
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    Just how much dumb-down can we all absorb until we finally know nothing? As an artist, do you really want your PRODUCT to be made by "recording engineers" who couldn't plug in stereo system to save their lives? More importantly, do you really want to pay your money for some dufus to waste hours and hours of time struggling to find out why he can't get the guitar to play back in stereo because he doesn't even know what stereo is? Better music deserves better recording, and better recording requires learning engineering--with all the physics and the math. Sorry, but there's no shortcut to experience and knowledge except study and experience. If engineering was easy, then everybody would be making good-sounding records. Check and see how many certified "Professional Engineers" there are in your community and you'll soon discover that the P.E. exam is waaaaay harder than passing the bar exam or getting an M.D. degree, and you'll begin to get a sense of just why there are so few Lee Hirschbergs, Tom Dowds and Bill Putnams.
     
  • Comment #3 (Posted by lettuce)
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    nicely written for the beginner, however the novice, or journeyperson/apprentice knows most of this stuff already from his/her instructor and from all the homework that was assigned.
    My question to you is how can you expand the knowlege base that we non-pro engineers need so that we can become entry-level pro engineers?
     
  • Comment #4 (Posted by guitarfiend)
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    I thought this was a good article. I'm a guitarist, not a recording engineer. Not everybody knows how sound frequency works, and a lot of musicians don't care...so this is a great article for a beginner who's just learning (we can't have all the articles geared towards the professional recording engineer...otherwise the beginners would have no way to learn the basics!).
     
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