Big amps

Sooner or later (usually sooner), the hankering to jam/play-in-a-band is going to come up.  And when you do jam, there will likely be someone louder than you, resulting in an ever-escalating war of amps.

First off, be careful and protect your hearing.  The frequencies of guitar, especially the high-end, can do serious damage to your ears.  Don't be stupid and put your face in front of a 4x12 with the amp cranked looking for the "sweet spot" for a mic.

That out of the way, you're going to want at least two speakers.  If you go cab+head or for a combo, that's up to you, but its a lot easier to manage carrying the amp and the cab separately.  As we have said before, the only good amps worth pursuing are tube amps, so that's what we'll be focusing on.  In particular, the tube amps that represent good value today.

So with big tube amps, they usually run one of two ways, Class-A or Class-A/B.  Class-A amps sound roughly twice as loud or more than a Class-A/B amp of the same wattage.  Now remember, speakers play a part in how loud and clear you sound too, but generally speaking, the tubes in a Class-A amp are working harder so your tube life will be shorter.  That said, Class-A generally sounds better than A/B to many people's ears.

How much is enough?  Well that depends on your speaker efficiency and also on which class of amp you choose.  For a Class-A amp, 30-watts pushing two speakers is very loud.  For Class-A/B, you'll want between 50-100-watts of power and push four speakers.

There's another route too, the tube-preamp + solid-state power amp setup.  This was used extensively by Kurt Cobain; Mesa Studio tube preamp into a big solid-state power amp.  Since Nirvana did not rely on their amp's power tubes for overdrive/distortion, this setup can work great and can really scale up big.  If you go SS, get something powerful, 400-watts is not overkill.  I ran a similar setup to Cobain except with a 2x12 instead of multiple 4x12's and power amps and I used a 450-watt Carvin power amplifier.

Which big amps to choose?  Well there are several that are reasonably priced still.  I like the Silverface Fenders a lot, especially the Bassman 100.  There are lots of Silverface models that are really good, like the Showman, and the Bandmaster.  Also the Peavey Valveking 100 isn't bad either; it even has gains to get some distorted sounds, although honestly I would still rather rely on pedals for my fuzz.

For a combo amp, I chose a Fender Prosonic.  This amp runs in Class-A or Class-A/B, although I ran it almost exclusively in Class-A mode.  With 30-watts pushing two 10" speakers, the amp sounds amazing, and has a drive channel that would confound most Fender-heads; it sounds very Mesa-Boogie-like.  The downside to the Prosonic is that it is a heavy beast, but then again, so is a 100-watt Bassman, mainly because of the HUGE iron transformers they used back in the day.

There are of course plenty of other big amps.  Sovtek MIG's are popular.  In combo form, Tranyor made a number of models that are still very affordable.  But big Marshalls?  No, stay away.  There is something to the Marshall sound, but they are vey expensive just to get your distortion from the amp. Also, depending on the particular Marshall, they aren't always that loud either.

Hopefully this helps you find your BIG amp and compete against ferocious drummers and bassists with 18" subwoofers.