General Music Chat

Won't doing a power soak burn out your transistors?

Naw, as long as you match impedance a power soak acts like a very gentle speaker load. No more wear and tear on your tubes/transistors than just turning it up a bunch. I find it still affects guitar tone though if you use too much attenuation. And they get pretty hot.

I have one but I like the tone of a small cranked up amp better than a big, cranked up/attenuated down amp. It doesn't make much sense to me if I only need 20 watts to bring the 100w and use 80w just to heat up the room.

Won't doing a power soak burn out your transistors?

Naw, as long as you match impedance a power soak acts like a very gentle speaker load. No more wear and tear on your tubes/transistors than just turning it up a bunch. I find it still affects guitar tone though if you use too much attenuation. And they get pretty hot.

I have one but I like the tone of a small cranked up amp better than a big, cranked up/attenuated down amp. It doesn't make much sense to me if I only need 20 watts to bring the 100w and use 80w just to heat up the room.

Some shows I've been to could've used the extra heat.

Another thing to consider is how many amps your pulling in the venue.
I find it rare in the smaller places I play for their to be a dedicated 20amp circuit for us to utilize

Won't doing a power soak burn out your transistors?

Naw, as long as you match impedance a power soak acts like a very gentle speaker load. No more wear and tear on your tubes/transistors than just turning it up a bunch. I find it still affects guitar tone though if you use too much attenuation. And they get pretty hot.

I have one but I like the tone of a small cranked up amp better than a big, cranked up/attenuated down amp. It doesn't make much sense to me if I only need 20 watts to bring the 100w and use 80w just to heat up the room.

Those old Sholz Power Soaks are wrapped with a metal grill when i used to use one with the old SUNN amp, that thing would burn an inprint in your arm if you laid it across it! I know I did it a couple of times! LOL

A smaller tube amp 20 watts or so is great for everything. I mean my little one is the one I favor for recording purposes too. It just does the trick. I think all the cover songs on my player were done with it and either a strat or a paul, the slide guitar on Tush was done with a little fender solid state amp I have and and Epiphone Sheraton guitar that I have the action set real high on for slide, I also stick a piece of toilet paper under the strings at the nut to eliminate unwanted fret noise. If you ever see a picture of Gary Rossington from Skynyrd playing the slide to Free Bird he puts a piece of plastic wrapped wire at the nut to dampen the strings.

George as far as breakers, a 20 amp breaker is sufficient for most stage setups. Ive used my SUNN head and the Triple both 150 watts and our bassist using a big Hartke and weve never blown a stage breaker.


Where you get in trouble with breakers is is you put some light on the same line as your amps or pa. I like about a 30 amp breaker for our lights, but a 20 will do if we cut the master fade down about 40%. If you use the same circuit for lights and amps you will also get a lot of noise from the lights transmitted thru your guitar amp. If you use single coil pickups in bars it can be a problem picking up unwanted line noise in your amp. Thats one reason I prefer humbuckers if Im playing harder rock with a lot of amp gain.

Yes JW. My point exactly. The smaller venues I have been in rarely have a dedicated circuit ... what's more they rarely know what is on what circuit.
We've not thrown a breaker in a live show either, yet as the "logistic guy" I often ask about the power source and what is on it already.

The answer 9 out of 10 times is ... humm I don't know .

Yes JW. My point exactly. The smaller venues I have been in rarely have a dedicated circuit ... what's more they rarely know what is on what circuit.
We've not thrown a breaker in a live show either, yet as the "logistic guy" I often ask about the power source and what is on it already.

The answer 9 out of 10 times is ... humm I don't know .

You guys have been lucky. We have tossed a lot of breakers over the years, and/or had low voltage brown outs where the bass amp starts clipping badly. I put a meter on the AC voltage every show. It is a simple math problem:

Our medium show rig:
1- 100w Marshall- 4A
1- 100w Twin-3A
2- Crown Stereo Amps- 10A
1- SWR Bass Amp- 5A
1- various mixers, effects etc. 2A
Maximum 120v draw= 24A

*If we play loud on a single 15A circuit, she's gonna blow!

Our Small show rig:
1-Mesa F30-1A
1-Orange Tiny Terror-1A
2 JBL Eon15P- 2A
4-TC Helicon monitors-1A
1-SWR Bass Amp- 5A
1- various mixers and effects-2A
Maximum 120v Draw=12A
This setup will work everywhere.

Yes JW. My point exactly. The smaller venues I have been in rarely have a dedicated circuit ... what's more they rarely know what is on what circuit.
We've not thrown a breaker in a live show either, yet as the "logistic guy" I often ask about the power source and what is on it already.

The answer 9 out of 10 times is ... humm I don't know .

You guys have been lucky. We have tossed a lot of breakers over the years, and/or had low voltage brown outs where the bass amp starts clipping badly. I put a meter on the AC voltage every show. It is a simple math problem:

Our medium show rig:
1- 100w Marshall- 4A
1- 100w Twin-3A
2- Crown Stereo Amps- 10A
1- SWR Bass Amp- 5A
1- various mixers, effects etc. 2A
Maximum 120v draw= 24A

*If we play loud on a single 15A circuit, she's gonna blow!

Our Small show rig:
1-Mesa F30-1A
1-Orange Tiny Terror-1A
2 JBL Eon15P- 2A
4-TC Helicon monitors-1A
1-SWR Bass Amp- 5A
1- various mixers and effects-2A
Maximum 120v Draw=12A
This setup will work everywhere.

Great information!

I might add that about 70 to 80% of bars in this area have 220v lines. We use a dual 220v to 110v step-down transformer. From what I have seen on the circut breakers thay range from 80 amps to 120 amps and the voltage signal is very very stable. No matter what PA I am using I always hook up to the 220 first if possible.

Those old Sholz Power Soaks are wrapped with a metal grill when i used to use one with the old SUNN amp, that thing would burn an inprint in your arm if you laid it across it! I know I did it a couple of times! LOL

Make a grilled cheese sandwich while you play!

JW & Johnny7 are bringing some useful information into the forum!

To Johnny those amp draws are interesting to me. I didnt knwo crown power amps would draw 10A that seems hi to me, but we dont meter anything. We do have a line conditioner in our pa board, that is supposed to keep the power between 117-124 volts. I assume its working.

Did I say we never throw a breaker, maybe I lied weve done it a few times but over the past few years we havent as long as we seperated the amps and the lights to seperate circuits.

Make sure if your in a bar that any bar lights arent hooked into your circuit your using.

As Mike said some good info here

A lot of talk about small Mesa Boogies here. No offence intended to all that dig them, because I know many people do...but strictly speaking for myself, I don't enjoy playing through those amps, and I'm not even sure what it is about them that doesn't work with my style of playing. If I had to take a guess, I think it would probably be not enough "sag" in the attack. Maybe it's to do with the rectifier circuit.

Dajax if you ever go to a store that has Mesa's you might want to look at soemthing with the circuitry of a Mark IV or the new Mark V. It probably has more of what you want, a tip if you play a rectifier type amp use a little less gain and it will give more sag.

Or even a Mark I or Mark II

If I remember right you seem to lean toward vintage type voiced amps from your sound posts.

The little Subway Rocket I have has a rectifier feel to it, but they had a non master volume model called a Subway Blues that might be more to your taste. They dont make these anymore but sometimes you see them on ebay or CL in the 250 to 400 dollar range.

For me my sound is kinda like Slash from G&R, or at least the sound that I set my main channel up for. A Les Paul and a JCM 800 tone.

I also have a POD PRO that i plug into the board sometimes, if and when we practice we paly thru headphones in our bassist studio. I have the POD set for a you guessed it JCM 800 tone that I actually tweaked in our pa system a few years ago. But there is nothing like a real amp behind your legs to me.

Good Luck

A lot of talk about small Mesa Boogies here. No offence intended to all that dig them, because I know many people do...but strictly speaking for myself, I don't enjoy playing through those amps, and I'm not even sure what it is about them that doesn't work with my style of playing. If I had to take a guess, I think it would probably be not enough "sag" in the attack. Maybe it's to do with the rectifier circuit.

Yea, a Mesa is certainly not for everybody. You can definitely get it to sound ugly. I think most players who don't find their sound in there just put too much gain on the front end. It does take getting used to. After 30 years playing through various Fender Blackface, I have been using a Mesa F-30 for 3 years and the more I use it, the more I like it. It is one of the few hand built, point to point, American amps that don't cost a fortune.

The clean channel lies somewhere between a Vibrolux and a Vox AC 30 and it will do clean rock tones or country chickn pickn' nicely. It sounds great with an OCD for a little OD on solos. Channel 2 is medium gain woman tone, (Clapton, Santana, L. Carlton). An extra gain stage gets you close to (EVH, Slash, Angus) but not full metal. It does sound good at lower volumes. Worth a look:
http://www.mesaboogie.com/Product_Info/ ... /F-30.html

A lot of talk about small Mesa Boogies here. No offence intended to all that dig them, because I know many people do...but strictly speaking for myself, I don't enjoy playing through those amps, and I'm not even sure what it is about them that doesn't work with my style of playing. If I had to take a guess, I think it would probably be not enough "sag" in the attack. Maybe it's to do with the rectifier circuit.

Yea, a Mesa is certainly not for everybody. You can definitely get it to sound ugly. I think most players who don't find their sound in there just put too much gain on the front end. It does take getting used to. After 30 years playing through various Fender Blackface, I have been using a Mesa F-30 for 3 years and the more I use it, the more I like it. It is one of the few hand built, point to point, American amps that don't cost a fortune.

The clean channel lies somewhere between a Vibrolux and a Vox AC 30 and it will do clean rock tones or country chickn pickn' nicely. It sounds great with an OCD for a little OD on solos. Channel 2 is medium gain woman tone, (Clapton, Santana, L. Carlton). An extra gain stage gets you close to (EVH, Slash, Angus) but not full metal. It does sound good at lower volumes. Worth a look:
http://www.mesaboogie.com/Product_Info/ ... /F-30.html

Well this all dials back to my reason for wanting to get a small combo amp for gigging. I don't really go for amps with master volumes, let alone gain controls. I like to just crank up the amp so there's a Keith Richards sort of crunch, and then use a clean boost pedal to hit the amp input harder for leads ( I use a MXR micro amp ) Also I have a fuzz face on my board which sounds best through a cleaner amp setting. When I try to run my Supro amp (30-35 watts) turned up enough to get the sound I like, It is still loud to the point that it creates that "kill zone" for people sitting up front on my side of the stage.