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Topic starter
15/12/2003 1:57 am
ok, a friend of mine wants to run his 15w practice amp into his 100w all tube head. would this would work and push the tubes into extreme overdrive? or should i not be in the room when he tries to play through it?
There is a cryptic ingredient in many of our modern improvements--we are awed and pleased without knowing quite what we are enjoying.
15/12/2003 4:14 am
If your friend's practice amp has a "LINE OUT", he could run this signal into the 100W head. If he tries to run an amplified signal into the 100W head, he will ruin it.
Why is he trying to do this? Why doesn't he just go into the 100W head?
You CANNOT run an amplified signal into an amplifier!!
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
15/12/2003 8:44 am
Can you tell your friend that I will give him 1 Euro for his 100W head - because that's about what it's going to worth after that little experiment. A preamp will generate about 1-2W and will drive any power amp into very hard clipping. The output from a 15W will put currents into the power amp that it was never designed to take.
On second thoughts, if he hates his head so much, he can send it to me for free - I'll look after it properly.
I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?
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Topic starter
15/12/2003 3:11 pm
if you kept the volume lower on the 15w amp, would it damage the power amp less? and what would get damaged, the tubes or the other electronic stuff? i read about some guitarist in the 70s having a setup sort of like this, what was his secret for not damaging his amps?
There is a cryptic ingredient in many of our modern improvements--we are awed and pleased without knowing quite what we are enjoying.
15/12/2003 3:55 pm
Like I said, it all comes down to the amount of volume you use in the 15W amp. To get the input low enough to not damage the power amp, you will have to have almost no amplification at all in the 15 watter - also a total lack of tone, probably zero distortion and not the kind of dynamics heard from a hard driven amp. So why bother?
It's like shouting at the top of your voice into a PA.
What will you damage? Probably the tubes and the speakers. All an amplifier does internally is increase voltage (a tube is running at around 300V). Put a large voltage in, from the preamp stage (your 15W amp) and it will be "amplified" by the tubes, to the point where something has to give. Should the tubes survive the onslaught, the resultant blast from the speakers may result in the cones giving out.
A far better solution is to use something like the boxes from Hughes and Kettner, which they call boosters. They are nothing but a low wattage preamp with a gain and volume. The Tubeman 2 is a three channel booster, so you can set up a clean channel, a bluesy overdrive and a heavy crunch. Just stomping the right switch will give you the channel you want and a really nice tube sound to boot (ecc83 & 12 AX7 if I remember).
I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?
Greybeard's Pages
My Articles & Reviews on GN
21/12/2003 4:21 pm
So, would it be OK to run it through a line out? because I've got one on my 10 watt amp
"I had these dreams that I would learn to play guitar, maybe cross the country, become a rock star"