High Power Solid State Amplifiers . . . . Discuss

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HellraiserJohnny

HellraiserJohnny

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Ok, I know I'm gonna get kicked right in the nutz for this post but trust me. . . . When playing Pro I routinely played in front of large crowds (500-5,0000) and after blowing up every Marshall and Highwatt (a few Sound City 100watt also) Ampeg's and any other guitar amp you can think of, I finally had my audio engineers set me up with several Solid State power amps to try. After working with QSC, Peavey and Crown I ended up with the Crown Power Base II powering my live rig (at the time 3 Full Marshall 1960 800\900 stacks).

When you do the math, each Marshall cab eats 300 Watts @ 16 Ohms. The head puts out well in excess of 365 Watts per side which ends up 150 watts per cab. Now you have a rig you can blast into the stratosphere on 10 all day long and never have to worry about blowing ANYTHING. SPLs in excess of 105 DB. That's not the amazing part of why I used this amp. Long before the days of Drop D and lower de-tunings, I was able to push my stacks (all with Celestion G12T-75's) down to 30 Hz! I was shaking the concrete floors. No amount of Marshalls heads old or new can produce that kind of power or sound on a single rig. I tried, trust me and I had to carry 6 100 watt heads with spares. The distortion alone just wasn't worth it.

Speaking of distortion . . . . there is NONE. The rhythm guitarist in my band who had an identical set-up, would routinely meet me in the middle of the stage and have a quick chat. Try hearing anyone on a stage in a live situation @ 105 Db. without them blowing out a lung (or your ear). That's because even at that volume we never pushed the amps into distortion. Always had plenty of headroom even when thumping on the open E string.

I know the tube purists will kick my ass on this one but I still use this rig today for both live and recording and many people can't believe the tones I get through my rig. What I have learned over the years is POWER=TONE and you can't have one without the other.

Please feel free to chime in. . . . . Thank You!
 
Boss Katana is pretty good. The Waza is WAY overpriced. Haven't heard of anything else solid state that sounds worth it.
 
I guess my only question is why not 300w per side?
 
The older Rocktron Velocity 300 was actually a really great sounding and highly underrated power amp. Had great warmth and plenty of low end thumpy-ness of a good tube power amp.
 
Many years ago when I bought my Quad pre I picked up a Crown poweramp, Only wanting clean power and wanting no power section saturation. Didnt even try it out, just bought it and brought it home. That was the WORST pairing I have ever heard tbh. I brought that back the next day and bought the Strategy 400 and never looked back. I cant imagine the Triaxis sounding much better with that Crown. (Plus they were known for having serious reliability issues back then too). That was my first real rig so I was wet behind the ears and didnt have the net to do research. Why not just use an Axefx and the Crown which would be a nice small touring rig?
 
mchn13":lbfnke33 said:
I guess my only question is why not 300w per side?
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Because the issue is the same with all tube amps, every time you turn up past 3-5 all you add is distortion and not volume (Power) and there were not a hell of a lot of 300 watt tube amps readily available to the working musician at that time (80's-90's). Don't get me wrong. . . I had more pictures taken of the 3 stacks with 2-100 Watters stacked on each and it look wicked but it became a lot more trouble than it was worth in the end.
 
phil b":2fer4vfy said:
Many years ago when I bought my Quad pre I picked up a Crown poweramp, Only wanting clean power and wanting no power section saturation. Didnt even try it out, just bought it and brought it home. That was the WORST pairing I have ever heard tbh. I brought that back the next day and bought the Strategy 400 and never looked back. I cant imagine the Triaxis sounding much better with that Crown. (Plus they were known for having serious reliability issues back then too). That was my first real rig so I was wet behind the ears and didnt have the net to do research. Why not just use an Axefx and the Crown which would be a nice small touring rig?
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My PB happens to work flawlessly with the Triaxis.

I don't know how many Crown power amps are out there, far too many if you ask me, but the PB series are some of the most underrated power amps out there. I've heard of ppl having these issues as well and I have tested several Crowns side by side and seen horrible results so I know what you mean.

Give you a great example. . . one of my vocalist purchased a CE1000 and we stacked it up against the PB II, not only could it not come close to the volume levels, the sound quality sucked. On the other hand, we did the same with an XLS 202 and that lil puppy rocked the house. So I guess it all depends on the application for which the amp was built. I have had absolutely no issues with my PB on the road, in the studio or at a rehearsal in over 20 years and I still use it today.
 
I have a Strategy 400. My research led me to look for one, or a VHT power amp. The only Solid state alternative that compares (according to many pros is even better) would be the HH V800, but those are really rare and out of production. The Matrix amps I hear are very good too. For my needs the Strategy is just for fun, way overkill at any club gig I do. But it sure is a blast to fire it up through 4 cabs(when no one is home lol) and slave my C+ or Jubilee or whatever through it with some volume. As far as standalone amps, the Katana is very tubelike but an even cheaper option is the old Randall RG80 or RG100ES...they are every bit as tubelike as the Katana and arguably better.
 
phil b":3fqn06pp said:
Many years ago when I bought my Quad pre I picked up a Crown poweramp, Only wanting clean power and wanting no power section saturation. Didnt even try it out, just bought it and brought it home. That was the WORST pairing I have ever heard tbh. I brought that back the next day and bought the Strategy 400 and never looked back. I cant imagine the Triaxis sounding much better with that Crown. (Plus they were known for having serious reliability issues back then too). That was my first real rig so I was wet behind the ears and didnt have the net to do research. Why not just use an Axefx and the Crown which would be a nice small touring rig?
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Oddly enough, Kurt Cobain's live rig in 1991/92 was a Mesa Studio Pre and Crown/Crest power amp. His live tone is...an acquired taste, but I like it. Can't imagine those songs with any other sound. I hate hearing Nirvana cover tunes for a lot of reasons, a big one being the guitar tone. If you don't nail it, it's just awful.
 
My Crown XLS1000 works great with my tube preamps. Lightning fast attack/response, massive solid low end. Doesn't have the "3D-ness" of a good tube power amp but good enough for gigging.

I found the common catch are the older "designed for guitars" SS power amps, just seems to be an excuse for selling underpowered amps at a premium.
 
Back in the day, using racks, I (and others) used tube preamps and solid state power amps...they were cheaper and put out more power with reduced peaks IIRC. Crown, Peavey, etc.

I had a full ADA bass rig and guitar rig, using their solid state power amps, B500B and B200S respectively.
 
I'm using a Matrix GT1000FX solid state power amp. 1000 watts bridged, not that I need it.
 
It depends what you are using it for? If you are running a pre (triaxis, quad, engl, etc...) a tube power amp is a must have. I ran an ADA rig and later a Triaxis, doing exactly what you are describing. I started with a ss power amp and thought that I had a good tone. Then I bought a tube power amp and it was night and day, the tube amp just killed it in every regard. With that said, if you are running your effects w/d/w or split, w/d, then I can see running ss for the delays. To your point though, the best live tone that I have ever heard was Eddie's and he uses ss amps for his effects, so there must be something to it.
 
My question is.... Why the need for so much power? When properly micing a cab you can easily play the largest of stadiums using a 100w Marshall. I haven't tried a Matrix, but as far as I'm concerned, the only SS power amp I've ever heard that sounds halfway decent in a guitar rig in an old HH V800.

I'd rather use a good head and a Torpedo live and forget micing cabs as opposed to using SS power amps.

Ed
 
BrokenFusion":399pcti4 said:
I'm using a Matrix GT1000FX solid state power amp. 1000 watts bridged, not that I need it.
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Same here for W/D!!!! Awesome power amp!!
 
shredhead7":2tgmk59t said:
It depends what you are using it for? If you are running a pre (triaxis, quad, engl, etc...) a tube power amp is a must have. I ran an ADA rig and later a Triaxis, doing exactly what you are describing. I started with a ss power amp and thought that I had a good tone. Then I bought a tube power amp and it was night and day, the tube amp just killed it in every regard. With that said, if you are running your effects w/d/w or split, w/d, then I can see running ss for the delays. To your point though, the best live tone that I have ever heard was Eddie's and he uses ss amps for his effects, so there must be something to it.
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I actually tried the pre through several tube amps and was not impressed compared to what I could get from the ss amps. As I stated in my original post, having all that power made the guitar scream. Bottom had 10X the punch of a tube amp and was much more defined. Felt like getting kicked in the chest every time you thumped a string. No tube amp ever gave me that kind of attack, depth and clarity.

At the time I was using this rig for everything. I was playing in a thrash metal band with speed of light timing\meter changes, high speed skips and was very difficult guitar playing to say the least. Our theory was, you only get one shot to get it right so we practiced with the same rigs we played out with.

As for mic'ing . . . . I refused to let the rig be relegated to playing through a POS wedge on stage. We would only put the bare minimum through the PA and let the guitars blast through the venue from the stage. Not unheard of for many thrash bands and believe me, people in the back of the room had no issue hearing the guitars from the stage alone. It wasn't till much later that I would use a TS Power Soak on one of my cabs and let the soundman mic up that cab. Once I started doing that I shrunk the rig down to what I have today which is 4 1960 B cabs.

Now I'm gonna add this little tidbit of information to this mix, since that time I've played with quite a few other guitar players who have used great tube heads (Egg, Mesa, Marshall etc.) in a practice situation and nearly all of them praise my guitar tone as being one of kind and "Cuts like a knife". Several have had a lot of trouble cutting through while playing next to me and just seem to get swallowed up in the mix. Since I switched to ss I've honestly got to say, I've not had that problem.
 
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