50w vs 100w

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braintheory said:
Agreed. Even more so I find with over 100w amps and same for my amps less than 50w in the other direction of relative pros and cons. Always trade offs it seems. For what I like 100w I find usually is a good balance/sweet spot of pros vs cons
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100w + 50w amp to each their own cab + a good splitter box. Best of both worlds.
 
Racerxrated said:
And that number, is straight in to the amp. Boosted? Even higher. Which is why some think the double boosted Superlead can push 300w at max distortion.
Which explains why my 72 100 buried my C+ Coli when I ran both at the same time. All I could hear of the Coli, was the low end thump it has.
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I think it’s just because that coli was so scooped. It made my iic+ hrg seem very midrangey in comparison lol. A lot of my other amps besides my 72 buried it (besides the low end), some of which are not as powerful as the 72. My Beta had also slightly more low end power

I find with boosting my 72, like most NMV amps I’ve had, it makes it way more powerful and punchy up until it get its volume around 10-11 o clock or so and then it kind of just squashes it a bit without seeming to boost its power much at that point onwards. Obviously very loud at those levels
 
thegame said:
100w + 50w amp to each their own cab + a good splitter box. Best of both worlds.
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Will have to try that. I don’t currently actually have any 50w high gain amps, just a 1969 Tremolo 50

I will say for whatever reason some of the best sounding modded Marshall’s I’ve tried so far have been 50w and some of them almost sounded like they could’ve been 100 to me
 
braintheory said:
Will have to try that. I don’t currently actually have any 50w high gain amps, just a 1969 Tremolo 50

I will say for whatever reason some of the best sounding modded Marshall’s I’ve tried so far have been 50w and some of them almost sounded like they could’ve been 100 to me
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I was thinking of vintage Marshalls for that setup. Crank the 50w for the dirt/squish while balancing out the volume on the cleaner 100w for support and filling out the frequencies. I think this was a common thing to do in the 70's and into the 80's when players daisy chained multiple Marshalls together (via front panel input 'ganging') while playing large venues.
 
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shar-vell Dan said:
Well boost or not older 20 & 25 watt Pre Rola & Rola celestions even newer speakers can blow easily with the Master past 6.
I keep mine between 4 & 5.
You should never have to dime a guitar amp.
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Oh, I know this of course. I'm talking about my 1972 SuperTrem with the treb vol at 2, tops...and the bass/rhythm vol at 4-5. Boost it and stand back. The power that amp has makes a Wiz blush and a Coli go crying off into the corner. lol
There is a point, on both my 72s where increasing the vol just gets mushy and unpleasant. I can't go higher than 4 on the high side and 7 on the rhythm vol. Doesn't sound very good at that point. But my earlier vol numbers, the amp is dead perfect to me.
 
CrystalSky said:
Oh shit, it is louder than Coli? 😯
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It is. And, the coli i had was a 2B upgraded to a C+ which means the power section is a bit beefier than the C/III coliseums. Mostly, the amp had way more upper mids which really bury a low mid amp like a Mesa...but even turning the mids down, I couldn't hear the Coli hardly at all.
 
rstites said:
Boosted doesn't increase power at the output. That depends strictly on the power supply of the amp. Boosting increases the distortion or the amount of frequencies in the sound.

Most likely, the reason you hear the Marshall over the Mesa is that the Marshall has most of it's energy in a tighter frequency band, while the Mesa is smeared across more frequencies. (This is why distorted amps are much harder to cut through the mix than clean amps.) Your ear only picks up the loudest at a given fequency - also why much of the bass and low mids disappear live as they're covered up by the bass and the snare/toms which are louder at those frequencies.

As noted, those old Marshall were rated at 100W, but that's an average power rating and they also rated those like hi-fi amps, so with low THD compared to where anyone ever plays them for guitar.

In the 50W vs. 100W Marshall, I definitely always preferred the 100W versions due to the tighter low end and bigger bass, but the difference is fairly slim and I could happily play the classic Marshall 50W too.
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It does when the vol is pushed from clean power to distorted power, which is why straight in, dimed the 2203 and 1959 is rated at 175w max distortion. This is why the owners manual states these numbers, 100w clean power 175w max distortion. Boosted, even higher.
 
braintheory said:
I think it’s just because that coli was so scooped. It made my iic+ hrg seem very midrangey in comparison lol. A lot of my other amps besides my 72 buried it (besides the low end), some of which are not as powerful as the 72. My Beta had also slightly more low end power

I find with boosting my 72, like most NMV amps I’ve had, it makes it way more powerful and punchy up until it get its volume around 10-11 o clock or so and then it kind of just squashes it a bit without seeming to boost its power much at that point onwards. Obviously very loud at those levels
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Except, I brought the 900/1100 and even the 750 sliders way up to offset....and still, I could hardly hear the Coli. But yes the Marshall is inherently brighter. I also dropped the mids on the 72..still no dice.
 
glpg80 said:
It’s addictive. Throw some 13’s on a strat and play some 4 bar blues with a bit of reverb. I don’t hate it but I don’t crave it. I do respect players that want it though - it’s a thing the lunchbox amps have been taking advantage of for years. The problem is that anything less than 50W tend to also lose the bigness of a 100W a bit too much so IMO it kinda limits me to only 100W and pulling tubes/halving impedance if I want 50W squish.
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I could get into it while recording for a solo . Give it a vibe
 
Racerxrated said:
Except, I brought the 900/1100 and even the 750 sliders way up to offset....and still, I could hardly hear the Coli. But yes the Marshall is inherently brighter. I also dropped the mids on the 72..still no dice.
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Relatively uncompressed and open sounding amps will naturally cut through much better than very compressed amps of even 4 x the wattage. I think that plays a much bigger role than just the frequencies each amp is strong at.
 
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Racerxrated said:
Except, I brought the 900/1100 and even the 750 sliders way up to offset....and still, I could hardly hear the Coli. But yes the Marshall is inherently brighter. I also dropped the mids on the 72..still no dice.
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I think you mean the 750 and 2200 sliders? Either way, yes I always set the 2200 slider up really high on marks and tried higher 750 settings. My regular IIC+ HRG still sounded way more midrangey in comparison (almost Marshall-y comparatively lol) even kept really scooped the way I generally set my HRG. Vs most other amps my hrg would sound pretty scooped. Most of my other high gain amps also cut more than the coli including also the OG Uber and Poundcake

The coli’s IME are just a lot more scooped, but of course also have that extra horsepower. I remember also when re-amping for some of my friend’s songs my iic+ hrg worked awesome in them, while the no stripe ++ coli I had kept sounding so distant in the mix no matter what we tried. I still think the coli’s I had were very cool, but for high horsepower amps I’m good with the Hell Razor KT150 and Beta as kings for me with the OG Uber and Blueface not too far behind
 
Racerxrated said:
It is. And, the coli i had was a 2B upgraded to a C+ which means the power section is a bit beefier than the C/III coliseums. Mostly, the amp had way more upper mids which really bury a low mid amp like a Mesa...but even turning the mids down, I couldn't hear the Coli hardly at all.
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WOW, just wow!

And people keep saying “Mesas watts are loud”!
Interesting revelation to me.
 
67mike said:
Mesa get fucking buried by Marshalls and similarly eq'd amps....imho

Edit: loudest amp I've ever played was my full stack Hiwatt DR 504 50 watter.....holy shit that thing was insane!
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Oh yeah, also heard about Hiwatts!

Curious now, if SLO-100 keeps up with Marshalls, as it is believed to cut through mix very well.
 
CrystalSky said:
Oh yeah, also heard about Hiwatts!

Curious now, if SLO-100 keeps up with Marshalls, as it is believed to cut through mix very well.
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I bought a 212 orange cab off a pro guitarist that demoed the cab using a SLO.....I would say YES!!!!!!! Talk about percussive whollop
 
67mike said:
I bought a 212 orange cab off a pro guitarist that demoed the cab using a SLO.....I would say YES!!!!!!! Talk about percussive whollop
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Hehe, I just never could compare mine with anything side by side. Thanks for letting me know!
 
CrystalSky said:
Oh yeah, also heard about Hiwatts!

Curious now, if SLO-100 keeps up with Marshalls, as it is believed to cut through mix very well.
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I haven’t compared in a recorded mix yet, but my prediction would be that the SLO (especially my ‘89 SLO) would probably do very well, but still not as well as my Marshall’s, but I would have to test it in that context to really know

I’ve been really liking lately the crunch mode of my ‘89 SLO. It sounds sort of like a more American 6L6 version of my 1972 Marshall SuperLead 100 with also a certain squish to at enough volume that is cool and unique. I’ve not been playing the lead ch as much lately
 
braintheory said:
I haven’t compared in a recorded mix yet, but my prediction would be that the SLO (especially my ‘89 SLO) would probably do very well, but still not as well as my Marshall’s, but I would have to test it in that context to really know

I’ve been really liking lately the crunch mode of my ‘89 SLO. It sounds sort of like a more American 6L6 version of my 1972 Marshall SuperLead 100 with also a certain squish to at enough volume that is cool and unique. I’ve not been playing the lead ch as much lately
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Yeah, power amp overdrive is glorious on slo, but SO loud haha

I am more curious about live mix. Let me know anyways.
 
CrystalSky said:
WOW, just wow!

And people keep saying “Mesas watts are loud”!
Interesting revelation to me.
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They are loud, but I’ve had plenty of amps that are louder. With the coliseums and triple rectifiers it’s more about their extra efficiency/ease of putting out sound rather than shear volume as well as the more extended highs and lows and more scooped mids vs the 4 power tube counterparts

I like the extra efficiency. It’s like if me or a bodybuilder were to bench 200 lbs maybe both of us could do it, but one of us will do it with so much more ease lol
 
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