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Question About Heads And Cabs
megadeth1117
Aug 12 2009, 11:36 PM
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I have a Vox Valvetronix AD100VTH head, It sounds great but when I plug into the can I'm using, a friends old Crate cab ,it just isn't loud enough for playing shows or even practice, especially compared to the other guitarist's Tube stack

My question is, if I were to buy a new, different cab, will it be loud enough? Or should I just sell it and go for a tube combo or something

The head is 100 watts solid state

Thanks in advance

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This post has been edited by megadeth1117: Aug 13 2009, 03:16 PM
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ZakkWylde
Aug 12 2009, 11:56 PM
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A diffrent cab won't make your amp head louder. A new cab can give you a better tone and if it's a bigger cab compared to the old one then your sound will be fuller but not louder. (AFAIK)

I guess your amp IS loud enough but it's just not cutting through the massive sound of a tube amp sad.gif

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axes
Aug 13 2009, 02:04 AM
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I actually experienced a volume drop when plugging my brother's Peavey Triple XXX into my Hiwatt Custom 4*12 instead of his Peavy Triple XXX 4*12 cab. So I think it really depends on the cabinet, or more precisely, the speakers. You should try the head out with different cabinets, and see which works the best for you.
And ZakkWylde's advice is something that is very important, too!

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megadeth1117
Aug 13 2009, 05:59 AM
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Thanks for the replies

Thing is that I really wont be able to fully test a new cab unless I max out the volume, which cant do in stores like best buy or guitar center

Also, If I buy a different cab and its still too low I will be stuck with it, which is why I'm also considering getting a Peavey Vypyr 60 watt tube amp, maybe that would be louder

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Mitch Roberts
Aug 13 2009, 06:57 AM
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That head is rated at 100w, it should have plenty of juice to cut through pretty much anything! I used to play a jcm2000 through a crate 4x12, and when i switched to a marshall 1960AB i didn't really notice a change in volume, just in tone. Maybe where your problem lies is in your equalization. I'm not sure what style you guys play, but it's common in metal to scoop the mids, and that doesn't exactly make you stand out in the mix. Crank your mids and play em proud!

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Koopid
Aug 13 2009, 07:45 AM
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That head should easilly have enough volume... My friend has the 212 combo version of it and he can be heard over drums at about half volume. Beeing heard over drums should be enough, if your other guitarists play so much louder than drums that you can't hear yourself he really should lower his volume smile.gif

Are you sure both your tone volume and the master volume are raised? And that head has a knob that controls the output effect at the back too doesn't it (Watt)? Make sure that one is raised too smile.gif

EDIT: Yep, it has powercontrol at the back, see image below, that goes from 1 to 100 watts and is marked Power Level. If that one is set low then you will have too low volume. The knob is the middle right next to the footcontrol input, hope that helps



EDIT AGAIN: And on the image below you have two volume knobs, one for tone volume (the one labelled volume) and one for master volume (Master) make sure none of them are too low. Even if the tone volume looks like it is raised you have to turn it down and then up again to make sure because it remembers the setting when you saved that specific tone, if you turn it up for another tone the control will show higher volume but your specific tone will still remember the lower setting.

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This post has been edited by Koopid: Aug 13 2009, 07:55 AM


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Ivan Milenkovic
Aug 13 2009, 11:36 AM
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Your head is very loud, don't worry about it. The problem is probably elsewhere:

1. As Koopid suggested, put power level behind the head to 100W and keep it there on rehearsals.

2. With the speaker outputs it is very important to match the head impedance (Ohm rating on the output, see labels in the table next to the red output jacks on the head) with the speaker cabinet impedance (check the cab, see what kind of impedance it needs and match it on the head)

3. Some cabinets ARE louder than other, and this is due to speaker sensitivity. Speaker sensitivity is very important and it is the loudness that speaker puts out when fed with 1W of power on the distance of 1 meter, it is labeled in dB (decibels).
Some speaker are more efficient than other and this will greatly determine how loud the amp is. For example speaker rated at 85dB on the 100W amp will sound less loud than 100dB speaker on the 50W amp, so remember that when choosing cabs and speakers. More dB it has - louder speaker.

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AdamB
Aug 13 2009, 11:48 AM
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QUOTE
A diffrent cab won't make your amp head louder


A new cabinet will make the amp 'louder'. It depends on what cab it is though. The easiest way to get more acoustic power from an amp is simply to increase the size/number of speakers it drives. The same amp head through a 1x10" will sound very quiet compared to the head running through 2 4x12" cabinets. Simply, because there is more air being pushed with more speaker surface. The other option is to get a more powerful amp head.

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Ivan Milenkovic
Aug 13 2009, 01:11 PM
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QUOTE (AdamB @ Aug 13 2009, 12:48 PM) *
A new cabinet will make the amp 'louder'. It depends on what cab it is though. The easiest way to get more acoustic power from an amp is simply to increase the size/number of speakers it drives. The same amp head through a 1x10" will sound very quiet compared to the head running through 2 4x12" cabinets. Simply, because there is more air being pushed with more speaker surface. The other option is to get a more powerful amp head.


This is also true. 412 cab will sound bigger then 112 but only because of the amount of air being pushed. The actual loudness level of the cab will remain the SAME, because power is distributed evenly across all the speakers. So if you have one speaker of 100W rating, and 4 speakers of 100W rating, running throuhg the same head, the 4 speaker cab will only get 25W per speaker. The amount of air is what causes the subjetive loudness increase.
However the tone of 412 is much wider, it will have good bottom end, and because of this the overall sound picture is better, so this is also one of the reasons why we perceive it as louder one.

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megadeth1117
Aug 13 2009, 03:18 PM
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About the power level, I'm afraid if I put it to the max, It'll blow the cab because before when I put it all the way the sound kept cutting out and sounded very poor

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Saoirse O'Shea
Aug 13 2009, 03:38 PM
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May be worth checking that the power amp stage is ok then megadeth.

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Ivan Milenkovic
Aug 14 2009, 10:48 AM
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QUOTE (megadeth1117 @ Aug 13 2009, 04:18 PM) *
About the power level, I'm afraid if I put it to the max, It'll blow the cab because before when I put it all the way the sound kept cutting out and sounded very poor


Again, are you sure that impedance is matched on poweramp and cab??

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megadeth1117
Aug 14 2009, 03:05 PM
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I actually don't understand how that chart it works it looks like ancient Egyptian to me sad.gif , I think mines is on Series I don't recall, but I don't want to try the other in fear of blowing my head, apparently the wrong settings can do that

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Ivan Milenkovic
Aug 14 2009, 11:34 PM
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You cannot blow the solid state poweramp with uncorrect impedance settings, only tube amps are sensitive to this.
Check out the manual. If you don't have it, the only one I could find is for combo, and on it it says it puts our 100W at 8Ohm. What is important is to have a cabinet that is rated 8Ohm as well.

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megadeth1117
Aug 14 2009, 11:46 PM
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QUOTE (Ivan Milenkovic @ Aug 14 2009, 06:34 PM) *
You cannot blow the solid state poweramp with uncorrect impedance settings, only tube amps are sensitive to this.
Check out the manual. If you don't have it, the only one I could find is for combo, and on it it says it puts our 100W at 8Ohm. What is important is to have a cabinet that is rated 8Ohm as well.

Well I'm not sure about that in the booklet is says incorrect setting might damage they head, also I'm not sure if yo uknow but when it says 8ohms x 2 under "Speaker cabinet impedance and number", what does that mean?

I'm not sure how to tell how many Ohms my cab is

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AdamB
Aug 17 2009, 09:07 AM
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It is possible to damage a solid state amp with incorrect imp., they're a lot tougher than say a vintage tube amp but it can still happen. It will either burn open the output transformers windings or damage the output xistors. Most amps have a fuse on the speaker out to prevent the transformer/xistors blowing, so even on a really resilliant amp you can still throw the fuse and the amp will cease to function until you replace the fuse.

Most modern tube amps are actually quite tough as well, mainly because transformers are of a higher quality now than the ones used in 60s/70s prodcution. With a vintage amp you really do have to be careful though!

-Adam

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Saoirse O'Shea
Aug 17 2009, 12:29 PM
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QUOTE (AdamB @ Aug 17 2009, 08:07 AM) *
...It will either burn open the output transformers windings or damage the output xistors. ...

-Adam


That's my understanding as well. No speaker connected will result in the transformer putting it self in to essentially an infinite loop until it either blows or the build up of heat damages other components. Wrong impedance connected and it is still possible to do this. Whilst it is less likely to happen in a tranny it can still do so.

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Koopid
Aug 17 2009, 12:43 PM
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That head does have tubes actually (I think?)

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This post has been edited by Koopid: Aug 17 2009, 12:47 PM


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AdamB
Aug 17 2009, 03:26 PM
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You can tell what impedance your cab is either by using a multimeter (connect a cable, put the multimeter across the 2 rings of the jack and it'll give you a rough reading on impedance) or by looking at the speakers - it'll usually say the imp. on the back of them. If there in series, they add together, if parallel, then you average it.

So 2x 8ohm speakers wired in series is 16ohm, 2x 8ohm speakers in parallel is 8 ohm.

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Ivan Milenkovic
Aug 17 2009, 09:28 PM
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QUOTE (AdamB @ Aug 17 2009, 04:26 PM) *
You can tell what impedance your cab is either by using a multimeter (connect a cable, put the multimeter across the 2 rings of the jack and it'll give you a rough reading on impedance) or by looking at the speakers - it'll usually say the imp. on the back of them. If there in series, they add together, if parallel, then you average it.

So 2x 8ohm speakers wired in series is 16ohm, 2x 8ohm speakers in parallel is 8 ohm.

Small correction, 2x8Ohm speakers in parallel connection is 4Ohm in total.

What is the cabinet model? We can check the impedance on the net.

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