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Posted by: Rain Dec 9 2008, 08:23 PM

A friend of mine said that he is trying to get rid of a 100v drummer amp and I am curious whether or not it works with guitars - anyone know? The ports look the same...

Edit: Someone is going to ask why I would want a drummer amp: I have a 10v amp w/ only bass and treble so any upgrade is an upgrade

Posted by: Jarl Emil Dec 9 2008, 08:28 PM

Ive never even heard of a drummer amp, and i personally dont think you should mess with other amps than guitar amps. Why you may ask me? For instance if you take a bass guitar and use it on a guitar amp it will ruin the bass sound on the amp, or other things. Cheers

Posted by: Rain Dec 9 2008, 08:36 PM

Once i get the exact name of the amp I'll let you know but until then are there any more suggestions?

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Dec 9 2008, 09:39 PM

I have not heard about a drummer amp as well - the drum sound usually goes through mixer to PA system, so this amp is probably just a PA system that was used for drums. If so, it could maybe be used nicely with some sort of processor, but with regular guitar gear, it is better to use a guitar amp.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Dec 9 2008, 10:03 PM

Hmm I'm puzzled too..I haven't heard about drummer amps ? And what ports it does have ?? For what, microphones ?
Anyway you can play guitar on different amps (bass or keyboard for example) but it won't sound good...Can you post more info on that "drummer" amp please , I'm curious now.. My guess is that your guitar amps (even though its small) should sound better...

Posted by: MickeM Dec 9 2008, 10:04 PM

Drummer amp huh? Never heard of it, like said before, does your friend mean a PA?

Posted by: Rain Dec 9 2008, 10:29 PM

Hrmmm well it's what my friend said - but I wonder if he's just crazy? I'll be sure to get more details about this!! Maybe he meant Drum machine.... but he did say it's waaay larger than my 10v.

Posted by: Muris Varajic Dec 10 2008, 10:03 AM

10v or 10W?
Amp or machine?
Give us more details.

Posted by: OrganisedConfusion Dec 10 2008, 10:16 AM

You have to mean PA and if so then I wouldn't bother getting it for guitar.

Posted by: Rain Dec 10 2008, 10:41 AM

Well this a perfect time to educate me on what in the world a PA system does Anyone for a quick explanation?

Posted by: OrganisedConfusion Dec 10 2008, 10:45 AM

It's basically the speaker system at gigs. You plug vocals into it and drums pretty much always and if you mic up guitar amps you plug them in to it. Also this provides you with monitors so you can get certain aspects of the sound put in your monitor like the drums if you're a guitarist and need to hear that. This is a simple explanation lol.

So basically the speakers and sound system at gigs. Mixers, speakers, monitors etc.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Dec 10 2008, 04:12 PM

When you come to gig, you will notice big sound boxes there. Those boxes, along with everything else that is required for it to work are called "Public Address" or for short - PA systems.

The simplest form of PA system is usually like this:


On the picture above you can see two big speakers left and right, couple of microphones and mixer/poweramp in the middle. These are basic components of the PA system, that enables the user to amplify the sound coming from the microphone in order to be heard in big halls, and by a larger groups of people.

In this first example you can see that the mixer and power amp are integrated into one box. This means that this box has a bunch of channels (which are basically preamps), and one power amp that enables all the sound from the preamps to go to big speakers with enough power.

There are more sophisticated solutions to this device where power amps and preamps are separated, one is usually in racks and other in a large mixer form as you can see on the pictures down bellow:




When you come to the gig, there is usually some kind of a PA system there, meaning they have some kind of mixer, power amp, mics, and speakers.

When you mic a drum set, you place the microphones near the drum components and wire it to the mixer. The the sound is amplified through power amps and goes onto speakers. The only difference with micing the drum set is because you use special microphones like this..



..in order to catch some drum sound frequencies better, but other than that, the rest of the PA system is the same basically.


So this drum amp is probably a PA system of some kind, and PA system is not good for guitar in general, because with PA system you have broader sound response then from guitar cab, like on the next picture:



This means that guitar is sonically speaking a middle range percussive instrument and guitar amps are made to do their job best according those facts. This is why guitar amp build is very different from PA system build.

Posted by: Marc_Maiden Dec 10 2008, 04:33 PM

i think he means one of those roland amps that you plug in your electric drum set to


it can be a nice amp if you get an effects processor, but other than that, when you plug your guitar in, all you will get is a clean sound...


that being said it is probably an upgrade from your little 10w

Posted by: kaznie_NL Dec 10 2008, 07:16 PM

... now that's an awnser

Posted by: Hisham Al-Sanea Dec 10 2008, 09:53 PM

i think you are talking about electric drums/ amp .you can use it for guitar but i prefer to add some good tweeter
to give you more treble coz this kind amps has only a woofer.

Posted by: Rain Dec 10 2008, 11:51 PM

Wow amazingly helpful replies on this stuff. I talked to my friend and he said it was a guerrilla-brand bass amp and apparently he can use that for his sons drum equipment - still a little lost on the drum part. It is 100v though. I hope that cleared it up for someone...anyone I'm working on more information as we speak

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Dec 11 2008, 02:19 PM

Bass amp? Well bass amps are usually made to play bass frequencies better, and have a better bass response. This will make the guitar sound muffled a bit.

That amp is probably 100 Watts, not 100 Volts. Operating voltage in North American standard is 110-120V, and in European 220-230V, so the 100 is too small for both standards. On the other side 100W is often used as power rating for bass amps, since bass amps generally need much greater power than guitar ones because of the nature of the bass waves, and the fact that bass sound must be without clipping so it needs a big headroom.

Posted by: OrganisedConfusion Dec 11 2008, 02:24 PM

Yeah. A Bass amp wont give you a great response I'm afraid. You can try it out though for sure. But don't expect great results and 100W it most likely is like Ivan says as you don't rate speakers on voltage usually but wattage as this is the most important value.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Dec 11 2008, 09:28 PM

I don't think bass amp will serve you good for your guitar practice! But keyboard players tend to use bass amps for gigs (when they don't have keyboard ones)...

Posted by: Rain Dec 12 2008, 12:39 AM

I definitely see the point of what all of you are saying - is it just that my SP*10 will be better than the 125 dollar bass amp or that it just won't be a "great" 125 dollar amp for a guitar?

Posted by: JVM Dec 12 2008, 05:31 AM

Bass amps can work decently well as clean guitar amps, in my experience. One of the most famous guitar amps ever is the fender bassman, made for bass but works great wit guitars. Not all will work so well, but sometimes they do.