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
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
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!
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
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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
May be worth checking that the power amp stage is ok then megadeth.
I actually don't understand how that chart it works it looks like ancient Egyptian to me , 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
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.
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
That head does have tubes actually (I think?)
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.
I'm not sure the exact model since its discontinued, Its not a flexwave though
This is a silly question, but, Did you tried pluging the amp on another electric take?. The ammount of watts that you're using can be lower than you need. It happens to me once. The electric tension on the stage wasn't the needed and the amp didn't work properly. Just try it if you didn't
oh yes I have tried that, all three shows I've played with the stack, it was too low the last one we did which was a few days back it was just loud enough, thanks for the help though
16 ohm cabinet can be run safely with an amp that has settings for 8 or 4 ohms. However, when running the head at a lower ohm rating then the cabinet, the result will be a significant degree of power loss. With this in mind, I suggest you check if this is not the case with your amp&cab combination.
In the second case of using a 4 ohm cabinet with an amp that must be run at 8 ohms, this will stress an amp and cause it to overheat.
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