It's Loud!

  • Last night I was playing with my Powered head & 1x12 cab and had it loud enough to conjure excellent controllable howling sustained feedback. You'd have to yell over it and it was really kicking. A drummer might ask you to turn it down so he could hear himself. I went to the power display and it was reading 6 watts!!! So in reality with my 8 ohm cab it was only 3 watts!!!??? I realize this meter is summing to an extent but 3 watts is LOUD! I have the power amp boost on 2. I was just surprised how efficient it was. If I turn it up so it reads 50W (actual 25) It would piss off the band and FOH in everything less than a 700 seater! I read the specs on the poweramp and I recall it's rated for 160W continuous. I couldn't imagine using half of that for anything!

  • Higher frequencies don't need a whole bunch of watts to be perceived as loud or to cause hearing damage. Low frequencies do. 3 watts on lower frequencies sounds about as loud as butterfly wings.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • I went to the power display and it was reading 6 watts!!! So in reality with my 8 ohm cab it was only 3 watts!!!??? I realize this meter is summing to an extent but 3 watts is LOUD!

    I have a Mesa Mark V:25 with a 10 watt mode. Its way too loud for home use. I pulled it out of our container a few weeks ago and leant it to a friend.


    I bought a Victory V30 as well because it had a 1/4watt setting which I thought would be ideal. I still couldn’t ise it in the house. I hated the sound of it anyway so I sold it after a couple of weeks.


    Next I bought a Kemper…………….


    ………….and the rest is history as they say 😎

  • Last night I was playing with my Powered head & 1x12 cab and had it loud enough to conjure excellent controllable howling sustained feedback. You'd have to yell over it and it was really kicking. A drummer might ask you to turn it down so he could hear himself. I went to the power display and it was reading 6 watts!!! So in reality with my 8 ohm cab it was only 3 watts!!!??? I realize this meter is summing to an extent but 3 watts is LOUD! I have the power amp boost on 2. I was just surprised how efficient it was. If I turn it up so it reads 50W (actual 25) It would piss off the band and FOH in everything less than a 700 seater! I read the specs on the poweramp and I recall it's rated for 160W continuous. I couldn't imagine using half of that for anything!

    This is why I always get confused when people say the powered Kabinet isn't loud enough..


    I use my powered rack to run an unpowered Kab ( which is similar in principle) and its stupidly loud. I turned it up to the point that it got really painful, way, way beyond the drummer, at it was showing 25 watts.....obviously its an exponential relationship between watts volume but even so...

  • I presume there are a couple of things at play


    First, the concept of what constitutes loud. You mentioned having to yell over it. I have had the misfortune to stand outside some soundproof rehearsal studios where you had to yell to be heard over the racket that was coming through the walls. God knows how painfully loud that must be inside the room.


    Secondly, it is mainly metal players that complain about it. The genre tends to include a lot of downtuned extended range instruments and a pretty bass heavy tome. As bass frequencies require more power to be perceived as the same volume those guys probably do need a lot more power than say a funk or country player.

  • I presume there are a couple of things at play


    First, the concept of what constitutes loud. You mentioned having to yell over it. I have had the misfortune to stand outside some soundproof rehearsal studios where you had to yell to be heard over the racket that was coming through the walls. God knows how painfully loud that must be inside the room.


    Secondly, it is mainly metal players that complain about it. The genre tends to include a lot of downtuned extended range instruments and a pretty bass heavy tome. As bass frequencies require more power to be perceived as the same volume those guys probably do need a lot more power than say a funk or country play

    Volume can also be a bit of a macho thing - your band might be loud, but ours is even louder ( and by implication better)!

  • I'll take having feel over volume, but some of that feel comes from a guitar speaker working a bit with me in the room. I always laugh at the guys that think they need a 150 watt amp because they play on a "big stage" with a "loud drummer". I always think "Don't you have a P.A.?" It isn't 1965, we have monitor systems now. I played an outdoor show with around 6,000 in attendance with a 30 watt amp. It had an open back, the whole band could hear it and had very little of it in their monitor. The FOH LOVED it.