A 150w- 200w amp

[Carontealbar]

Ciao!
I am really happy with my Laney A1 amp. I'm playing a hollow body jazz guitar (Cort Yorktown) with it. It's 120 w and it works well in little places when playing in sessions. But often it happens some concerts are outside and with other guitars, bass, drums with high volumes, it seems it's not enough. I need some suggestion on a 150-200w amp for acoustic/hollow body guitars. The sound I need is a fat warm one, but still open on the mid/treble tones.Thanks to help me. Bye
Alessandro Italy

[Cuki79]

Watts is not equal to loudness.

Sound pressure level is a better way to have an idea. Many manufacturer don’t give the figures… But you have to know that depending on the efficiency of the speaker you can make a very loud amp or a quieter one with the exact same wattage.

Anyway Watts can refer to peak power or RMS power (the A1 seems to indicate 120W peak and 65Wrms) that maybe confusing sometimes

Finally some guitar amps have very poor input gain stages… meaning they can be very loud with an additional preamp or mixer but are actually quiet just plugged straight in…

[RogerPease]

That is what Hendrickson amps are all about, but they’re not cheap.
And I do not know if you can get them in Europe. (You are in Italy, right?)
Forum member Cuki or someone else will have to comment on amps in Europe.

Good luck in your hunt! Regards, _Roger

Oops! Cuki already replied. Cuki, what about brands in Europe/Italy? _RP

[Cuki79]

There are many brands to try

• AER
• Schertler
• Acus amps
• Hughes and Kettner

[Br1ck]

So many, if not all, amps are rated peak watts at 4 ohm, so that 1000 watts is really 250. Speaker efficiency is a huge factor. I'd get something with a line out to the PA too.

[phcorrigan]

If you're playing in a venue with a PA, can you plug directly into that?

If not, have you considered a powered speaker? The Behringer B108D and B110D are rated 300w RMS ( slightly less, since Behringer tends to round up slightly) and are decent speakers. These or something similar should be more than adequate.

[Jinder]

As has been said, wattage rating doesn’t really bear all that much relation to volume, as there are so many variables.

I used a Hughes & Kettner Era 2 amp for a while which is rated at 400w. The amp that replaced it, an AER Compact 60, is significantly louder than the H&K, despite being rated at just 60w!

The AER is also louder than my PA speakers, which are Alto Truesonic TS112s, rated at a seemingly whopping 800w. That said, the Altos are rated at 800w peak and 400w RMS, and the pres/input stages in the Altos are fairly poor, whereas the AER has pristine and highly efficient preamps and a cleverly limited power stage which really makes for very loud and very useable output.

Throw and dispersion are also thing to consider with an amp. If you have a beamy projection from a 120w amp, it’s less useful for live sound reinforcement than a 40w amp with a wide angle of dispersion.

Wattage in relation to volume makes for some slightly odd maths. In general, all things being equal, to double the volume you have to increase the wattage tenfold, so a 20w amp will be half as loud as a 200w amp, and a 2000w amp would be twice as loud as that, so in effect, going from your 120w amp to a 150w amp is likely to yield only a 1-2dB increase in volume. I’d suggest looking for a more efficient amp with better projection and dispersion rather than focusing on the wattage specifically.

My suggestions to audition:

Acus OneForStrings Simon 8 (200w)
AER Domino 3 (100w X 100w stereo)
Henriksen Bud Ten (120w)
Polytone Mini Brute (100w)
AER Compact XL (200w)
AER MM200 (200w and VERY VERY loud!)

All of the above will give you different flavours of what you need…I’d audition them if possible and see which suits you best.

Enjoy…keep us posted!

[Cuki79]

Typical example is the AER compact

If AER still source in italy, they Sica (italian speaker) dual cone speaker Sica 8D11.5CS 4 ohms

https://www.toutlehautparleur.com/me...a/Z004670C.pdf

This speaker has a sensitivity 93.1 dB/W.

If you use this calculator
https://mehlau.net/audio/spl/

You will find that away that for 60W it can project 110.9dB SPL at 1m if the speaker is placed far from any wall. If it is placed next to a wall (as most performer playing in bar would be) it goes up to 113.9 (thanks to the wall reflection, especially for the low end which is not directional).

It brings you where you want in terms of loudness as far as acoustic amplification goes.


As a comparison a Fishman Loudbox Artist will provide 113dB SPL at 1m when placed far from tany wall with 120W. So you double the wattage, but get the same loudness as an AER just placed 1m from the wall.

[EZYPIKINS]

I have decided to use a small mixer (Soundcraft Signature10) into a PA speaker JBL815


Lay the speaker down behind me and eq to suit. 15" speaker with 2" horn and 1500 watts.

Plenty of power with best quality sound.