Wattage for gigging?

p90fool

Everyone preferred the price of the Lastone.

Grunfeld

AlexC said:

I’m also drooling over YT reviews of the Orange CR120c!

I've been gigging with a CR120 head and 2x12 for several years now and absolutely love it.  Could wax lyrical on why but it all comes down to versatility for the music my band plays and it's lightweight, and takes pedals well.  You can get a lot of sounds from a CR120.

fretmeister said:

The HT20 Head is a cracking amp. Very loud with the right cab, and quite modestly priced compared to many others.

This is indeed a cracking amp, very tidy gigging amp, and I had one in our rehearsal space.  The space has gone but the amp is HERE.  Great for gigging; great for rehearsals; great for home use.

So that's me just pimping my Blackstar HT20 head.  I'm flexible on price too.  (There's a little backup amp in that listing too.)

AlexC

Thanks all for thoughts/advice.
to answer some questions and clarify some points -
My budget at the moment is non existent. Can’t afford fuel for the car, let alone gear. I’m thinking of maybe a year down the line.
Band I’m in is very diverse - new wave, alt rock with some singer songwriter style stuff. Think Blondie/Pretenders/Floyd type tones. So heavy, heavy distortion not really required.
Yes - I use pedals.
Would rather a combo than a head.
Nothing wrong with existing Peavey other than it’s a modelling amp chock full of fx which is great for faffing about at home but lacks simplicity and ease of use in a live environment (for me anyway.)
I’m also drawn to the Vox AV60. Tried the AV20 and thought that was a great amp.

ICBM

In that case you want a Peavey Bandit, Fender Deluxe 112, Laney World Series, Marshall Valvestate 8080, or something like that - bombproof old-school analogue solid-state, simple to use, good clean sound that takes pedals well, easily loud enough to gig, and can be typically bought for under £100 in full working order and good condition.

The Marshalls and the later Peavey Transtubes actually have very decent overdrive channels of their own too. I'm currently using a Studio Pro 112 which I acquired for free because the owner didn't want to spend as much as it was worth fixing it after he blew the speaker. It would sell for abut £90 probably, if I was. (I'm not!)

Lesgrandepotato

I’m curious about wattage / speaker count. My  HT5 stack wouldn’t be enough with a drummer. But if I split and sent it to the Cornford harly as well. Then I have 11watts, and that’s being fed to two 10” speakers and a single 12” 
Will that be louder than a single 12” 10watt? Or a 20 watt?

Danny1969

Lesgrandepotato said:

I’m curious about wattage / speaker count. My  HT5 stack wouldn’t be enough with a drummer. But if I split and sent it to the Cornford harly as well. Then I have 11watts, and that’s being fed to two 10” speakers and a single 12” 
Will that be louder than a single 12” 10watt? Or a 20 watt?

You might be surprised  how loud an HT5 can be, as I mentioned above I did hundreds of gigs with one HT5 head into a
1 X 12" Cab with a Celestion G75 Lead speaker. Although I was mic'ed there was many gigs where the soundman turned me off on the desk and moaned at me to turn down. So those occasions were just the HT5 doing the work. Of course with a mic on it you can gig an HT5 anywhere .... I did Portsmouth Guildhall (capacity 2500) with one twice .... look at the tiny HT5 rig behind me on the left 

ICBM

Lesgrandepotato said:

I’m curious about wattage / speaker count. My  HT5 stack wouldn’t be enough with a drummer. But if I split and sent it to the Cornford harly as well. Then I have 11watts, and that’s being fed to two 10” speakers and a single 12” 
Will that be louder than a single 12” 10watt? Or a 20 watt?

It will definitely be louder than the same total power into one speaker, although working out by how much is complicated.

It’s very important to make sure both amps are in phase, for a start...

ecc83

"You might be surprised  how loud an HT5 can be"

Yes Danny. I have mentioned this before. The Five has a class B, fixed bias output stage unlike almost any other five watt guitar amp (I suspect the "Bugger" rip off is cathode biased?) The HT is also high for such a wee amp at ~450V (be very careful if you go in one!)

This all means that although the amp clips at almost bang on 5W it can be pushed to a good 10 watts and 10W into a 100dB speaker is 110dB SPL at a mtr and that is 'king loud! If a 4x12 is used there is also an increase in efficiency in the forward direction.

I have also mentioned before that all Blackstar amps are specified at 230V mains input and since we all get 240ish (mine is an almost constant 243-245V) so 15 watts at full, distorted chat is not out of the question. The output double triode, the 12BH7 was a "field output" valve in tellys in another life and thus can stand 2kV flyback pulses. I rarely had one fail.

For sure, if you want an amp for clean, chimey stuff AND compete with a drummer, even a vegan drummer, the HT-5 is not for you but as a rocker it can do a lot!

Dave.

Grumpyrocker

Yeah I've just got a MK2 HT-5 head and through my 2x12 V30 cab it is really effin' loud. Amazing what that little thing can do.