What amp wattage is enough?

[DoubleJ]

Hey im looking at purchasing a new amp. At the moment im looking at an svt-3pro 450W solidstate.
http://www.ampeg.com/products/pro/svt3pro/index.html

My only concern is that it won't be loud enough to keep up with the rest of the band. Im after something i don't have to crank right up and thus losing the clean sound.
Has anyone got or had any experience with this amp?
Any other amps you think will be more suitable?
What sort of wattage should i be looking at?

[Kev77]

min 300 watts = but I'd never buy a bass amp again without playing it,, some just dont have the nuts to make the boom sounds.,.,.

[Capt. Black]

Take any one persons advice and double it.
Take the mean average of all suggestions in this thread over four days and triple it.

[Pakehendrix]

It's definitely about "where" the volume is. 450 could be monstrously loud, but it could also get very lost. Definitely try before buy...my Mesa is much more than loud enough at 320W, and it goes to about 600W with another cab...but my old Jansen was also plenty loud enough at 50-60W.

[ash]

With bass I think a lot of the question over power versus volume comes down to the speakers used. With solid state, if it is rated at 450W a 4 Ohms, you need to use a 4 Ohm cab to get the full herb. An 8 Ohm cab will only deliver about 250W from the amp.

I agree with Kev's asserion that 300W+ is a good level of power for SS bass. As long as the speaker cab is delivering it to the air. A 450W SVT should waltz in.

[afiman86]

I keep telling my bassist to get more and more wattage. So far ive got him looking at 1000w or something.

Very easy guy to persuade

[shinenz]

min 300 watts = but I'd never buy a bass amp again without playing it,, some just dont have the nuts to make the boom sounds.,.,.

+1 on the min 300watts, 750+ works well with loud bands. We practice with a 300watt, and holds up, but playing live is a diff situation. My last bass player had to get a 750 watter, as the 300 was just no good for performance, and then ended up using a quad and 15inch to match, for the sound that was needed. However, depends what style you play, might be a blues, jazz, low key kinda act, then 300 be more than enough

[rickenbackerkid]

300 watts would be fine for me, everywhere I play we have a PA and so I only need a personal monitor. 10-20 watts is easy enought for guitar.

[GrantB]

Hi there. Our bass player uses an SWR Workingmans 300 from memory (is there a 300...maybe 400 - around that anyway) with an SWR 4x10 quad. Sounds epically large but the only thing it probably doesn't do is that early 70's focussed sound of under powered P or J Basses driving a valve head real hard. I have a 160 watt Ashdown 15" combo which can achieve that sound pretty good., Great practise amp too...super portable.

[Rog]

Generally I say for bass: go at least three times the power rating of the guitarist (B>3G).

However, the trend todays seems to be throwing everything through a board, so its really who cares? In such cases its immaterial - a 15W amp would be big enough! After all, if the guitarist is using a 5W boutique amp miked up all the way, that's still 3G, surely? There's plenty of DI boxes made for bass - save money and use one of them.

Me? Up until last week, I played in a band with drums, keys and 2 guitarists plus bass. Having sold my bass amp, I now use a Jansen Merlin 100W ss head ($75 from TM) into a single 15" BW 1502-4 ($125 from TM) in a homebuilt cab and I still get told I'm too loud and that was at an outdoors gig with only vocals through the PA).

Thus the answer is - whatever it takes to get the job done, there is no such animal as a formula for what power rating anyone MUST play through, IMO, despite my 3G rule.

[jimi]

I have one of these. It really depends what speakers you are using and what other instruments you are up against.

I started off with a single 8ohm 15 cab and found it struggled playing with guitarists using 100watt amps and quads. With the Ampeg SVT8x10 I had next it was overkill.

Currently using an Ampeg 4ohm 4x10 to get the full power out of it and it seems to be the right mix of loud enough and portable enough. I've jammed with 3 different bands with the current setup and I've found it to have enough head room and I havent had to resort to dirty tricks like taking the wheels off the cab to get extra volume out of it yet.

To be honest I wouldnt mind a bit more power though. Maybe 600 watts, just to have the luxury of knowing you can step it up if you need to.

I reckon its a fantastic head though. Not very modern or hi-fi sounding, like a markbass, but its great for dirty blues and that grindy sorta indy sound. Crank the gain and bit and you can have it where it cleans up when you play lightly then gets nice and dirty when you dig in.

[Bg]

I have one of these. It really depends what speakers you are using and what other instruments you are up against.

I started off with a single 8ohm 15 cab and found it struggled playing with guitarists using 100watt amps and quads. With the Ampeg SVT8x10 I had next it was overkill.

Currently using an Ampeg 4ohm 4x10 to get the full power out of it and it seems to be the right mix of loud enough and portable enough. I've jammed with 3 different bands with the current setup and I've found it to have enough head room and I havent had to resort to dirty tricks like taking the wheels off the cab to get extra volume out of it yet.

To be honest I wouldnt mind a bit more power though. Maybe 600 watts, just to have the luxury of knowing you can step it up if you need to.

I reckon its a fantastic head though. Not very modern or hi-fi sounding, like a markbass, but its great for dirty blues and that grindy sorta indy sound. Crank the gain and bit and you can have it where it cleans up when you play lightly then gets nice and dirty when you dig in.

+1 and its all about how much air you push not the power of the amp Once you add enough speakers you'll kill the guitarists

The good thing about bass is you make your own sound, no-one ever says - that bass sound is wrong, so find your happy medium and the tone you want and go with it Obvious exclusions would be death metal fuzz in a funk band etc A general rule of thumb would be that you want to be able to play clean at your guitarists top volume, then you can dirty it as you wish

[thehenderson]

8 watts is sweet, 16 watts is twice as much

[shinenz]

I keep telling my bassist to get more and more wattage. So far ive got him looking at 1000w or something.

Very easy guy to persuade

haha nice one!

[Bg]

8 watts is sweet, 16 watts is twice as much

thats shit