# 30W amp loud enough to play with drums?



## hemants (Nov 9, 2007)

Wondering if a 30w amp is loud enough to play in a basement party with acoustic drums?


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I've heard a roland cube 30 hold up.

I'd mic it up though.


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## evenon (Nov 13, 2006)

In general, yes. Unless you want crystal cleans, but even then a 30 watt Matchless like a DC-30 would be more than enough. 

I gig with 7, 15 and 30 watt amps depending on the size of the room. All rock gigs with a relatively loud drummer. Some times the amps are mic'd sometimes not.


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## Emohawk (Feb 3, 2006)

Should be. I have a buddy who plays small clubs un-miked with a Classic 30. That same amp could hold it's own at sane volumes against my Laney & my pal's Bogner...but at insane levels it's another story.

As evenon noted, you might not be able to get perfect cleans, especially with a loud drummer.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

You should be fine with a 30watt Tube amp. I sometimes gig with my Classic 30 in smaller venues. You might still be able to coax some cleans depending on how loud the drummer is. But for a basement, assuming you are talking about a house basement, 30 watts is plenty.


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## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...i gig with a fifteen-watt tube amp.

it also depends on how much clean headroom you want.

as chito says, 30 watts should be more than enough for a basement situation, even if those are solid state watts.

-dh


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

The short answer is yes, but as others have said, it's more complicated than that. Being prepared for a variety of rooms (and outdoors), band configurations, drummers (heavy hitters can be a lot louder), desire for headroom (I like lots) and clean tone, can move the demand for more wattage upwards. Generally a good tube amp at 30 watts is fine and a good extention speaker cabinet can help spread the sound around, as would a p.a.. A lower quality 30 watt solid state amp might not have the balls to match a drum kit. My 50w tube amp is huge compared to my 60w solid state amp. Speaker size may figure into the equation too, especially if a small one sounds weak or tinny. 

Having said all that, a larger amp in reserve is a good idea.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

30 Watts is plenty.

Cleans are no trouble if you're using single coils.


I was rehearsing and gigging with 40 watts and typically had the master on 2 ~ 4.


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## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

Depends on the kind of music, a heavy rock drummer and a small jazz combo drummer don't necessarily play at the same volume. I did a couple of jazz gigs with a Roland Cube 30 and it was fine, but I wouldn't trust the Cube to pull me through a loud rock gig let alone a rehearsal. With a tube amp, 30w should be plenty. You might not be able to get pristine cleans if you have a ham-fisted drummer, but if the drummer has any sense of dynamics, a 30w tube amp should be more than loud enough.


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## zdogma (Mar 21, 2006)

I find my Route 66 (32 watts) too loud for basement jams, 15 watts with an efficient cab is enough for me in most situations, or I run a Weber mass with the route 66.


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## Guest (Nov 17, 2007)

Quick answer is yes, 30 watts should be plenty. This assumes that your drummer has a "volume control". If not the party may not last long.


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## JSX/6505 (Nov 18, 2007)

30 watt tube amp? Absolutely

30 watt SS? It will struggle.


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## Slidewinder (Apr 7, 2006)

I've played 150 seat bars, which isn't big at all for a bar but bigger than a basement, using a peavey classic 30 turned up to about 6-7. No pedals, just straight in and it was fine. I put it up on a chair though to have the sound spread better.
That was with drums and a hammond keyboard and I was easily heard.
In a basement the acoustics won't be as good if everyone cranks their volume cause of the way the walls will bounce the sound around.
You should be fine, but as was already said, a 30 watt SS amp might struggle and tends to go a bit mushy when you really push it.


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## moonsocket (Dec 5, 2007)

Ive used a Vox AC30CC for gigs and it does well. I have to dime it though.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

you dime an AC30?!?! i take it it doesnt have the neodynium (sp???) speakers in it then


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## LowWatt (Jun 27, 2007)

JSX/6505 said:


> 30 watt tube amp? Absolutely
> 
> 30 watt SS? It will struggle.


what he said.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The sonic implications of wattage is one of the most regularly misunderstood things in the musician's lexicon. Music store sales staff and misleading ad copy on audio components certainly doesn't help any, and as more and more people do the burnt of their listening on personal devices going straight to the ear the level of audio-specs literacy declines day by day.

That lament aside, consider that:

a) When the input signal and output driver are held constant, it takes roughly 10x the wattage to be translated into double the perceived loudness. In other words, 10W sounds twice as loud as 1W, and 5W sounds twice as loud as 1/2W, and you'd need (theoretically) 300W to sound twice as loud as 30W. The implication is that sometimes you need a whole helluva lot more wattage than you might think to make a difference, but also that sometimes wattage differences between devices that might appear to be meaningful (e.g., the difference between a 10W and 20W amp) simply aren't.

b) Speakers vary considerably in efficiency and there the specs are often VERY meaningful. If speaker A provides a sound pressure level of 93.2db at one meter distance with 1W fed into it, then it is MUCH louder than speaker B that measures 87.4db SPL under the same conditions. Keep in mind that a 3db difference in measured SPL is tantamount to a big increase in wattage, more or less. I won't say 3db = 10x the wattage because perceived increase in loudness depends on what the current loudness IS. That being said, often simply changing the speaker can produce a change in loudness well beyond what diddling with 10W here or 20W there will do. Additionally, the efficiency of the speaker is a function of the enclosure that lets it move air efficiently...or not. A better enclosure and a more efficient speaker can make a huge difference in loudness. I have a dinky little 2W LM380-powered amp into a decent Marsland 6.5" speaker in a sealed cab and that baby rocks much harder than you'd think 2W has a right to.

c) All a power amp does is add more gain to an existing amplified signal, using devices that can withstand passing all the current required to do that. If you feed it a hotter signal, then you get more out of it. So providing a hot input signal within headroom limits can also increase the apparent loudness of the amp.

d) Ability to "compete" with other instuments would depend on the extent to which their respective frequency ranges overlap. At a certain point the ear starts to smudge sounds falling within the same approximate frequency range, such that telling them apart becomes very difficult. One of the things gigging musicians will often talk about is "cutting power", or the ability of something to be heard in spite of other fairly loud sources going on concurrently. While a limited view of "cutting power" might suggest that loud upper mids or huge bass is the key to being heard, the real key is to figure out where in the frequency spectrum there is less coverage by the other instruments, and try and position yourself there, sonically. It's a bit like trying to show up in a group photo - you want to be where as much of you that can be seen as possible IS seen, so that you can be identified in the photo. The takehome message from that rambling discourse is that often being able to be heard is not a question of loudness and mere wattage, but about the spectral coverage of your instrument and speakers. Judicious use of tone controls, and selection of speakers (and sometimes NOT using a distortion) can help immensely. Despite having access to other things, I've brought my little 5W tweed Princeton to jams for years. It has an 8" JBL with more bottom than the original 8" Jensen. I wouldn't say it "competes" with drums all the time, but you CAN hear it, and if it was powering a 12" speaker in a bigger cab you could probably hear it a lot better.


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