Does playing at 10 harm a decent amp?

[ENB]

I hear a lot of guys talk about SRV and others playing dimed out amps. Outside of the obvious threat to hearing and perhaps the shortening the life of your tubes, does playing an amp wide open cause any particular damage to the amp? I am assuming that most median quality and up amps should have a speaker properly matched so I am guessing it dont hurt much but would like to hear your thoughts. I have dimed vintage 5 watt champs, even my Peavey Classic 30, but dont have the gahonies to try it with my Hotrod Deville.

[black_labb]

with a well designed amp no, but it really depends on the individual components. it will make things more likely to go than amps at moderate volumes.

[olddawg]

I have dimed every amp I have ever owned. I have blown a few speakers and wore out tubes but never killed an amp. I have seen amps smoke from being dimed into a power soak. People will argue all day about that.

[tubeswell]

If you made a geetar amp that you couldn't dime all day, you'd go broke on warranties. Guitar amps are made to be dimed.

[Chuck H]

The ones I build pretty much live on 10 (or 11, 12, dimed, whatever). Amp's have been built that were never intended to be played wide open. But that was long ago when MFGs and players thought that distortion was a bad thing. Any modern amp that can't take being cranked is not up to par. That being said...The Hotrod Deville is a MV amp, right? the distortion is supposed to come from the preamp while the "normal" channel handles the cleans. You shouldn't have to crank that amp. But being a modern amp it should be built to handle it if you want to. As was mentioned earlier, MFGs can't afford to allocate warranty service every time some wingnut kid decides to put all the knobs on 10. And FWIW, at 40 I'm still a wingnut kid

Chuck

[izzybell2810]

Dimed Deville

I hear a lot of guys talk about SRV and others playing dimed out amps. Outside of the obvious threat to hearing and perhaps the shortening the life of your tubes, does playing an amp wide open cause any particular damage to the amp? I am assuming that most median quality and up amps should have a speaker properly matched so I am guessing it dont hurt much but would like to hear your thoughts. I have dimed vintage 5 watt champs, even my Peavey Classic 30, but dont have the gahonies to try it with my Hotrod Deville.

I run my Deville flat out at every gig. Into a THD hotplate for smaller gigs and without for the open air stuff I do now and again. I've never had any problems in the 8 years I've owned it other than shorter tube life. Turn it up, it'll come to life!

[Regis]

I have dimed every amp I have ever owned. I have blown a few speakers and wore out tubes but never killed an amp. I have seen amps smoke from being dimed into a power soak. People will argue all day about that.

What he said. All my amps are vintage so not sure about the HRD or similar but I would think the only thing to worry about is killing the speaker. Over time the power tubes do wear out faster too.

I usually run the amps dimed with an attenuator if needed, been doing that for years with no problem.

It's my opinion that if an amp blows due to attenuator use it would have blown anyway without it.

[hasserl]

Obviously there will be wear at an accelerated rate when running an amp dimed. Stresses on the amp will be maximized.

Besides, most amps IME don't sound their best when dimed, usually around 7 is the sweet spot. Measure the output and you'll even see the highest power production is typically with the volume at around 7, turning it up beyond that often results in lower output.

[Mark Hammer]

Turn on any amp, and turn everything up to 11....but don't plug anything into it. Leave the amp like that for a full 24hrs. Would you expect anything to go awry? No. The problem is never the amp settings themselves. Rather, it is what you direct the amp to DO at those settings that is always the problem, or source of risk.

[Gtr_tech]

with a well designed amp no, but it really depends on the individual components. it will make things more likely to go than amps at moderate volumes.

I agree here. The most stressed component when running flat out is the output transformer. If its beefy enough to handle whats thrown at it by the output tubes, great. Modern amps...well, high number production big name amps where the bean counters insist on cutting every corner possible...who knows. I wouldn't expext them to live forever. Standards have slipped. I've seen 50w amps with an output xfmr just slightly larger than what you'd find in a Deluxe Reverb....that's not something I'd run flat out, for long anyway. Silvertone 1484 twin twelve....perfect example of a severely underrated output xfmr.