30+ watt amp the size of a pedal!

[olddawg]

Quilter Performance Amplification
Quilter Microblock 45... $149
I just wonder if you can get a clean and overdrive sound out of it in a live performance with no channel switching...
Your amp is now on your pedal board. The 24v external power supply is almost as big as it is!

[d95err]

Clean and overdrive - I guess you'll just have to use the volume control on your guitar. Probably works best with pedals before it for distortion and overdrive.

As far as small amps go, have you seen this? Palm-sized 50W (hybrid) tube amp:
http://www.voxamps.com/MV50

[eschertron]

Clean and overdrive - I guess you'll just have to use the volume control on your guitar. Probably works best with pedals before it for distortion and overdrive.

As far as small amps go, have you seen this? Palm-sized 50W (hybrid) tube amp:
http://www.voxamps.com/MV50

"Equipped with Nutube" We've talked about that before.

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t38678/
Nutube ? English | korgnutube.com ? English

[olddawg]

Clean and overdrive - I guess you'll just have to use the volume control on your guitar.

If it reacts like an old school tube amp. I can see adding a jack to vary the gain or Tone Q control
With a volume pedal...

[nickb]

The irony is that us oldies who know and love the classic tube amps are also the one buying these lil' guys as we find the others too big to carry

I wonder when there will be a equivalent revolution leading to a significant weight reduction in speaker technology?

[g1]

Traynor had a mini 25W amp called the quarterhorse which had more controls and reverb, was a little bigger, but cost more.
I'd imagine you could find them used for cheap, but you'd need a bit more room on your pedal board.
Traynor Amps

[olddawg]

The irony is that us oldies who know and love the classic tube amps are also the one buying these lil' guys as we find the others too big to carry

I wonder when there will be a equivalent revolution leading to a significant weight reduction in speaker technology?

I often reflect on the irony of the situation. When I was young I had huge amps, roadies, and was too loaded to load anything anyway. Now I use a small amp, am on prescription drugs, have one of those "Rockstar" carts, and have to tell any band I'm in that they have to help me load and unload my gear. Lol! I don't see any way around speaker physics except QUIT USING MDF!

[olddawg]

Traynor had a mini 25W amp called the quarterhorse which had more controls and reverb, was a little bigger, but cost more.
I'd imagine you could find them used for cheap, but you'd need a bit more room on your pedal board.
Traynor Amps

That actually looks pretty good. I would have set up the controls better. The question is.... does it suck?

[R.G.]

Here's a thinking process.

Is it possible for clean solid state amplification to **re**produce good guitar sound? Sure - PA systems and hifis do it all the time. So the magic is not in what amplifier actually drives the speaker. It's in the signal fed to the amplifiers that drive speakers.

It >>may<< be necessary to feed guitar through some tubes and maybe even a specially voiced guitar speaker to make the right signal for power amplification. Miking small amps on stage is all about that. And many people think it's OK.

So maybe. Maybe pedals can make a decent signal to feed to a PA amp. Maybe the nutube, or micro "peanut" tubes from the old golden age.

Suckingness is increasingly going to be what you get from a signal source, not a quality of an amplifier. Probably it won't be easy. But then nothing about the last 50 years has been, has it?

[olddawg]

Here's a thinking process.

Is it possible for clean solid state amplification to **re**produce good guitar sound? Sure - PA systems and hifis do it all the time. So the magic is not in what amplifier actually drives the speaker. It's in the signal fed to the amplifiers that drive speakers.

It >>may<< be necessary to feed guitar through some tubes and maybe even a specially voiced guitar speaker to make the right signal for power amplification. Miking small amps on stage is all about that. And many people think it's OK.

So maybe. Maybe pedals can make a decent signal to feed to a PA amp. Maybe the nutube, or micro "peanut" tubes from the old golden age.

Suckingness is increasingly going to be what you get from a signal source, not a quality of an amplifier. Probably it won't be easy. But then nothing about the last 50 years has been, has it?

True that! Nowadays I play through 20 watt El84 two channel open back combo amp with one 12" through a speaker attenuator with a pedal board. The guy on the other side of the stage uses a very expensive and complex pro processor and rack preamp set up into the main amp input of a JCM 2000 then into an oversized 4x12" cab. I can't convince him that ALL of his trashy tone is in the damn processor. The power amp is never driven to saturation so any power amp would work and he doesn't need that mountain of gear for small venues. But he tells me the preamp "has a tube" in it and he can only hear that monsterous pile of amp, preamp, and speakers. It's also DIed into the PA. A couple of times he's accidentally blown us off the stage after a couple of shots because the overhead is still there even though the preamp output is on 1. Go figure. He has to have it! And at the end of the day he can still lift it!

[potatofarmer]

I wonder when there will be a equivalent revolution leading to a significant weight reduction in speaker technology?

Neodymium-based speakers are hitting the bass world pretty well. Some manufacturers are taking advantage of the increased flux density to get performance that ceramic magnets can't match. The Eminence 3015 comes to mind.

There are some neo-based guitar speakers, but maybe they're taking longer to catch on?

[loudthud]

I have often considered building a non tube amp with an external power supply. Common AC transformers are limited to 24VAC and 40VA in the US, not sure what the limit is in other countries. That's enough for something like a solid state 5E3 or slightly more power. A SMPS can go to 48VDC and 200VA or more. That will get you to 45-50W @ 4ohms. The advantage of the SMPS is the universal 100-250VAC input.

Quilter must be using a digital power amp, I wouldn't go that way so I would need a heat sink or at least a bigger box. Still it might make a cool kit or DIY project.

[J M Fahey]

Common AC transformers are limited to 24VAC and 40VA in the US, not sure what the limit is in other countries.

Where does that come from?
I feared something similar but this standards page, although focused on efficiency and idle consumption, mentions all sizes of "external supplies" from less than 1 Watt to Larger than 250W which is more than enough for any loud amplifier and could easily imply up to a couple kW , although they actually do not state any limit.
Efficiency Standards for External Power Supplies | DigiKey
IŽd *love* to be able to build different 100W (or more) amplifiers all sharing the same plug-in power supply module or worst case, glorified wall wart,to drastically simplify certification.

[R.G.]

External power supplies are not limited in power in the USA that I know of. I can certainly be wrong about this, because I am NOT a standards/certification guy by any means, just have scars from dealing with folks like that.

But I think you may be talking about the standards for hazardous secondary voltages. There are limits on how much power you can pipe through wires to a second unit before having to protect users from contact with the connections on either end of the cable carrying the power between external power supply and the powered unit. The limits on that are something like 24Vac, 42Vdc, and 40VA, maybe. Above that, you're obligated to insulate and protect the external wiring and connectors just as you would AC mains cords. That is, if you want to get certification, which is not mandatory in the USA at all. In the USA, we have a steadily decreasing number of freedoms, but we still have the freedom to create electrical equipment with no safety review at all, and get sued for our pains.

Yes, Quilter is using a Class D amp. The revolution in Class D amps is that we now have MOSFETs that can switch high power fast enough to get audio-speed signals out and not run into either sudden smoke pouring from the outputs or horrible band limiting to prevent aliasing. Class D will probably eat up the entire high-power audio market as a result. It's just too tempting to have high audio power in a tiny, cool package. In fact, until the last election, I kind of expected the DOE and EPA to >>>require<<< Class D power amps on all new audio equipment to save the electrical heating. Maybe we won't have to do that for a few years, anyway.

There is a lot to commend Class D, so long as it can turn out similar audio quality.

[uneumann]

I have often considered building a non tube amp with an external power supply. Common AC transformers are limited to 24VAC and 40VA in the US, not sure what the limit is in other countries. That's enough for something like a solid state 5E3 or slightly more power. A SMPS can go to 48VDC and 200VA or more. That will get you to 45-50W @ 4ohms. The advantage of the SMPS is the universal 100-250VAC input.

Quilter must be using a digital power amp, I wouldn't go that way so I would need a heat sink or at least a bigger box. Still it might make a cool kit or DIY project.

My recent build is based on LT's line of thinking. It is a drop in replacement for a tweed bassman chassis. The whole chassis weighs in at under 6 Lbs which includes a 3 tube preamp and PI and a SS power amp and its 24v SMPS (150w). Also includes tremolo and spring reverb. Lots of EQ features and puts out a solid 50w sine wave at 4 ohms.

This link has a project history. https://sites.google.com/site/string...m-lite-project