Stupid question about power amps

I have bought this mesa boogie studio preamp few months back and I have to say its kickass, and im currently running it in my transistor amp input, but.... How necessary is power amplifier? What changes it makes to tone? (sorry for being total noob but im not very familiar with these :lol: )
My tone is not very heavy and I would not consider it for metal...
What power amp would be good, and what difference's there are between
mesa power amps...?( Oh, im looking more like metallica-type crunch )
:roll:

It's essential if you want to run it into a cab.

Check this out brother:

http://www.amptone.com/

You'll learn all you ever wanted to know and more....

~ Lance

IMO - If you're going for the "Mettalica-sound" - you'll want to run EL34's in a Power Amp (depending of course on what era you're going for).

The Studio Pre is based on the Mark series for clean AFAIK - and the MarkIV cleans I get are my absolute favorite.

I'm more of a head / cab guy - although I AM getting into more and more rack stuff (just picked up a Recto Pre), so I'm looking for a Power Amp myself.

The word I've heard so far is that for the sound YOU describe, you'll probably want to stay away from the EL84 (20/20) amp and go for a 50/50 or better Power Amp....

Can I use a Bass 400+ as a poweramp for a Quad as opposed to a 395?

dmt said:

Can I use a Bass 400+ as a poweramp for a Quad as opposed to a 395?

Click to expand...

You could do that. I'm not very familiar with the 400+, so I'm not sure if it's a regular power amp or a pre/power combo, but either way you could use it. You'll probably have more low end than a regular guitar power amp, since I think the 400+ uses KT88/6550s as opposed to 6L6s.

I have dont have really much money, and I am thinking which should I buy, power amp or new guitar.. so could someone put clips with and without power amp from studio preamp? If the effect on tone isnt really big, im going after new guitar, because I really want to get rid of this boring tone :twisted:

The effect of going from a transistor power amp to a tube power amp will be very noticable. IMO, you'd be better off going with a used Mesa 50/50 versus a new guitar.

Just my 2 cents. I don't have a studio pre, but later this weekend I may be able to get some clips of my Recto's preamp through a solid state power amp versus the tube power amp.

Another vote for the Fifty/Fifty. You'd probably find one of these on the used market for around €600 or thereabouts. There is a mod for these I believe shape the sound similarly to the 2:50, the purpose for it being to match it with the Triaxis pre-amp for a heavier and darker sound.

The down-side with the Fifty is it doesn't run EL-34s although I'm trying to figure out a way for it to do that anyway. Probably running just one channel would relieve the PT enough for a pair of EL-34s but would require changing the bias resistors.