August 30th, 2010 | 
Author: Why is it, in an old plexi marshall for instance, that a 50 watt tube amplifier breaks up into crunch a bit sooner than the 100 watt? And is it just with these that this applies? Or can this be so with any tube amp, old or new?
Oddly enough, Jeep Diva is closer to the correct answer than anybody so far. In a 100 watt, you’re splitting the load between 4 power tubes instead of two. Because each tube is carrying less of an individual load, it takes more volume to get them to run outside their normal operating conditions.
There are ways you can compensate for this. Break up doesn’t just come from the amp circuit. If you change the speakers, the character and time of the breakup will change. Your amp tech can also change the cathode resistance on your power tubes, thus changing how much power your tubes are dissipating. This is biasing. If you run a 50 watt with a cool bias and high wattage speakers, you’ll get closer to the breakup of a 100 biased hot with low wattage speakers.
Well, this is all assuming you are setting the two amps for the same resistance at the speaker end (your ohm rating). Also, that’s assuming you’re using the same pickups, the same boost pedals (or lack thereof). There’s more to this than I could list in a few words.
A side note: your tone will be different on a 100 which could account for some of this as well. Higher wattage amps tend to have more bass response.
Posted in tube amps
There’s probably more people screwing in the bulb.
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A 50 watt amp is capable of a lot more power than 50 watts.
that’s the point where it starts to break up or distort,
so a 50 watt amp will distort when you go past 50 watts,
while you have to crank a 100 watt amp up past 100 watts before it will break up.
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Look there boy the lamps are like turbo to the amps the give more power that is why people recommend the lamp amps. there you go now boy keep rocking
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Its simple tube dynamics. Tube amps start to break up when the tube are saturated by electrical current. The amount of saturation is determined by the volume at which your playing and the amount of signal your putting thru the input. It takes less volume to saturate the tubes on a lower wattage amp than a bigger one. A 5 watt amp will break up at far less volume than a 100 watt amp. Which is the driving force behind the surge in low watt tube amps being offer now days. Better tone at lower volumes.
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Oddly enough, Jeep Diva is closer to the correct answer than anybody so far. In a 100 watt, you’re splitting the load between 4 power tubes instead of two. Because each tube is carrying less of an individual load, it takes more volume to get them to run outside their normal operating conditions.
There are ways you can compensate for this. Break up doesn’t just come from the amp circuit. If you change the speakers, the character and time of the breakup will change. Your amp tech can also change the cathode resistance on your power tubes, thus changing how much power your tubes are dissipating. This is biasing. If you run a 50 watt with a cool bias and high wattage speakers, you’ll get closer to the breakup of a 100 biased hot with low wattage speakers.
Well, this is all assuming you are setting the two amps for the same resistance at the speaker end (your ohm rating). Also, that’s assuming you’re using the same pickups, the same boost pedals (or lack thereof). There’s more to this than I could list in a few words.
A side note: your tone will be different on a 100 which could account for some of this as well. Higher wattage amps tend to have more bass response.
References :