Amp Watts vs. Speaker Watts - Cab Questions

It's easy to measure wattage, and actually it's quite easy to calculate if you know the amp's design parameters well. Still there are different standards in use for this that cause confusion.

It's a whole lot harder to measure sound output in a meaningful standardized fashion, and besides, many amps can be used with different speakers so will have different outputs depending on what's plugged in.

First, passive speakers have no power of their own. When you see a speaker rated 25 watts, this tells you this speaker can handle 25 watts of power on a continuous basis. A speaker rated 100 watts can handle 100 watts on a continuous basis. Higher rated speakers are generally of better construction... better materials, bigger magnets, voice coil, etc...

Any speaker will distort if you send it a distorted signal. So if you overdrive a low powered amp like the 5 watt Epi Valve Jr., the speaker will duplicate this distorted signal and give you a overdriven, distorted tone. If you overdrive the Epi Valve Jr into a cab with speakers rated 300 watts total handling power, you will still get a distorted tone. But the distortion comes from the overdriven amp, not the speakers.

But speakers themselves distort. And a lower rated speaker will normally distort before a higher rated speaker.

If you like natural tube amp distortion, try a low powered tube amp into speakers with a low handling power rating.

Speaker power handling is really telling you how much power a speaker can handle without damage. If you run a 100 watt amp into a speaker rated 25 watts, you will probably blow the speaker if you crank the amp up.

I kinda agree with Ricochet, overdriving the speaker does not usually sound good. You want to overdrive the amp, not the speakers.

Speaker power handling is really telling you how much power a speaker can handle without damage

Good info! I hadn't considered that before, though with what I ended up with I should be fine.

Cheers!