power amp question

[pmag55]

Hey guys, the Marshall EL84 20/20 rack amp and the Mesa 20 /20 rack amp both use EL 84 power tubes. Should both of these amps have similar tonal qualities or not? Thanks.

 

[mott555]

I'm just guessing, but I would expect they'd sound pretty similar. Ideally your preamp does all the tone coloration and the power amp just faithfully amplifies it to speaker levels. There are tonal differences between power amp designs, but if they use the same power tube I'd expect the differences to be quite minimal.

I've never used a rackmount tube power amp so I could be totally mistaken. I'm working on theory and from experience using solid-state power amps for PA systems.

 

[tallcoolone]

really depends on the application

 

[pmag55]

Yeah your likely right about that . I Think but I might be wrong, that the 20/20 was not really made to be heavy but more classic in the type of tube saturation it put out?
If that made any sense.

 

[Marshall_Watts87]

i'd go with the marshall

 

[pmag55]

I agree with you Marshall Watts, I have a Mesa 20/20 with a JMP-1 and the tones are a little Marshally but not what I hear from the Jmp-1 and Marshall 20/20 on sound clips. I've even set my preamp to the same settings as the Dave Murray settings and it's not really happening. right now I'm using an Ibanez rgt42dx .