Marshall relaunches 18Wer (and others)

[zenstate]

Ah but the hands that do the soldering garnish fingers of diamonds and great beauty. he he...

[zaphod_phil]

At the demo I saw, they had a guy in a Marshall t-shirt saying a little bit about each amp on show, and he was going on about the amp "pushing the speaker past its ratings". I felt like reminding him it was an 18W amp with a 20W speaker, and that that lovely tone was coming from the output stage.

Yes, but bear in mind that 18W RMS is roughly 36W peak, and you will also get transients of well over 50 to 60 watts. Somone recently measured 40W transients coming out of a 6W AX84 P1! In non-guitar applications, usually it's usually recommended that speakers are rated at least twice the amps' RMS output power, or preferably four times, for this very reason. So the speaker will in fact be pushed fairly hard, and at times possibly even beaten within an inch of it's life!

As for "hand soldered" cabs, I would have thought that Marshall could find much better ways of gluing down their tolex, other than solder.

[loverocker]

he was going on about the amp "pushing the speaker past its ratings". I felt like reminding him it was an 18W amp with a 20W speaker,

Well, as a rule I don't leap to the defence of marketing bods but the 18W figure is for the amp's clean output, no? A cranked 18Wer must put a lot more energy through the speaker.

[zaphod_phil]

I think someone said it actually measures only around 15W clean - can't remember who it was, but yes with distortion it will be quite a lot more watts hitting that speaker....

[pete_skelton]

I still felt like asking him some questions, like what types of valves are they going to ship with? Can I hear the trem going ? Just brassed me off a bit because he seemed to be saying that the amp was staying totally clean. Thankfully it isnt

peter