High Deco Amplifiers System Integrator Power Soundstage Component Consolidation Concepts.

Kennedyaudio internet sales - sole public notice of the following:

Touching live leads left over right handed with current and voltage drive
circuit technology has a ten times greater chance of death than wrongly
contacting other types of high wattage amplifiers or drive line terminals.
Touching live leads left over right handed with current and voltage drive
circuit technology has a ten times greater chance of death than wrongly
contacting other types of high wattage amplifiers or drive line terminals.

....BUT the AMP is immortal....!!
....BUT the AMP is immortal....!!

Note that while the kennedy amp output is actually much safer than any tube amp, the Kennedy amp is designed to be useful when connected to widely differing speaker loadings, making line handling possible for this device when most 'consumer' amplifiers cannot change their speaker loadings. Also the major risk in touching speaker lines is creating a path where electricity must pass through the heart and chest areas to go to ground. While the AC signal tends not to penetrate as deeply as DC and the voltage is much lower than a tube amp, the continued contact would cause the signal to supply ever increasing amperage (current) which in turn penetrates deeper than skin levels. Always Act responsibly around all live wire connections on stage and in practice. Ask for help and assistance whenever you even need to be near wires that run into speakers. Remember smaller wires can be a sign of higher voltages as high voltage requires lesser wire diameters. Understand many speaker jacks use the metal of the jack itself as a hot or 'live' path to ground.
These standards have been with us a long time and perpetuate themselves and make innovation harder.
Our index listing catagory is as communication consultants and not as a consumer electrionics company.

Buy Compare Bass Amp Trade in allowances:
on Kennedyaudio amps negotiated only for amps supplied with working 48V+ large power (1000W+) transformers center tapped¡

On high wattage current and voltage drive sales - Dealer inquiries welcome.

We sell only current and voltage drive amps & audio. For more safety information
contact: mailto:anybody@kennedyaudio.com

Relax awhile: read tech talk, order or buy online and compare vintage analog to digital subsystem consolidation concepts designed built and installed by internationally marketed sound systems integrators!

Shop tubes versus solid state amplifiers. Reliable hard to find bass amps.

Stringed instruments amps and voltage and current driven components.

Automatic cabinet matching to amplifiers; the sound man's sound solutions.

Easier set up of any sound envelope for better live performance.
Available designers of loud stage sound in high population arenas.

We've been thinking out of the box by using our own buying power and research
to put new dimensions into the old school box once a plain power bass amp.
Thinking new requires testing new. Avoid paper powered gear and sales channel toys.

Kennedyaudio.com Multi Function HI-FIDELITY Power Amp.
Buying Or Dealing Direct Cuts Your Costs In HALF.
Did Retail Electronics Mass Marketing Ever Work For Americans?

So why not compare a quality reliable Kennedyaudio.com
amp with fickle bass killer underpowered tube amplifiers?

Question :What kind of person should buy Kennedy Audio power amplifiers?
Answer: Someone who must:
1) Replace their aging 1st amplifier or midrange priced tube amp channel configured in stock sale fashion.
2) Expand the ranges of sounds and feel of physical air movement associated with the safe use of solid state audio power sources.
3) Use stage sound re-inforcement amp to double as a bass, 6-string, keyboard, and/or vocal amp or stereo (customized) channels.
But also
4) Anyone who knows how hard it was before the eBay.com to buy and sell good pedal effects and pre-amps to work with solid state amp's.
5) As a post pre-amp(s) distortion option, tube amps do work, but beyond 200 watts, tubes 'absorb' power, heat and $$ bigtime. Note- you can not clip a clipped signal, so putting distortion pedals after a pre-amp must be done specially impedance matched, or this will just reduce distortion and flattens out the noise-reduced sound. It is typical of higher speaker power systems to pre-amp a solid state amp to overdrive it and use it also as a pre-amp. Tubes have remained popular in theater scale systems and heavy metal genre partly due to such double distortion chaining and undersized power transformer saturation distortions.
6) It is possible as a footnote, to simulate the pickup of a guitar to use multiple effect pedals. This would likely work best either 1)with active battery powered pickups like EMG makes, or 2) using a resistor or pickup simulator after the solid state (or practice tube amp that has a pre-amp output stage jacks, almost none have this feature) distorted signal from overdriven amp going to pedals and then to high power Kennedy amp(s). To accuratly track such a complexly distorted signal, the Kennedy Audio 500 bass amp would make a great power amp choice!

Here are some of the pros and cons of valve amplifiers:
Pros:

There are more American made instrumental brands. 99.9% stereo brands are imports. These include Marantz, Philips, Sony, Toshiba, Kenwood, Sansui, Technics, Yamaha, Fisher (Sold to Sanyo 1975), Pioneer, Dual, JVC, SSI, Rotel, Technical Pro, Denon-Onkyo (i.e. Dolby), McIntosh and Boston Acoustic after 2002.
Crown sold to Japanese based Harmon Kardon 8 years ago.
JBL speaker still exists as the 1 USA based audio firm but is struggling with technical problems concerning magnet materials some folks say
Prefered by blues musicians and lead guitar parts for organ like sounds.
Tubes are known for their 'fuzz' type sounds by sawtooth patterns in the peaks of half waveforms rather than square wave (flanging).
Able to 'color' or distort and clip a signal already clipped or distorted.
Smooth measured transition into clipping (RMS power is usually quoted at a given % Total Harmonic Distortion THD).

High dynamic range (because the onset of clipping and volume vs. gain controls actually change the multiple of amplification factor not supply voltages).

Overdriven sounds are "musical" (ie smooth and not harsh overdrive sounds) and only require compression or limiting, not sustain.

No speaker crossover needed or possible as speaker resonant freq. used to make sustained mystic tones, fewer cabinet & porting issues.

Sustain & resonance above eliminate the far away and non-musical character hard to avoid in Solid State amp's.

Various models produce consistent standard high recognition value sounds. (dubbed 'modeling' - simulated and reproduced in digital processors)
Cons:

Circuit burnup. Especially true of larger power tube amps, usually 4 or 6 tubes. Worst are parallel push pull designs.
Such a configuration cannot be turned on, even without
any signal being input or volume control turned high unless speakers are connected. This takes only a millisecond. Organs are known for this. Some guitar heads have built-in protection circuits, but they don't always work in time.
Not so much prefered by garage, grunge and metal rhythm guitar parts when they want a punck thrash sound, high volume, multiple sensitivity speaker sets and many available low cost effects.
Limited bandwidth. (amplifier and speaker in combination typically cover 80-6000 Hz); only 30% of the audio frequency spectrum.

Associated with the bandwidth, CD disk sensors are replacing pickup coils and these feature a greatly expanded frequency response intonation spectra, and some experts predict (accurately we think) the tube amp will not keep up with CD transfer of futuristic motion vibration technology. At the present time, aftermarket add-on conversion pickups hide these by embedding them in the plastic molding holding the collecing posts.
Amplifiers are heavy, due to the requirement for a speaker transformer and larger power transformers. While our amp is heavy, it's extra rubustness is for the input power transformer.

Valves typically need to be replaced up to once a year to maintain peak performance and can react to surface dust or oils or storage.

Valves are noisier (there is almost nothing but noise at 6oooHz-20,oooHz). If a guitar driven typically they must use noise cancelling less sensitive forward and reverse pair coil pickups (humbucker). Activating two pickups has more noise and an unresponsive attack.

Valve amplifiers run hot, take time to warm up, can't be bumped and some don't include cooling fans or rain protection or replacement alternatives. Speaker re-coning when originals blown reduces value.
Expensive, poorly tech supported (or none at all) and housed in poorly made plywood metal and fabric boxes and dangerous to allow hands even near metal parts as shock jumps across gaps (hi voltage).

As preamps or distortion stomp boxes and pedals:

Guitar pickup output is less than 2 volts, these convert to much higher voltages. This in turn makes using other effect pedals impossible or they cannot duplicate their original function as the tubes are interfering with the clean waveform they need as input.
Size prevents good outer 'skins' and easy carry in guitar cases.

Safe input to amp's is 1 to 10 volts, these tend to far exceed this.

As distortion, they almost always use underpowering distortion or wear out very fast from being run near or over specification voltage. Less true overdriven sound.

Active tone controls don't work inside tube powered amps due to their high internal direct coupled circuit impedance.

Using an 'equalization pedal' to control and shape tone does not provide enough voltage ouput to help overdrive tubes or solid state amps, even popular small wattage practice tube amps used to get distortion effects. There is less overall control in the signal path unless a good pre-amp with active tone controls and higher output is purchased.
Likewise impedance precludes feedback loop channel to integrate effects or equalization. Another fancy way of saying the same thing without offending too many customers.
Splitting the less than 2 volt high impedance pickup output into more than one pedal before reaching a pre-amp makes even a strong high impedance (non-active pickups) guitar signal way too weak and noisy.
Gain is not fixed and then attenuated by volume controls (op amps), sometimes desired but can make loudness control interaction difficult unless the tube amp is the last one in the line which in turn means controling a tube pre-amp from a central sound board is rarely practical. Tubes must be running at high gain to distort.

Active tone sweeping greatly improves signal/noise ratios so that tube power circuits tend to use short cables to active tone pedals, pre-amps, noise filters & studio equipment to make best use of tube amplifiers on stage and in studios. Mixing clean with distorted signal is also only very rarely possible and not easily reconfigured onstage.
Consolidation with solid state new bi-amplification channel splitting and digital power amplification is destructive rather than an improvement.

I would like to deconfuse and clear up the 'Power Rating' of amplifiers here.
This is technically more complex than this because the voltage

and the peak current wave that is driven by it are out of phase with each other.

There are two terms RMS power and PEAK power applied to power ratings.
Peak power is a 20 millisecond measurement of voltage times current.
Usually either voltage or current is fixed. Tube amps have fixed output current.
RMS power, originally averaged square root, (standard deviation), of sine waves.
However it became used as the integral or total sum of the curve area.
An improved formulation of the facts uses a 'standardized' normal distribution:
The currentXvoltage wave's peak then equals .3989 of the area under the curve.
Average Power equals 1.4825 times the RMS if RMS is root mean square method.
The Average power represents 1/2 (.5) of the RMS power if RMS is integral sum.
Usually for vintage amps, which were peak power rated, divide it by 2.5069 to get modern watts eqivalence or maximum speaker power requirements and tolerance.
One common rule says divide speaker watts by 2 to get vintage peak amp power.

It's based on the average of 1) average power factor and 2) peak to area factors.

Thus 1.48 plus 2.507 divided by 2 is 1.9935, but it's only a crude guideline.

Speaker wattages should be for 8 ohm loads. Derate 4 ohm loads by a factor of 2.

A vintage amp's 150 watts into 4 ohm is a 30 watt amplifier by today's standard.

Ask yourself if there is enough power in a tube amp to play in large arenas with people absorbing the sound. The off axis distortion, even for full stacks with horn projectors is very noticeable in midranges of the sound spectrum.
A 30 watt tube amp may sound good- at full volume. But what about your hearing loss being right in front of it and the sound reinforcement system costs designing a stage to re-project more subtle mixed sounds? Results -

No Control. Unbalanced brazen music. Your group swoons; so do your fans.

A more powerful amp with auto-impedance matching allows a small speaker behind the musician and others front stage where they look best and belong.

Almost always, a sound reinforcement system is needed, especially outdoors.

You can buy a Kennedy amp at the same price for a good condition vintage amp with plenty of power for several cabinets, facing left right and center.

Again about safety: There are musician's earplugs. Why use them?

Because middle ear cells do not regenerate.

They age more as the nerves and mechanical action respond more to stimulus.

REMEMBER the main reason old people partly loose their hearing is their EXPOSURE history to sound, vibration, pressure pulses and noise.

Our Solid State technology offers the power to CONTROL sound BETTER than before. Don't be a sound pig. Play soft, play powerful, and play safely.

Here are some basic ideas about high wattage amplifiers:

In the 1980's new transister technology allowed many high wattage compact amps to be sold; downsized for auto, suited to fancies for homes.

These quickly aquired a bad reputation because of speaker sensitivity changes.

For example, a 102dB SPL speaker sensitivity means at ONE Watt taken at one meter. The watt is based on the voltage drop measured before going to that particular speaker and then after the current exits it. The voltage drop times the current in amperes of copper charge flowing in the voice coil. So at 1 meter you have already reached the legal volume limit in most towns specified at 50-100 feet in dB of total sound pressure; from all directions and sources. A second method uses the input wattage using 1.624 volts supplied with 1 ampere to the test speaker. In fact 120dB is the safe level of not causing hearing loss even in short durations. At 120 dB you have roughly 100dB at 60 feet outdoors. This is based on the power being the square of the volume, 1dB being just barely hearable volume. Because 1 trillion times a barely hearable volume is the safety limit, a trillion or 10 ^ 12 is considered safe. (12 Bells) You might (if you do this to a speaker) notice that supplied wattage ratio to voltage droped wattage of a voice coil is less than 1% energy efficient. That can changes with the tone supplied and the voltage as well, so we are writing about averaged values for explanatory ressons.. Comparing a tube driven speaker at high voltages or a bass speaker to a tweeter is a bit like comparing apples and oranges.

That does not leave a lot of room for more speakers or bigger size speakers. There is some bad information floating around that 'For every 3 decibels the wattage doubles. In fact only the power ratio doubles for every 3dB but each power factor is also logrithmic. For volume (PEAK amplitude) to double you must use 20 log10 (2) so 20 times .30103 = every 6.02 dB of output. RMS or average amplitude is sometimes approximated for power purposes as being half the peak volume. Since the scale is base 10 logarithmic, not natural logarithmic, power in Watts doubles every 30 decibels. That is to say 1000 watts output RMS power could provide a gain of 30dB or based on 10,000 watts -40dB. In the first case, 3000 watts or 3 Watts of output doubles the gain but only if impedence is constant. By the formula Watts=I (amps) squared times R for power SOURCES and NOT DEVICES this would be true. But a coil in a speaker responds with eddy currents that increase it's impedence as current or voltage is being increased and decreased so this old myth of a rule, is only a circuit design parameter and should not be used in acoustic output applications. For one thing, with line sources (waveguided horns and electrostatic devices) , the sound pressure level decreases by 3 dB for each doubling of distance. A cone speaker's sound pressure level, on the other hand, decreases by 6 dB for each doubling of distance because it behaves as a point source. So, to get back to the point, speaker sensitivities were REDUCED! This was during the safety concerns of the disco dance floor era. Based on a speaker sensitivity of 100, making it 94 cuts volume in half or at 88, in a quarter. Most speakers made in the 1980s were somewhere in between these two benchmarks in sensitivity. But stadium venue sized bands pay top dollar for high sensitivity and high wattage tolerances. High sensitivities enhance dynamic range & setup convenience, compressability and headroom, response speeds, longer woofer cone excursion, more variable supplied current voicing, more effective lows called environmental equalization and vastly improved damping factors which reduce noise and improve signal to noise to stereofile levels and some beyond. In the 1980's there also was the beginnings of computer enhanced impluse response testing and development. This type of test tried to reduce the negative influence of every loudspeaker's main weaknesses 1)phase inaccuracy and 2) the tendency to produce loud midrange (4,000 cycles approx). Therefore newer magnet types, cone materials and crossovers were also introduced (forced?) to the market as 'improvements'. Most of them were based on research or patends far too limited to be actionable or too many exotic positional or delay variables to be practical; neodymium & ceramic magnets, multiple path multi-coil voice coils, a general move away from lower amplification factor class A amp sources for example.

Result? A big split between DIY stereo and surround enthusiasts and the supply sided market, as if a large gap did not already exist, with most audio components being Japanese made, with the only notable exception being Mcintosh after H.H. Scott went out of business. The futurists complained to the consumerists that designers were forcing changes and were disconnected from the system users. Lest we be painted with too broad a brush, we want to bring the message back to the people that they can have empowering technology that makes sense to buy. It isn't cheap but the better researched American made components never were and have kept their value because of it. Ask us about custom building speakers up to 18 inch up to Sensi 106 or about designing a killer disco for your bar room.

The future will bring new music, new bands and stars because of our innovation.

For now, well just say - look for a band and recordings from a group called................................. 'Heavy Watters'.

And have a great day, month and quarter in your personal business affairs!

Buy Compare Bass Amp Trade in allowances:

On high wattage current and voltage drive sales - Dealer inquiries welcome.

We've been thinking out of the box by using our own buying power and research
to put new dimensions into the old school box once a plain power bass amp.
Thinking new requires testing new. Avoid paper powered gear and sales channel toys.

Kennedyaudio.com Multi Function HI-FIDELITY Power Amp.
Buying Or Dealing Direct Cuts Your Costs In HALF.
Did Retail Electronics Mass Marketing Ever Work For Americans?

Buy Compare Bass Amp Trade in allowances:

On high wattage current and voltage drive sales - Dealer inquiries welcome.

We've been thinking out of the box by using our own buying power and research to put new dimensions into the old school box once a plain power bass amp. Thinking new requires testing new. Avoid paper powered gear and sales channel toys.

Kennedyaudio.com Multi Function HI-FIDELITY Power Amp. Buying Or Dealing Direct Cuts Your Costs In HALF. Did Retail Electronics Mass Marketing Ever Work For Americans?

We've been thinking out of the box by using our own buying power and research
to put new dimensions into the old school box once a plain power bass amp.
Thinking new requires testing new. Avoid paper powered gear and sales channel toys.

Kennedyaudio.com Multi Function HI-FIDELITY Power Amp.
Buying Or Dealing Direct Cuts Your Costs In HALF.
Did Retail Electronics Mass Marketing Ever Work For Americans?