For Dave Hunter:

Why drive a Vette when a Prius is all you really need? When are you gonna be able to use all that power? Wuss. My drummer EATS 20 watt amps for breakfast.

Heh?

If I played my 7 string on anything less than 50 watts, my tone would suffer. Especially when I drop the 7th string from a B to an A, I can hear the difference.

While boosting the wattage from 20 to 100 won't make much of a difference volume wise, there's a real difference in headroom that matters. Having more headroom means my amp doesn't distort easily at loud stage volumes, esp. in the clean channel. The best way to achieve this is to play through a higher wattage amp.

Hmph, now if only I could find anymore of those Marshall Mode Four heads...?

Thanks to Dave Hunter for his excellent article about amp wattage & it's real world applications. I guess our Vette drivin', 7 string thumpin' brothers didn't actually read the article all the way through. If they had, they would have noticed the criteria he used to suggest that most people just don't need a 50-100 watt stack: playing bar/club sized venues, having good sound reinforcement/on stage monitoring & desiring tube amp breakup in your sound.

They also would have read his list of possible situations where a stack might be justified: needing extra headroom for a clean sound, playing a 7 string, using pedals to get your basic sound and/or being a rock star playing arenas with plenty of roadies to schlep around your gear.

As for me, I realized a long time ago that a 5 watt tube amp is too loud to crank in a dorm room, apartment or house without driving people crazy. I must really be a wuss.

I didn't even realize that 5w Tube amps existed.

...maybe those ones aren't gonna cost me an arm and a leg?