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Howdy I have a Hilbish PB10 that I am really digging and I'm currently running in stereo. I have one 300 watt cab and a 400 watt cab (both 15's, both 8 ohms)... I'm looking for a power amp to push the cabs... something LOUD and solid state. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated, thanks.

Peavey CS-800

I've had one in my rack for years. Never let me down. Will never part with it. When I feel like relocating the foundation of the house, this gets the call.

I am NOT a Carvin rep. That said, CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN CARVIN all fucking day long, son.
I accidentally reproduced their drop test with my DCM 2000, and it passed with flying colors. I sold the 2000 but still have the DCM 150 which is a one-rackspace unit, and the 2004L which is a 4-channel, 2 space number. They are compact (fit in shallow rack cases) and dependable af.

Might check out the rocktron velocity

Any results?

those qsc power amps are legit and so is carvin and so are old peavey ones. which has all already been said, but i just want to confirm.

i used to run a roland sip-300 (black flag worship anyone?) into a stupid old qsc power amp and damn it sounded amazing. the power amps bf actually used were the original roland ones that eventually blew up before switching to qsc or carvin or something.

I am currently A-B-C-D-E-Fing a few different power amps with the Hilbish; a Peavey 50-50 EL84 based bridged to 100w, a Tube Works MV 942 (80w,) a Matrix GT800FX (400w per side @ 4 ohms,) a Carvin HT760M with onboard Graphic EQ, (250w per side @ 4ohms) a Crown XLS 1500 (525w per side @ 4ohms,) and a Rocktron Velocity 300 MK II (150w per side @ 4 ohms) I'm running into an Orange PPC 412 HP8 4x12 400w cab with Celestion G12K100'S and a Marshall 1960AX 4x12 loaded with 100w Scumbacks. I will update as I go along.

if you can handle 400 watts per cabinet your best bet is the power amp that comes close to 400 watts per side but wont blow up the cabs. that takes the peavey out of the equation since it's such low power the speaker cones will barely wanna move in those cabs. same for the tube works. the matrix is *too* powerful, if you're not careful and if it peaks, kiss your cabs goodbye. the crown has the same problem as the matrix. the rocktron is also a bit weak. looks like your winner is the carvin. other people will tell you you can use more powerful amps if you're careful. fuck that noise, no one has time to be careful between resetting their settings and start playing at a gig. however most of the power amps are solid state and rated for a lower impedance of 4 ohms. so you plug into the 16 ohm guitar 4x12s, you'll probably lose a few hundred watts from your power amp due to the mismatch (which means you could technically use the matrix or crown, but i don't suggest it, solid state power in high doses does NOT sound good). you can always safely run a solid state amp into a speaker cabinet with higher resistance, you just lose power, the other way around you blow up the amp. with tube amps, they kinda work till they blow up when you do that.

waltdogg wrote:the matrix is *too* powerful, if you're not careful and if it peaks, kiss your cabs goodbye. the crown has the same problem as the matrix. the rocktron is also a bit weak. looks like your winner is the carvin.

If it were all about matching wattage and ohms, the Matrix seems like it would be the choice. It's 400w per side and that's exactly what the cabs are. I wired them for 4 ohms. But so far the Matrix seems to be the one that really needs some additional EQing. Probably why it's popular with the AxeFX crowds, they can do all that in software. The Carvin does sound really good, but not as good as the Rocktron. But the extra 100w per side of the Carvin could tip the scales. The bummer is I could have just used my basket-weave Marshall cabs if I knew I was only going to be running 250w per side, but I went to the trouble of procuring/putting together 400w cabs. Another nice thing about the Carvin is that I can EQ each side separately, which will be handy when the Emperor cab I just bought off Reverb comes in. It's a 1x15 + 2x12.

I use a crown xls1500, its small and light and also plenty of power. I have used a pb10 with it and it sounded great. Avoid guitar poweramps, they suck

Gorgar wrote:a Rocktron Velocity 300 MK II (150w per side @ 4 ohms)

I currently have one of these (which may be a MKI given how cheap it was used). It can get fairly loud and has adjustable bass and presence on both channels, but sounds kind of boxy. Still not bad for a $109 power amp, though.