HOW MUCH POWER DO YOU NEED? Not as much as you think. For the musician, TONE is king. we’ll get back to this statement in a bit. Just some real world application first, then we’ll talk about the bass player’s place in it.
If you end up playing in any size venue at all then you will have a PA system complete with a sound guy to run it. You will have somebody like @DaveT there who knows the science behind the function. You must trust your sound guy in these situations because what you hear on stage isn’t what the audience is hearing. Your sound guy will make you stand out. He will make you sound good because making you sound good makes him sound good. With that in mind, you really don’t have to worry about power or dB or levels or anything else. Let the sound guy do the heavy lifting. That’s what they do.
After saying all that, all you need to be concerned with is your sound, your TONE. If you don’t sound good to you then your not going to be able to just roll with it. So make sure you sound like you want to sound then send a signal to your sound guy and he will take from there. So now the long awaited answer. How much power do you need? Enough to reach across the stage and still have room to turn it up some. Anywhere from 250 to 500 watts will do everything you need to do. Most of the time you will be nowhere near taxing your amp. In fact, if your too loud, the sound guy will have you turn it down some. That size of amp will fill a good size room by itself. Think small church size or school gym size. You can dial your controls back and use it in your music cave or crank them up and play a fund raiser at your kid’s school. Two recommendations here, make sure your amp has an XLR out so you can plug in to the house system when available and never run your amp maxxed out. Your sweet spot for tone will be somewhere in the middle unless you play metal in which case you will have your gain cranked as well as several other gadgets in place to distort your sound. If you absolutely have to have your amp dimed out just to keep up, THEN look at getting a bigger amp. Again, this is based on experience, not science. Participation and opinions welcome.
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