[bradh716]

I am about to start playing guitar in church. I am shopping for an amp. I don't want to spend more than about $600. I really don't know what I should be looking for in an amp for playing in church. The modeling amps seem like they could be very useful. Is it better to have external pedals or are on-board effects as easy to use? The tube amps sound nice but might not be as versatile. Would a 15 watt tube amp with one speaker have enough stage volume? Do I need an amp with an effects loop? Can I use external speaker out to run through the PA? Are there brands that are known to be troublesome? Thank you for your help.

[thesteve]

IMO, external effects are usually much better than an amp's built in effects. I'd rather have either of my delay pedals than the delays on the low-end amps with built-in effects. Modeling amps are useful because they're versatile, but a lot of players prefer to have one really good sound than several mediocre sounds.

As far as tube amps go, a 15W tube amp with a 12" speaker should be plenty loud for most church stage situations. I recommend using a microphone to run the amp to the PA system. If the amp doesn't have enough sound spread to cover the whole stage, then the sound man can pump the guitar into the monitors of the other people on the stage. The external speaker out is not designed to go through the PA. It'd be a good way to blow up a channel on your sound board actually.

Effects loop necessity varies from player to player. What the effects loop does is allow you to put effects "behind" the tone shaping part of your amp (the pre-amp). If you are overdriving your pre-amp, what this means is that the effects in the loop will be affecting your overdriven signal, rather than having the effected sound overdriven, which is the scenario when the effects are before the pre-amp. Whether or not this matters changes from person to person. Some guys won't buy an amp without an effects loop. Others have no purpose for them at all.

[acrossthesirion]

Some basic answers to get you started. Hopefully the people with more technical knowledge can answer some specific questions...

Originally Posted by bradh716

I am about to start playing guitar in church. I am shopping for an amp. I don't want to spend more than about $600. I really don't know what I should be looking for in an amp for playing in church.

It really depends on the setting you're playing in: how big is the space, what are the acoustics like, etc...

Originally Posted by bradh716

The modeling amps seem like they could be very useful. Is it better to have external pedals or are on-board effects as easy to use?

Personally I'm a fan of the tube amp + pedals method. Modeling amps might give you a variety of sounds, but the quality of those sounds usually isn't as good.

Originally Posted by bradh716

The tube amps sound nice but might not be as versatile.

This is were effect pedals come in. If you get a great clean-sounding tube amp you can layer pedals to get some variety.

Originally Posted by bradh716

Would a 15 watt tube amp with one speaker have enough stage volume?

Depends on the size of the space, but most likely yes.

Originally Posted by bradh716

Can I use external speaker out to run through the PA?

I'm under the impression that you can't (or shouldn't) do this. You can however, mic your amp to get it through the PA.

[jthomas1600]

On the Houston Craigslist right now I see an AC15, Egnater Tweaker, Peavey Classic 30, Fender Blues Devill 4x10 just to name a few that are all priced under $500. So with your budget you should be able to pick up an amp that will work for you and have enough money to start work on a pedal board.

[metropolis4]

Originally Posted by bradh716

Is it better to have external pedals or are on-board effects as easy to use?

On-board effects are a pain in the rear to use compared to pedals at your feet. It's much harder to tweak on the fly. With pedals you just reach down and turn a knob. Not to mention the fact that with built in effects you're stuck with what you're given. With pedals you can change things out to find what really works best for you.

Originally Posted by bradh716

The tube amps sound nice but might not be as versatile.

Ultimately what you'll come to discover is that quality sound is more important than versatility. Versatility comes much much more from the player than the gear. Also, once you start figuring in using your own effects instead of the on-board one's on the amp there's really not much difference in versatility. I would say tube amps offer an edge in versatility however because of the characteristic way you can drive them hard to get natural overdrive. You can't do that with a solid state, or digital modelling amp (well, you could... but please don't :

Originally Posted by bradh716

Would a 15 watt tube amp with one speaker have enough stage volume? Do I need an amp with an effects loop?

This is what PA's are for

I just played two weekends at church using a 12 watt amp with an 8" speaker. Not a huge church, but about 700-800 people.
As a general rule it's better to have an amp that's too small, than an amp that's too big. It's far easier to let the PA work for you to get more volume out of a small amp, than to try to bring the volume of a big amp down

Originally Posted by bradh716

Can I use external speaker out to run through the PA?

No. You will break things (most likely your amp). I'm not good enough in electronics to tell you specifically, but your amp would be sending power to the input of the PA which would do bad bad things to it, and I believe your amp would probably see flyback voltage from an impedence mis-match which would fry your transformers and kill the amp. You could use a line out, but I wouldn't recommend it. It would work technically, but it will sound terrible.

Originally Posted by bradh716

Are there brands that are known to be troublesome? Thank you for your help.

Stay away from vintage AC30's

[johnray777]

I'd get something like a Egnater Tweaker(Head $399, combo $649) or a Blues Junior($499). They can be found on the used market.

[dailybeans]

Hmm, I just thought of something I never had before.
Can you put effects between the external speaker out and the speaker cabinet?
Or would that most likely blow up the pedal?

[thesteve]

Originally Posted by dailybeans

Hmm, I just thought of something I never had before.
Can you put effects between the external speaker out and the speaker cabinet?
Or would that most likely blow up the pedal?

Blow up the pedal and possibly your amp...yep.

[Drenlin]

Originally Posted by dailybeans

Hmm, I just thought of something I never had before.
Can you put effects between the external speaker out and the speaker cabinet?
Or would that most likely blow up the pedal?

It'd blow it, for sure. Keep this in mind when running signals between pieces of gear:

Between the guitar and the amp is "Signal" level. Same for most microphones running straight to the board, as well as many keyboards.

Between most active devices, such as a powered DI (XLR out) and home audio equipment, and also between the house mixer and amp(s), is called "line" level. This is usually much hotter than signal level. (For reference, it's sometimes powerful enough to get half-decent volume out of some headhones.) It can sometimes damage some components that are only designed for signal level use, though a lot of gear will be perfectly ok with it. I killed a Hartke A25 a while back because I wasn't paying attention and ran a fairly hot line-level signal into its aux-in.

Between any amp and a speaker is called "speaker" level. It's usually whole orders of magnitude more powerful than either line or signal level, though when powering smaller devices such as headphones or computer speakers it's a much closer gap. With reference to musical equipment, running a speaker level input into almost anything but a speaker will kill that piece of gear. The exception is that many DI boxes and mixers have a built-in attenuator that can bring it down to line level, or in some cases even signal level.

[metropolis4]

Originally Posted by dailybeans

Hmm, I just thought of something I never had before.
Can you put effects between the external speaker out and the speaker cabinet?
Or would that most likely blow up the pedal?

Yeah, in addition to destroying the pedal, putting something between the output of the amp and the speaker will change the resistance the amp is seeing and will probably fry the transformer in your amp.

There are other ways to do this. I have an attenuator that has a line out so I can plug my amp's output into that, then run a line out of it into my effects and then to the input of another amp.

[dailybeans]

Thanks for setting me straight, everyone! Haha