300B Tube Amps with 15/16 Watts Per Channel?

 If you use a Hammond, you will never hear what the circuit can do....

@donsachs Great for small guitar amps though!

I used to fix guitar amps for musician friends.  They are pretty simple.... (the amps, not the guitarists!)...  except Marshalls, which have many small pcbs and jumpers and inevitably it would be a failed bias pot on the board buried the deepest in the amp.  A 3 minute repair that took an hour to get to.   The thing was, I could always improve the amps, but they wouldn't want you to.  They WANT distortion.   So you just replace all the bad lytic caps, and make sure the operating points are where they should be, and put k40 oil caps in where old oil caps have failed, etc..  You can get away with making the power supply a bit stiffer, but that is it.  Otherwise the amp is too "clean" for a lot of guys....   So yeah, a Hammond is just fine for a guitar amp....

@atmasphere said, "Put another way, if your speakers are efficient enough that the SET never needs to make more than about 25% of full power you’ll really start to hear the best of what that amp can do. In case there’s any doubt, this is part of why horns were so common in the 1950s and prior."

How do I know how much power my SET amp is using?

I have a beautiful set of Atmosphere Class D that never give me concern of overdriving them. I also have a Shiny Eyes SET 45 Mesh Tube Amplifier from Radu Tara that I believe is 2 Watts. I use them to drive Charney Audio Companion Excalibur with AER bd-3 drivers (104-106 sens???)

Can I measure (or need to) my output to see if I am staying within the 0.75 Watts to avoid excess distortion?

Thanks and Happy 2025 to all.

As a side, I live in New Orleans and am in ER doc. I worked NYE. I don’t always understand the world, but hope sanity and tolerance prevails in 2025.

How do I know how much power my SET amp is using?

That's the tricky bit. The easiest way these days might be to use a sound pressure level app on your phone, once you've calculated how loud 0.75 Watts would be driving your speakers in your room.

The AER drivers are measured at 1 meter. Sound pressure level drops off the the square of the distance, but in an enclosed room not so much due to reflections. The size of the room, the distance the listening position is from the speakers and how lively the room is all make a difference. If an average room you're likely alright if the sound pressure is below 90dB or thereabouts.

dseltz,

I've heard, and really liked, the Charney Companion with the BD3 driver, in a system driven by a SET 300B amp.  While this amp does deliver more power than a 45 SET, I know your system can get quite loud while remaining clean.  It is hard to say what others feel is loud, and your room size and characteristics do play a part, but, if it sounds good to you don't worry.  Even if you exceed 25% of rated power, at peaks, so what?  You will not be hurting anything with your setup and your ears will tell you if you are clipping excessively.