Suggestions for clean power amp for rack rig?

[PTC_Tasteytone]

I recently joined the POD HD fraternity and am blown away by the I/O versatility. After reading lots of posts, I'm considering building a rig using a good SS rack power amp to drive my guitar cabs in stereo. Since I'm new to this, I'm struggling to figure out how to properly size a rack power amp to my guitar cabs. I know tube and SS power are different, but how would I go about figuring the proper wattage rack amp to match with say two - 60 watt 16 Ohm cabs? It seems tough to find a rack power amp at lower than 100w per channel RMS at 8 Ohm. If the amp is rated this way, would a 16 Ohm load on each channel effectively half the amps power (i.e. to 50w per channel)? is there a simple rule of thumb for matching amp and cab power? I don't want to bake my cabs but also dont want to damage them by underpowering them either. Am I making this too complex? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
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[randombastage]

I have a Rocktron Velocity 300 that does 37.5 watts per side at 16 ohms, 75 watts per side at 8 ohms and 150 per side at 4 ohms and 300 watts mono bridged.
It would work pretty well with your speakers without much if any chance of overpowering them.
It is a pretty darn good sounding SS amp with "reactance" (tube warmth simulation) and "definition" (presence) controls for each channel. It has two outputs per side so you can run pairs of cabs in parallel, you can run 8 ohms on one side 16 on the other etc.

I was using it with numerous cabinets...a pair of 1x12 16 ohm 40 watters usually one on each side but sometimes I'd put them together on one side to make it 8 ohms and put a single 8 ohm 2x12 cab on the other side. Very handy little amp to have.

[guitarnet70]

Look at this thread, apparently they are as good as a tube power amp

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/sho...ghlight=Matrix

[Axe-Man]

I've owned a V300 and a Mesa 20/20 and now a VHT 2/50/2 clone with 6L6's and EL34's (also it has OS transformers) and IMHO, the VHT clone is by far the nicest sounding and feeling amp.

I liked the V300; no questions it's a nice SS poweramp (it's very loud as well) but I love the 50w VHT clone. Sold the others and will likely never sell this amp.

It's very clean and transparent as well and just sounds better and better the louder its cranked. It's espec nice with EL34s.

I would look at a high quality tube poweramp personally as they just sound great.

FRFR might be on paper more versitile (I own a QSC K10 for reference) but seriously, the tone that you get via a quality poweramp and cab is leagues ahead and even the volume from a 50w tube amp is louder than a '1000 watt' *cough* QSC.

This is just what I've heard with my own ears. Tubes still beat everything else I've tried. Wish I'd just personally gone with tubes and saved myself money and time and frustration. YMMV.

[paulmapp8306]

Dont worry about too much power - too little is far more problematic. You dont HAVE to turn an amp up full you know. too little power and you start getting into "non linearity" and eventually "distortion" which for a SS amp is NOT what you need.

Typical values would be 2 to 3 times the RMS value of your cab.

The Matrix is very very good - better then the Velocities and Art SLAs by a long way. i use one channel of the Matrix 800 into my 60 Watt cab (8 Ohms) - so the amp is capable of delivering 250W. its not an issue as i run it -6db down, so its actually generating 62.5W at max. Perfect power match with 6db of clean headroom which is plently.

into your 16 Ohm cabs, that amp is going to deliver around 150W per channel. IMO, at 2.5 times your rated RMS, its an almost perfect match for power and headroom.
As far as power into Ohms goes, A SS amp is rated at an ideal Ohms (for the Matrix its 4 Ohms in stereo or 8 Ohms in bridged). from there, every doubling of the Ohm load results in a power drop of around 2/3. so for the Matrix, its 400W into 4 Ohms, 250W into 8 Ohms and 150W into 16 Ohms. For the Art SLA-1, it would be 140W into 4 Ohms, 100w into 8 Ohms and around 60W into 16 Ohms.