can anyone give me details about these? some of them run to about 1,000 watts and can be cheaper than alot of normal amps. whats the differences of power amps and normal amps? can you just plug in an play with them or do they have specific purpose? thanks

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i dont have one.. but i'm pretty sure that, with a power amp, you're gonna want a preamp and obviously a speaker cabinet to go with it. a preamp will give you the gain and all that, while the poweramp allows you to give a nice volume to your speakers.

You will need to buy a preamp to get tone. the preamp have all the eping and effects. Poweramps just amplify the sound, they dont alter it in anyway.

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well done dead.....

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isn't that what i said :P

yeh but i just love DEAD so much...i cant help myself..

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like DEAD said, you're gonna need a preamp with the majority of poweramps(99%) i've heard of a couple you don't need a preamp for, but i'd imagine they probably don't have much to offer without a preamp.
they might seem like a steal compared to the price of a nice head, but for a quality power amp + a quality preamp, plus other rack accessories you would probably be looking into, like a power conditioner, maybe a tuner, an eq, multi effects processor, rack case, ect. its probably gonna run you just as much, or in alot of cases, more.
i have a nice rack setup instead of a head, and it costed me well over a grand(almost two)in u.s. $, and the majority of stuff in my rack i bought used, and i'm still looking into more shit i want.
so i could have easily just bought a 5150, dual rec, jcm 2000, ect., but i like the sounds i get, so i aint complaining.
if you don't already know much about rack equipment, then you're probably better off with a head/cab or combo setup.

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Well, if you by pre-amp mean what dislexic uses the word as, then maybe it'll be quite expensive. However, you don't need one pre-amp, one multi-effect, a separate tuner and whatnot. I've got a Boss GX-700, which is a now discontinued multi-fx rack unit, with a great built in tuner, and the previous owner ran it to a poweramp and then into a pair of 4x12s, so it doesn't have to get that expensive.

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true, a multi fx unit can be used, even some stompboxes can be used as pre amps.
but i was talking more on the lines of if he wanted to buy a high end tube preamp such as a marshall jmp 1, ada mp1, mesa vtwin, mesa triaxis, ect. and team it up with a high end poweramp. instead of buying a nice tube head like a 5150 or dual rec.
cheap gear costs less money, but usually wont sound as good as expensive top notch stuff. there is always going to be a cheaper way out, just no gaurantees that it will sound good.
just don't jump into rack gear because you think it will be cheaper than buying a head. it can be a whole different world, whether its a better world or not.... i don't know, i still love a lot of heads, but i swear by my rack.

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