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Peter Wieck[_2_] Peter Wieck[_2_] is offline
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Default I just am not satisfied

Guys and gals:

The OP is a person-of-strong-opinion. Nothing wrong with that, but if the starting point is "stage equipment", that puts a specific slant on what is being represented herein.

Back in the day, now 50 years ago, I ran a professional 35mm RCA projection system that an individual had donated to my high-school, along with the building it was in and other gifts. It was an RCA system set up for visual Mono and magnetic stereo - but the school used only the visual sound-track. That was a total of six (6) 6L6 output tubes driven by 6SN7 drivers to a single pretty large horn behind the screen. Did fine. My guess is about 60 watts, continuous if necessary. The stereo amps were 4 x 6L6 each.

I did once observe reinforcement equipment at a large NYC theater venue - multiple tube amps that may, in total, have reached 500 watts or so. It is perhaps possible that a WHO concert back in the day might have 1000 +/- watts on stage, or maybe the cumulative effect of Woodstock. But 3,000 watts? OK, then.

Point being that not one single example cited herein was designed as an exercise in High Fidelity. More an exercise in making noise as efficiently as possible with the equipment at-hand.

Hindsight is always 20:20, often enhanced by wishful thinking to 20:10 or even better. As I suggested earlier, solid-state equipment of high wattage (and decent quality) is totally merciless on the signal fed to it. Tube equipment driven to clipping is very soft (and easy) on the same sources.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA