Some years ago, I built a 2W push-pull amp using a pair of 6AK6 pentodes. It was far too loud.
Last year I prototyped a single-ended amp using a tiny TV pentode as the output device. The pentode was one half of a 6JW8 triode-pentode, with a thundering 1.2 W max anode dissipation rating. The amplifier put out about 0.2 W to the speaker, clean.
Clean tones were maybe a bit too quiet. At the same time, overdriven, the amp was too loud for my apartment.
I was forced to the conclusion that there was no one answer to "How much power do I need to play guitar in my apartment?".
The answer seemed to be "About 1 watt for clean sounds, and about 0.1 watt for heavily distorted sounds." So some kind of VVR or speaker attenuator seemed called for.
Since then, I bought a 50 W guitar amp - a solid-state Boss Katana 50, the first solid-state guitar amp I've ever liked. Set to the "0.5 W" position, it works very well in my apartment, both for clean tones, and for overdriven ones. It sounds better - and more "valvey" - than my actual valve amps do!
And when set to 50 W, the same amp worked just fine at an outdoor jam this last summer (no drummer, but we had a bassist with a 300 W amp of his own.) If that wasn't enough, the same Katana, set to "Acoustic", works amazingly well with my electro-acoustic guitars.
It's a brilliantly good amp. Annoyingly good, if one of your hobbies is building little valve guitar amps!
-Gnobuddy
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