Just how loud can you boost?

[BmoreTele]

I was rearranging my board (again) and I found myself looking at a buncha boosts and I started wondering ... how loud can you push the signal before you blow up the amp?

 

I have a MIG*Boost, a Hellbilly, a Timmy (just came in yesterday!!!), and an MI Audio clean boost. The MI boost can add 40 dB's according to Mike.

 

How much boosting before the signal gets too hot for the amp to handle?

[Teahead]

Great question, hopefully someone with the knowledge will explain this?

I'd say that with average boosting levels, much depends on where the amp is set, how hard is it working already, before the signal hike.

I know from experience that cranking an AC30 wide open and using two or three boosters together, (each capable of around 20db+) is going to give your power and rectifier tubes a rather short life expectancy!

Beyond that, I haven't damaged anything else, although lately I keep the amp just over half way and use a few different flavour of boost, comp, clean, fuzz & treble boost.

[Sir H C]

It is not dB of boost that is the issue, it is the final voltage swing the pedal can do. For a 9V pedal, your maximum swing (without transformers or other tricks) would be 9V out. That is 9x what a really loud pickup can deliver (bass pickups for some of the Gibson EB series were in the 1V range). 9V swing hitting the input of some solid state amps might overstress parts and blow them up, for tube amps I would doubt any damage would occur from the signal itself though in general hitting amps really hard will cause more stress than playing quiet and clean.

So in the end, solid state you may have problems, tube you should be cool.

[voerking]

you'd run out of headroom in a tube amp long before any actual damage occured.

(i'm glad the timmy arrived safely. the rng did as well)