Biamp power?

[Derek5272]

I keep seeing this with GK amps. What does that mean? There's an 800RB on the Bay for $280ish after shipping, and MF says that it has 400W of biamp power, but the specs say 300W at 4 ohms.

 

Also, I've never played through one of these, but I've tried a 400RB-IV, and I liked the tone... Is the 800RB's tone similar to the 400RB-IV? Or are they completely different?

[bikehorn]

Those have two power amp sections, one 300 watts and one rated for 100 watts. The idea is if you use one of GK's biamp capable cabinets, or any other suitable biampable cabinet, the high frequency driver/horn has an entirely seperate poweramp driving it with no passive crossover between them to add distortion/colouration/power loss/unwanted phase shift. Also the LF section is given a low pass, so the bass speakers aren't wasting power trying to reproduce frequencies above their usable response band. Passive crossovers are a quick and dirty solution, and usually the most economical, but not necessarily an ideal one. The clarity stands to be much higher with a biamped system although the complexity can be higher as well. Depending on your playing style and preferred sound, you may not like this.

[Derek5272]

Alright, thanks. That's what I was thinking it was, but thought I should clarify.

[bikehorn]

No problem. In principle, a biamp system is superior to passive crossovers, but the system has to be designed well to bear this out in real life. In this case GK appears to have done a great job.

[jackcheez]

I don't think it's been made clear here and this comes up often so...

 

The 100 watt amp in the 800RB will work with any 8 ohm speaker. Say a 2 X 10 or something like that. The other GK "biamp" heads put out 50 watts and that will only work with a GK cabinet.