Question about guitar and bass amps in the home studio

I have been using a pod for a long time and dont own any amps.  I want to however work on capturing live sound and am thinking of investing in a bass and guitar amp.  I have a few questions:

- I have read that guitar amps can be of a low wattage and that it does not matter to the tone one ultimately achieves in the mix.  Is this true?
- What about bass amps?  I don't see myself playing live.  Would I get an equally good tone out of a smaller bass amp in the mix?

Thanks

- I have read that guitar amps can be of a low wattage and that it does not matter to the tone one ultimately achieves in the mix. Is this true?

There are plenty of 1 x 12 and 1 x 10 little combos that sound great and will give you excellent recording tone.  Fender has several, Vox has a couple, and there are a gazillion more. 

There are also small combo amps that let you specify the wattage (down to 5 watts), allowing you to get nice overdriven sounds at small volumes. 

It seems most amps have a master volume control now, so it is no longer necessary to completely crank an amp to get the tone.  Most amps tend to sound better when cranked by driving the tubes, but you certainly should be able to achieve decent tones without always waking the neighbors.

Like has been said before, just go play a bunch.  You can see for yourself.

This is the link where I thought I had heard that power does not matter.  Pete Townshend used a measly 26W amp and a hollow body to get all those amazing classic Who guitar sounds from Who's Next onwards.

http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/fenderbandmaster.html

Yeah.... my Mesa Boogie 22 watt studio can hurt your ears if it wants to.  Especially in a smaller room.  

On a stage, with the band, it did need some assistance from my Carvin DCA-800 dropping it's wattage into 2 lab series 4x12 cabs with 12" speakers...... moving air makes for a fat sound.

In my opinion, small amps can sound huge in a studio/home studio.

But the tone doesn't just come from the amp. To get a good sound you need good mics, good mic placement, good pre-amps, etc.... and that is where your pod comes in so handy! I'm not suggesting a Pod can fully replace a great setup, but don't under-estimate it's power or its flexibility.

If your curious, why not just rent a couple smaller amps and see how it works out? You may love it, or you may find your better off approaching things as you do now. As for what to get, I would stick to tube - but that's just my view. If you don't know where to start, maybe try a Fender Pro Jr. It's got a great clean and bluesy tone and also sounds good with pedals.

Good luck on this quest!

Mike,
Not an EL-84 in the bunch, what a shame...

And don't forget to shop the little guy's. We have a local tube amp builder
http://www.daviesaudio.com/build.html
who's amps are not only better sounding, but will last forever. Seems all these manufactures farm out components to China. I owned a Music shop though the 90's and got to try a lot of stuff on stage. In the end I use a 69 Princeton that was hot rodded by Cory Davies. Marshalls all had the same cheap pots found in Korean amps and would come back to me to fix every month.
Make sure the amp you buy has a speaker jack for the main speaker. It's nice to be able to put the speaker box in another room while recording. To me that's a critical feature.
Don't get anything less than 18 Watt tubes. Between that and 30 watts is all you'll ever need.

For bass there's no need to have a giant amp sitting in the studio, We only use the pre amp on ours anyway. Very hard to mike a bass amp in a small studio. Look into good bass pre amps instead. Just don't buy anything made of plastic, that's my rule.

I have a Vox Night Train (15 or 7 watts and of course master volume) and an early 70s Vibrochamp (6 watts.) Both would be extremely loud if turned all the way up. I had a Microbaby and even that (at one monster watt) would be quite loud if turned all the way up.

So I use a combination of schemes. For master volume amps of course you can just lower the master volume. This is a different tone from the amp running wide open obviously, but still sounds quite nice. For both of them I sometimes use a Weber attenuator to be able to run them hotter. And in both cases I sometimes use them as clean amps and use a distortion pedal. depending on what flavor I'm looking for.

So it's definitely doable. If you really want low wattage the Zevez Nanohead is 1/4 watt, and some of the boutique amps have attenuation built into the circuit directly in order to get lower output in a way that is as transparent as possible. The Carr Mercury is one example that comes to mind. It has a 1/4 watt option as well as a few other options. Some of the 65 Amps amps have a nice power lowering circuit that is very transparent.

Would I get an equally good tone out of a smaller bass amp in the mix?

 
It really depends on what you're after.
MarkBass makes some nice small/light bass amps.
They sound very good (tight/warm)... but they don't sound like an Ampeg SVT (if that's what you're after).
 
You don't need a 8x10 cab to record great sounding bass tracks.  
I use an SVT Classic head - because it delivers classic (Rock) bass tone.
To keep volume somewhat in check, I run it thru a 2x10 cab.
If you're into old-school rock; plug a P, J, Stingray, or Ric into this rig... and you're set.
For me... that's the ultimate bass tone.
When I first saw the SVT Classic head, I thought there's no way this thing weighs 80-pounds. 
That was until I lifted it... 
 
A nice DI (Radial, U5, etc)... combined with Ampeg SVX (or your favorite bass AmpSim) is a good compromise solution.
 
Speaking of DI, some basses sound much better going straight DI than others.
So the instrument/s will also play into the equation.
 
Regarding smaller guitar Amps:
I'd go to a large music store (preferably at an odd time - so you can actually hear) and play a bunch of the new low-watt Tube Amps.  If you're after a higher-quality custom option, I'd bet Tom Deering could help you.    
 

Agree with most everything here. Don't let small 5 watt combos fool you. I have a 5 watt Epiphone Valve Jr. with the Eminence speaker cab. That little sucker has an abundance of punch and starts to break up so nicely at higher volume. My Strat never sounded sweeter.

Randy

Oh boy!
Now you're talkin. I'm sure there are some EL's in this bunch!

Charles, you need to host the jpeg on somewhere like photobucket or imageshack (I use both, there's no real difference)

Once you've uploaded your picture, you'll get a unique URL which you then paste into Sonars "Insert an image" dialog above.

whoops