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I was looking on the Rivera website, at the Knucklehead, and it states that the quot;55 Watt [version] has 2 EL-34’s, and the 100 Watt has 4 El-34’squot;

What effect does more tubes have on an amp?

If the tubes are in the 'power amp' stage... then to 'get them [all] cooking' you inevitably run at a higher volume.

Often, if people have a 100w amp that is too loud to crank, they take half the tubes out. So you can still get the cranked tone at a lower volume.

power tubes have a quot;maximum powerquot; rating - that is, a given power tube will produce X amount of power .. so most 6L6 amps will produce about 50 watts with a pair, and 100 watts with a quad

tubes have design capabilitys, and any given tube will make a certian amount of power based on the design capabilitys. If you change things about how the tube is being run, you can change the power it will make. Example...a single 6V6 in a BF/SF Fender champ makes around 3-5 watts, a pair of 6V6's in a BF/SF Fender Princeton makes about 12 watts, but a pair od 6V6's in a BF/SF Fender Deluxe is about 22 watts...the power went from 12 to 22 because the tubes are run differently. You can take a pail of 6L6's and get between aobut 12 and 60 watts depending on how you run them. There are quot;standardsquot;...most people assume that 2 6L6's is 50 watts, 2 EL-34's is 50 watts, 4 EL-84's is 30 watts, etc...in truth those numbers can be quite different...a BF/SF Fender bandmaster has 2 6L6's and in fact it's much closer to about 35 watts, a Plexi Marshall has either 2 or 4 EL-34 and instead of being 50 and 100 watts, they are much closer to about 38 and 75 give or take a few. The most important thing to keep in your mind is that YOU CAN NOT HEAR A WATT...A Vox AC-30 tops out at 33 watts, and those are some of the loudest amps you could imagine! Also, remember that more is not always better...a BF Fender Twin has 4 6L6's and produce around 85 watts, the later SF Fender twins had the same 4 6L6's but had higher voltages and produced 135 watts, thats more that 1.5 times the original's 85 watts, but IMO these amps do sound nearly as good as the 85 watt BF versions, and if you had both amps in front of you top AB between the 2, you would find that the 135 watt SF Twin is not much if any louder.

Those numbers are maximum power rating the tubes can run at. But depending on the circuit, they can run much less. I have a late 50's tube PA amp which runs on two 6L6's and is only about 15 watts. It still sounds great even though it doesn't run those power tubes anywhere near capacity.

Ahh ok, thanks for the fountain of knowledge, much appreciated