You can tell how good a cook is by how they use salt. It’s the simplest ingredient—but also the easiest place to mess things up.
Same goes for amplifiers. Big, powerful amps can impress with their slam and authority, but if they don’t sound right at one watt, they’re not going to sound right at a hundred.
That first watt—where most of our listening happens—is critical. It’s where the space between notes lives, the breath in a vocalist’s phrasing, the shimmer of cymbals decaying into silence. When an amp nails that first watt, there's a sense of intimacy, of connection. Like the music has weight and presence, even at low levels.
Now, don’t get me wrong—power matters. Headroom is critical. Big amps give you the freedom to play music dynamically, with punch and scale, without that dreaded compression that creeps in when an amp is nearing its linearity limits. That’s where fatigue starts. That’s when you stop listening, even if you don’t know why.
But power alone doesn’t guarantee magic. That magic first watt and the effortless headroom to keep it alive when the music swells.
Because just like in cooking, it’s not how much you add that matters. It’s what you do with the first pinch.
