First, a fiddle. It has a piezo bridge pickup but has its own preamp, both made by Fishman. Only needs amplifying outdoors.
Second, a traditional Japanese WX7 and VL70m pair. Yhe WX7 is a midi keyboard that looks and plays like a clarinet, the VL70m is a "Virtual Acoustic Tone Gnerator" that produces, apart from others, passable bassoon and bass clarinet sounds. Runs off 12v.
Yes. I understand that these, along with other percussion instruments, produce quite a lot of peak energy.
I've been using someone else's "Pignose" 20 watt amp. It has a single 6.5" cone that clearly doesn't manage some of the higher harmonics. Playing the instruments through the home hi-fi (ish), they sound very much like the real thing. Played through the Pignose, except in the octave around middle C, they both sound like ....... The upper ranges of the clarinet and bassoon sounding very electronic and similar. Mind you, it still sounds better than a Yamaha "portable pa" box.
The advantage, I thought, of the car speakers was their relatively wide frequency response and compactness.
Thanks very much!
Sam