So because the RMS ratings of the amp are lower than those of each speaker, I could run the amp at full power without blowing the speakers? But I would probably fry the amp? I guess that's my question. If the gain on the amp was set to Max, what does that actually mean in terms of wattage transferred to the speakers? Would that be the max rating for the amp?


Any ideas on these power issues?

At full rated power the amp shouldn't hurt the speakers. And your amp should be just fine at that level.

If you set the gain to max, it will take a fairly small signal from the empeg to give the rated power. If you increase the volume setting on the empeg above that, the amp will start to clip Iie your gain setting and input voltage multiplied will be higher than the internal rail voltages - ie max output voltage on the speaker terminals - and the tops of the sinus signals will be clamped to that rail voltage and the tops of the sinus curve thus flattened. Increase the volume even further and the output signal will more and more look like a square wave signal.
And here lies a danger: the power of a square wave signal with a given amplitude (rail voltage) is twice that of the sinushaped signal with the same amplitude. So a 50W per channel amp can, when driven to full clipping, actually put out 100W.

See this page for more info on gain settings and clipping

/Michael