re: My questions
No offense taken Switchkit, I guess as I get older I don't make myself as clear as I should.
Let me try to explain where I'm coming from, back in the "old days" of cb we wanted our rigs to work as advertised I guess, 23 channels, 4 watts out on AM and 12 pep on sideband and 100% mod or a tad under, if you increased your mod over that you would bleed over a few other channels and throw telephone & tvi to the four corners of the earth and as there wasn't cable back then you would kill tv reception for blocks around, get very angry neighbors who might recognize your voice and give you an earful or complain to the fcc.
Now as to Amps accepting 4 watts input pwr., the amps back then would accept 4 watts input because the rigs put out 4 watts and depending on the model put out anywhere from 100 to 1.5 kw's.
I use to run and still have somewhere an old Cobra 148 gtx "Export model" which put out 4 watts on Am & Fm and 12 pep on sideband, the signal ran thru a tvi filter to a 100 watt "Black cat" class AB2 Amp, a nice setup for its day with plenty of "talkpower".
We also had double sideband rigs, the carrier is surpressed and the "talkpower" went into the sidebands, I had one and never cared for it personally.
I guess I look for balance you might say, what good is a strong carrier if no one can hear you and what good is it when you overmodulate and kill half a dozen channels above and below your channel plus create havoc on other services? (harmonics)
So there you have the reasoning from the 60's era.
I hope I didn't confuse you further?
Master Chief, Roflmao, that was a good one!