Bass amplification ideas...

[the isaac eaton]

what my bass player plays

http://www.amprofmusic.cl/catalog/image ... 0800RB.jpg

Sounds great, loud, and solid state. dew it, you won't.

[Gavin]

Looks quite cool too.

[kim]

yeah, don't get too nerdy about board setups and whatnot, i wasted time on messing with loops and clean blends and whatnot and really, most of the 'exciting' stuff for an audience is in the way you play, not the fx you use, it's not that essential, especially not live, in the end i was just using that sansamp so i had three stages of 'rough' in a pedal and it still sounded like bass and didn't need to mess with clean blend and stuff. less is more.

i sooooo miss it though, it's probably my favourite instrument, more than guitar or drums, it was the first thing i played so it'll always have a special meaning i guess.

gav do you use a plectrum with that mag300? i thought it really shined like that, reminded me of the bass on that warsaw record, middy but lots of growl.
i don't think i would get a combo again though, i liked having the mag top in a case and the svt had wheels so as long as there were no stairs it was pretty ok for your back. but i remember our rehearsal space's 'gear storage' was in the basement, so we had to get it up and down these really flimsy wooden stairs lol that hurt

[Gavin]

Yeah, I always use a 2mm pick. Always have the OCD on as well.

[kim]

yes !


haha

that gk, i was always interested in it, their cabs too, i was so crazy about the tool bass sound, there was a dude on youtube covering tool just with bass i think his setup was all gk ? i liked it.
it's a closed chapter though, no way i'm ever joining a 'strange' band as a bass player and getting messed with like in my last band, they fucking destroyed my will to ever join a new band again.

[the isaac eaton]

The GK 800RB is kinda expensive, i think about $800 new. but man that amp sounds great. and for being a solid state amp it takes pedals extremely well, which helps because our bassist hardly ever plays clean. he runs it through an ampeg classic 4X10 and it works really well.

[avj]

Those GK 400 and 800RBs are definitely sweet. They're a bit more than I'm looking to spend at this stage, and that's not including a cab. It's also probably a little more than I need for this fairly mellow acoustic-folk-alt-country-whatever-the-fuck-genre project.

I actually found these intruiging:

Gallien-Krueger MB115 1x15 200W Ultralight Bass Combo Amp
Gallien-Krueger MB210 2x10 500W (350W without extension cab) Ultralight Bass Combo Amp
Gallien-Krueger MB212 2x12 500W Ultralight Bass Combo Amp

Amazingly, they all weigh under 40 lbs, thanks to the Class D power amp section. I'm not sure how well that works in a bass amp, but I'm going to try and give them a demo tonight at a shop.

[plesiosaurus]

I play an Eden VT.40 into a Ernie Ball Music Man HD-210 cab. It's 400w into 4ohm but I run it at 8ohm. It seems to be plenty loud for most situations in which I don't have a DI, even though it's only a 2x10, with enough wattage it does the trick pretty well.

I paid $250 for the cab and $400 or so for the head from Bass Northwest in Seattle, both used. It's got a tube preamp (which was designed by James Demeter which is apparently a big deal), a compressor, a di, and an adequate eq. It gets a great compressed tubey snarl when I crank the pre, and a really honest clean with it down. The guy at the store tried to steer me away from 1x15's and said I'd be better off with a 4x10. Size was a constraint because I was going on tour, so I went with the 2x10 and it's been great. If I ever need to push more air I'll grab a 4x10, but I'm pretty happy with what I got right now.

[Boab]

we've just purchased an ashdown MAG300 15" combo, got it for £200 and gavin broke its cherry at a gig on saturday. i thought it sounded pretty good, only thing is we're thinking of getting a 2x10" extension cab to give it a bit more onstage volume / projection. it's not the loudest, most trouser-flapping bass amp i've ever heard, but at that price i ain't complaining. he could probably tell you more about the finer points of it than i, though.

You didn't happen to get it off gumtree did you?

My friend had e-mailed a guy about a £200 MAG300 there, only to be told it had sold a few hours previously. He was devastated!

[stewart]

yeah, it was gumtree. think he wanted £225 for it but we knocked him down a bit.

[Billy3000]

I say go for a used GK 800RB, I've seen them in the $200 -$300 range quite a bit and in good condition. They're great, reliable amps. I met Against Me last year and Andrew uses one as his backup head on tour. He says it sounds amazing and is by far the most reliable amp he's ever owned. Coming from a guy who performed 350 days out of a year one year, I'd say that's a pretty damn good endorsement.

Your best bet is to get a used amp with at least 300 watts of power, a decent 410 or 115 cab and a sansamp. I've also had plenty of friends that have used the crummy ampeg SVT-350h heads solely for the power amp, and run their sansamps through the pre-amp input on the back and gotten pretty damn close to the same sound that I get out of my all tube SVT 2 pro. You can find those on the used market for fairly cheap too. I've thought about picking one up and ditching my almost 100 pound all tube head because it gets so close to my sound already and is about 1/4 of the weight.

Also, if you own a sansamp, I wouldn't worry about getting an amp with an onboard DI. The built in DI in my ampeg sounds like shit when run through the PA, and has been completely unreliable, it's broken 3 times in the last 3 years that I've been performing with it, the last time it broke I used my sansamp as a DI, and I've never looked back or even thought about fixing the DI on my amp since then. Seriously, in case it hasn't been stressed enough already, the sansamp is the best piece of equipment I can suggest to any gigging bassist!

[Dillon]

Your best bet is to get a used amp with at least 300 watts of power, a decent 410 or 115 cab and a sansamp. I've also had plenty of friends that have used the crummy ampeg SVT-350h heads solely for the power amp, and run their sansamps through the pre-amp input on the back and gotten pretty damn close to the same sound that I get out of my all tube SVT 2 pro. You can find those on the used market for fairly cheap too. I've thought about picking one up and ditching my almost 100 pound all tube head because it gets so close to my sound already and is about 1/4 of the weight.

Yeah, this. I gig with an SWR 350 that I purchased used (in a three-slot case) for $250, run into a Traynor 1x15 cab, $75. It's a hybrid, i.e. tube preamp solid state power amp. This setup has been extremely reliable and I get compliments on my tone all the time. I do want a 2x10 or 4x10 to cut through the mix a little bit though. Generally speaking, I think the difference between hybrid bass amps and full-tube bass amps is marginal these days. But the rule still stands that a tube power amp is going to be a lot louder than a solid state power amp, with less wattage.

[Fran]

Not read any of the thread but i'll throw my two penneth in.

I use an old 70s Laney valve PA head with a battered 4 x 12 bass cabinet. The whole set up looks shabby, but get this... This band that was supporting us had this bassist with a fuck-off big Warwick rig. 3,000,000 watts or something output solid state thing with all the bells and whistles, he also had a pedal board with 6 pedals on it but thats another story. He never shut up about this rig but when he realised his band only had a 20 minute spot he asked to borrow mine.
It blew him away, he looked flustered and all his pedals sounded shit. But he loved it, said he was going to buy a Valve head asap.

The valve head is 60 watts, its loud, with the low tuning it makes you feel sickly and your bowels move. Plus you can drive it using your bass volume knob.
You can pick this kind of stuff up cheap, old Sound City, WEM, etc. and to my ears it is always superior to the new stuff.

[Billy3000]

I agree that with bass tube amps can't be beat, but with a sansamp and a powerful enough power amp you can get a pretty damn close sound out of a solid state or hybrid rig.

[light rail coyote]

Hartke HA 3500 is cheap, bulletproof and sounds great, It sven has blendable tube and solid state pre amp sections. I got one for $200 less than a dollar a watt!

[hugh]

I'm thinking of splashing out and getting a Mesa Boogie Powerhouse 6x10. I'm worried that I'll look like a douchebag playing small gigs with an epic cab, but the Rig of Doom threads at Talk Bass make me feel better.
LINK
There's some stupid shit on there, 6 ampeg 8x10s and whatnot.

[goldengurls]

I have plenty of ideas, I have done this exact thing about 5 times now, first of all make a trolling craigslist ad looking for a bass rig in your price range, don't bother naming brands, there are always like 80 people in any locality trying to dump bass gear, why? Because almost all bassplayers are guitarists you see, the market is always in flux, unless you're gunning for some awesome ampeg b15 fliptop you'll come out on top. In the past few years I have owned 2 ampeg b115's that i got for under $200 each and 2 sunn concert bass heads, I bought a ported 1x15 cab that i used for a long time for $75. I think the problem is you need to just seek out the cheap, not expect it to land in your lap.
I hate putting things that way but well I am really pretty good at making my dollar stretch super far.
Good luck and keep in mind that CARVIN made rad bass heads in the 80's that also rip on guitar, there is a guy that has been trying to sell me one of those heads for $150 for like a year now.

[Billy3000]

I'm thinking of splashing out and getting a Mesa Boogie Powerhouse 6x10. I'm worried that I'll look like a douchebag playing small gigs with an epic cab, but the Rig of Doom threads at Talk Bass make me feel better.
LINK
There's some stupid shit on there, 6 ampeg 8x10s and whatnot.

I definitely recommend the powerhouse cabs! I have the powerhouse 1000 (4x10 with a 15 in the middle) awesome awesome cab. I get so many compliments on my sound, and a lot of it is because of that cab!

[hotrodperlmutter]

[Fran]

That Kustom may sound good but look at it. It makes me want to give up life as a bad mistake.