dannybuoy

Fortress Studios in Old Street are good, they have a massive Trace stack with 2 4x10s that absolutely kicks, and their PA is massive. Rooz in Old Street has Orange valve amps which are cool, and the place is pretty funky for a rehearsal studio - it has a bar, and sometimes the rehearsal rooms open up and turn into mini gigs! Terminal Studios in London Bridge is pretty good with decent equipment (Ashdown mostly). I used to use Unit 9 in Balham (who also have Ashdown amps), mainly because it's close to me... There's one in Streatham by the kart track that's meant to be pretty good too. If you use Scar in Camden, be prepared to either take your own amp or use a farty Behringer or an even more farty fossil of unknown origin from the seventies!

Zoom B2 does pretty much everything the Pandora does, is dirt cheap and sounds great.

Dr Bass 1580 looks awesome, they have smaller 4 ohm cabs too. You can get them from RIM Basses, who is a member on here. BFM Omni 10s also pop up for sale on here occasionally. But it looks like you might have a smokin deal with that DIY 15!

Get The Vintage so that you'll look like an old school badass!

There's a lot of old farts with bad backs playing bass these days!

Checkout the lightweight GK MB2-500... Lighter than the Markbass and sounds much more 'rawk'. It has a footswitchable overdrive that's supposed to sound great... but they are having a few issues with the early models (RF interference, thermal shutdowns when played for too long!), so I'd wait until they sort those out then it'll be one sweet amp. There's also the Ashdown Little Giants that are just out if you can stand the paintjobs, and if you like the basic Ashdown tone then checkout the ABM 500 heads, they turn up cheap second hand!

I never knew King's X were playing, and you lot are sounding pretty good too - let us know if there's any more tickets available, looks to be all sold out!

I suggest checking out the classified ads over at Talkbass! Lots of tasty amps on offer.

They're chunkier though, but supposedly more robust than the Georgies.

Also be aware that some amps get really loud within the first half of the volume knob, then don't get any louder, while others behave differently. e.g. 12o'clock on the volume knob on amp may be 50% power, but on others it may be 90%. A cunning ploy to make the amp seem loud when people try it out in the shop environment!

Yeah, it's best to use your ears and not your eyes!

I'd like to know if anyone else reports that the volume is somewhat lacking...

For general playing,the Trace 1153 and Barefaced Compact will both provide plenty of top end. They both roll off around 5k or so, just like my VT Bass pedal. Trouble is, the VT Bass neuters the sizzling top end you get from some fuzzes or from slapping, so I'm considering that I may want an adjustable tweeter for those kind of sounds.

Cheers for the input, not entirely sure on what kinda cab I want right now. Alex's cabs sound (on paper) amazing, this idea is a way of putting together a poor man's Compact without woodworking skills if I could get a broken 1153 for say £50 or so and get the 3015 driver for about £100. I'm leaning towards 15s, but not sure if I need much response above 5k or not. Usually not, but when using a synthy fuzz effect that extra sheen above 5k sounds good... I'm going to make some recordings and filter them to see how much top end I would actually need/miss.

Check out the Hartker LH500 and LH1000 amps, best bang for buck going. Much better than the older Hartke stuff apparently. Then you could get a 500W head for less cash than the Ashdown 300W!

[quote name='obbm' post='371306' date='Jan 5 2009, 07:50 PM']I received my LG1000 from Sounds Live last week but haven't had the chance to plug it in yet as it's too cold in the garage. I have a possible gig on Friday so I may well use it then.[/quote] Too cold to try it out?! Buy an electric heater from Argos, plug it in, AND START JAMMING MY MAN!!!

I've got a Humprey Modded Bad Monkey, been stomping on it for a year with no issues! Never heard of any reliability issues with em apart from the above. For the price (£30 new for the stock version) you won't find much better. You can change a couple of caps to make it more bass friendly, but it's meant to be pretty good out of the box. It also sounds awesome going into a VT Bass pedal. And I think there's a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive in the classifieds...

I'm thinking of getting an old knackered Trace 1153 and replace the driver with a Kappalite 3015 to give it increased power handling and a better all round sound. Anybody ever done this? I've downloaded WinISD but haven't fully sussed it out yet. The ports on this cab are round tubes that look like they'd be easy to modify if the cab needed to be retuned. Any advice would be appreciated!

It's a passive tonestack which will be different to the usual Hartke EQs. If you turn the bass knob up, it increases the volume going into the mid and treble stages, and if you boost the mids it increases the volume going into the treble stage. If you turn all 3 knobs down, the amp goes silent. I'm not sure, but it sounds to me that if you boost the bass knob you may just experience a volume increase unless you reduce the mid and treble to compensate. And boosting the mids to get rid of the scoop should also boost your treble, so you'll have to reduce that to compensate. This will confuse a lot of people used to more conventional modern EQs. But it's all meant to sound very nice anyway, so just tweak em until it sounds good!