Black Coffee

The unfortunate thing with buying amps is that we try them in situations which never come close to where we will actually play them. A music shop, bedroom, living room, garage etc are all places one might play alone but when a drummer and a guitar or two come to the party it gets difficult. My advice would be go separates and buy what you think you will need plus a little bit more. If you think you will need 200 watts,(which is all relative depending on the make, speaker, head etc) then aim a little higher. Ample headroom is a bass players best friend. I recently played at a small event in a hotel and was told that there is only one heavy handed drummer and a guitar and a keyboard. One might be tempted to think that you wouldn't need much, but what I didn't know was that at least 250 people were singing along to it as them words were on a screen for them, and that was a lot of extra sound to compete with. The headroom from a Markbass 500watt head and a barefaced supertwin was required, as the other factor was that they also didn't tell me they had no subs in the pa and a 100 watt combo amp would have been a poor companion to have along. Money is needed to go big and light but as it has been mentioned already, there are always reliable honest used options here on BC. I've bought dozens of things here and the community is sound in the used gear section.

They are like catnip until you finally arrive and realise how expensive they are and its then very sobering. Beautiful to own and play, and I have owned three but none were combustions so I can't comment on them. As for the ABZ and ABII basses I owned - flawless construction and sound. I'm a bass hopper and always wanting to keep trying different stuff, but if I had to pick one - the ABII I owned would be under consideration.