I'm heading to the studio next month and although 90% of the time I go straight to desk, we sometimes have an 'acoustic' jam through amplifiers which is good fun. I haven't actually had an amp for a while now (except the TC BH800 I have at home to power my floorboard/studio setup) so I decided it would be good to pick up a light-ish and decent powered combo.
I know I like 10" speakers and I wanted a compressor built in, plus something that would match a super clean Smith bass with rounds and a P bass with flats, which is quite a tonal range. I looked at a few options, and thought about using an external pre or my Roland VB99 to take care of the front end but really fancied something 'plug and play'. I tried the Fender Rumble series which I was impressed with but I saw this come up at a decent price which happened to be en route to my in-laws.
It's a 2x10 500w job which is a fairly easy one hand lift - I've got a dodgy back but even I can manage it fairly easily but would probably want help over long distances.
I have only trialled it at home for a little while (I don't really like playing amps at home, stuff rattles, I don't like annoying people and people can hear me!) but my first impressions:
- The compressor seems to be EXCELLENT! I was worried about this as I'm quite picky with them but it's very pleasing; you can't hear any 'squashy' effect at all, just an overall limiting and evenness.
- Lots of tonal options. You can choose between three 'voicings' (Classic, Modern, Flat) and three 'responses' (Linear, 6L6, 6550). That gives plenty of options (9?). So far I like the modern voicing with linear response but I can tell that the 6550 setting sounds very close to my old Trace V4 combo which had those valves in - which I wasn't expecting. Very punchy and clackerty. Nice. To be honest it took me right back!
- It also has OD, Distortion, Fuzz, Chorus and Octaver. I'm unlikely to use those but they might be fun to mess with. The chorus sounded good, the octave might take some time to balance as I think it pushes the pre into overdrive at the moment
- Need to spend some proper volume time setting the input gain correctly; no indication light to show when it's breaking up and I can't crank it at home to learn how it reacts yet!
- Loud... you can see I had the master on 9 O'clock and although that's no indication I turned it up half way and touched a string and now my balls are in my bottom
So I'm very pleased with it so far - as I say I haven't really been up to date with amplifiers since leaving my last band, and the rigs I'm most familiar with are a Mesa 400+ and 1516BE cabinet, a Trace V4 1x15" combo and an SWR stack (see why I have a bad back!) and this gives me even better initial feels than those did, which is a good sign. Plus I can move it.
A few pics: