Jack

We got our Alto TS115 tops for £500 second hand. We did it over my protests as I wanted something more QSC or RCF but honestly? They sound great. So good I've since bought a pair of their cheaper TX10 tops for myself. When you feel like it later on, the matching TS118S subs were cheap too.

Is it one of the ones where the eq switch is backwards? So pressing the switch in actually defeats the horrible preset eq curve? Otherwise you just set the gain high and make the graphic eq look low a frown, should be easy if everything on the amp is working like it should.

I had the head as part of the combo, although I'd asked for mine to be detachable. I bought it to use with my EUBs (for which it excelled) but ultimately that project never took off, I stopped playing the EUBs and eventually sold them and the amp. I can't stress enough how good the amp sounded, really, really clean and full. However, with the external power pack and the fact that it needs proprietary cables it's bigger than you'd think and for the volume it produces it might as well be a DI box in any 'proper' guitar and drums band, so like I say I found it hard to have a use for it. For a double bass amp on jazzy gigs or as one of the world's nicest bedroom amps I can recommend. Also, Didier is pretty much a gem. Great customer service, great communication, all-round stand up guy. A Sumo power amp is on my GAS list as soon as I get round to it.

GSS is one French man named Didier. I'd assume it's a Google Translate problem rather than anything else. The amp is bleedin' amazing despite the marketing copy.

The girlfriend contacted GK last Christmas about buying me a GK-branded tshirt as a present. They put her on to Polar, Polar were awful, slow and dismissive. She ended up buying a snide one on ebay, which is kind of a shame because we don't really 'do' fake stuff and it means GK lost a sale, however small. It's a shame that they really give GK such a bad reputation in Europe, whilst everyone in America just rings Jason at GK and gets great service the same day.

Is that an old person joke?

It seems that there's not a lot of graphs out there. I was able to find an RTA of a sansamp modelling a 300W SVT. Which is nothing like what you asked for but I suppose that it's a pretty good recreation of a pretty common tube amp? So. No. Is the short answer.

They're normal equalisers aren't they?

Unfortunately I don't think they will, the unwashed masses will see that it starts to taper off at 30Hz, say to themselves "but that means it'll have less low end" or maybe, "that means you won't hear my low b string" and they'll choose another amp over a Genzler.

Well this one is £20.

@Dood is there a thread or a review about this somewhere? Do you at least have the trace from the scope? Sounds intriguing!

It didn't matter so much with a 100W tube amp into a cab that starts to roll off at 75Hz but nowadays we have 2000W of perfect, digital, clean power and cabs that go subwoofer low.

Hi all, I have a Behringer MIC100 that uses a 12AX7. It's supposedly for warmth, but realistically it doesn't seem overly tubey at all. It's standard starved-plate, low-voltage, there-for-marketing-purposes kind of job. Anyway, said tube has now started to fail. It goes all quiet at times and is very distorted. So I need a new tube! Now, I'd never bother tube rolling with this thing, it's not like it's a vintage SVT, but at the same time it would be silly to waste my time putting the 'wrong' tube in. I know that they sound different, have different distortion and outputs, some have more or less bass, etc etc. What's a good tube for this DI box, being used only on bass guitar, for less than £20? I can get a new preamp for £25 and they're much less than that second hand so there's no point putting a £250 tube in it. Having said that, I appreciate that there may be some sonic gains to a nicer tube. I have to get this thing back working again and I'd prefer to spend the £20 on a new tube rather than a new di box. It just seems less wasteful!

Indeed. I alluded to it with my 'not a sub-bass guitar' comment and Phil covered it way better than I could have but basically there's not a whole lot of fundamental in a bass guitar signal. An SVT 8x10" rolls off around 70-80Hz and sounds great.

Looking up there, there's a 320W speaker cabinet. We all know that the engineers who designed the cab would say it's 250-300W to be safe. The marketing department are going to round that up to 400W+ though. It's probably worth pointing out that it's the ability to do this kind of math at home now that's helped to make the high pass filter the ubiquitous gadget de jour around here over the past year or so. We can do the math, it's 320W above 40Hz and only really 20W at 20Hz, which is why people are so up on the HPF to filter out the sound below a certain point. Not only to clean up the muddy tone but also to protect the physical speaker. If you were to give that cabinet the full 320W at every frequency (you would't anyway, it's bass guitar not sub-bass guitar) then you've got 320W at both 40Hz and 20Hz, bad. If you put a 10dB/octave high pass filter from 40Hz down, then you're at 32W at 20Hz, which is looking a lot better. Most HPF are either 12dB/oct or 24dB/oct, so you'd likely be safe either way round.

It's a personal thing. We could all gig with a Jazz, but some people will prefer other basses... I really, really like balanced, quite high tension, coupled to bright sound so I'm loving the D'Addarios. Not everyone will though!

If you want proper headphones rather than IEMs then I'm very, very happy with my PJB ones.

Indeed, knowing they would be a bass amp 95% of the time is why I chose thethe FR800 too, I think I may push the band towards rcf. Thanks for taking the time.

What are your thoughts on the FR800 vs the 745? My main band is looking for an upgrade and I (as a bass rig) have FR800s, so we could do two of those for the PA but I have a feeling that the RCFs are likely better PA cabs.

+1 for the Orange Juice.

And if you attach it to one of the outputs on your B3n then that's a whole, ampless rig. Sorted!

I had a plex for about a year, it was on a board with a wireless and a B3. The board was wireless>B3>plex and then it went into one or two Barefaced FR800 cabs. I had an 'A03' unit, which was one of the ones that didn't need the recalls but A01 and A02 units had to go back to GK for something. I found the output too low. I had a balanced cable that went from the TRS out into and XLR for the cabs made by our own OBBM but I had to really crank the volume to get anything decent out of it. Part of the problem was that the input was very easy to clip (yes, even without anything in front of it, coming straight from a passive bass) and so that I had to run the input trim very low, which kind of made the in-built comp, drive and eq a little ineffectual. The only way I could run it was to have the compressor (set to a light compressor) with the volume set to nearly full, that way there was enough make up gain to be able to run the output volume properly. It worked ok, but I meant I couldn't turn the compressor off ever.... As a separate issue, the thing required it's own wall wart as it won't play nice with lots of power supplies including my Strymon Ojai. I have to say, the pedal sounds GREAT. And the feature set is perfect. It's such a shame, I'm a huge GK fan and the thought of a GK rig in a box was so tempting but the gain staging just didn't work. If you look online actually a lot of people find the same thing: it's a great effects pedal into a proper amp but a lot of people are unhappy with it as a preamp and amp replacement. I replaced the board with a Helix as my main rig. FWIW, I still use the board (kind of) as a backup/small board. The B3 does a good GK impression (although sadly not as good as the plex) and a superb Behringer mic pre drives the cabinets and then some. I did think about adding the Behringer as a gain stage after the Plex, but it needs AC power and it was getting a little silly under the board with a power strip, a Strymon that was only powering two things and two massive wall warts.

See that's the point I made about blurring the lines though isn't it? The B3 clearly is the kind of thing that you're looking for and the Helix clearly isn't. But what's the difference between them really? It's just the size and price as far as I'm concerned, they do the same thing. The M81 you mentioned is more of an effects pedal, the B3 and similar is more of a multi effects unit, something like a Sansamp is more of a preamp... I think by looking for everything in one pedal you're limiting yourself too much. Much better to get one small pedal to rescue you at gigs and another that's a headphone amp with an aux in. The likelihood of you needing both at once seems slim and you won't be compromising as much. Honestly, if my amp died at a gig I would be satisfied with a (my) Behringer BDI21.

Am I missing something, or did you quote me from another thread? I had no idea you could do that! Oh man, tough question. I use a lot of the little DI boxes and preamps, to the point where some of them blur the lines. Like, does the Helix count? 🤷‍♂️ Normally, given the fact that you also have an EUB and you asked for flexibility I'd have suggested the Studiospares one but your criteria state headphone output and it doesn't do that. Really, the one that I use most often is my B3 (headphone amp and versatility sorted down to a tee!) but you've already sort of discounted that one and it doesn't have an aux in. I don't really own anything with a headphone amp that isn't a digital multi effects I don't think. Well, Soundcraft Compact 8 mixer? I suppose that has digital effects too! Did I see that you own a B3n? I'd pair it with a good DI and call it a day. It's not as small as something like the EBS or PJB units but you already own most of it and you'll never be short of options or funtionality!