Sparky Mark

And he never suffered from GAS. I think he only ever owned that one tuba, upright and J bass for his whole career.

The pickups and control plate on the Ignition models are true to the Japanese made parts fitted to some German 80/90s basses. It makes sense to me that the Japanese tooling would've transferred more readily to the Chinese Hofner factory some time after Japanese production ceased.

I loved that man. Herbie's son Nick attended my secondary school for a while and Herbie started my bass playing passion by lending me a Fender bassman combo and bass guitar for a few months until I could afford my own. Meeting him 40 years later at the 2016 SE Basshchat get together was very emotional for me; as is the news of his passing.

Good advice. I've just updated a couple of my bass for sale ads with that comment. Not sure it'll make a difference as they're both pretty niche instruments, but worth adding anyway.

I do have a few relic basses, which have been done really well IMO. I couldn't buy a Pino P any other way unfortunately. I'm okay with them because I don't get stressed when they pick up dings on gigs. I hate scratching pristine basses. YMMV of course.

Get Alex to guarantee the tolex won't peel off though.

What happened please?

Great amp. Do you have to pull or press one of the knobs to bypass the parametric EQ?

Welcome and prepare your wallet for GAS!!

Politeness costs absolutely nothing. A lack of it however will cost GG at least one potential customer.

If you don't like Charles Berthoud, just don't watch his videos. Simple. That's the point here.

That sounds like the amp is going into protection mode for some reason. If an amp cuts out, then recovers after a pause or being turned off and on again, it might be behaving exactly as intended. One slightly unusual aspect of these TB heads is the apparent need to select the correct speaker impedance with that 8/4 ohm switch. Are you 100% sure the switch was set to the cab's impedance?

Whenever I've heard them at pub gigs I thought they sounded pretty good and quite similar to the AD200B, which is often accused of having the same limitation. With the passive tone stack set with mids full up, bass and treble fully off, this head is fairly neutral and does convey the tone of whichever bass I've used at low volume. Of course I've only had it for a day but I can already appreciate the raw power of the output stage and looking forward to a proper test on a gig. I think the Clean switch is an excellent solution to the MK1 one sound character; now it has (at least) two!

I was curious why the OTB has an impedance selection switch on the back panel? I found a Bass Gear Magazine (Issue 6) review of the OTB MK1 that explains why. A very interesting feature of the OTB is that its output power into 4 and 8 ohms is 500 watts for both loads, unlike most solid state amps that give lower maximum output into higher impedance loads. So this is truly a 500 watt head, even with a single 8 ohm cab. Clever!

It's a MK2. (It's printed on the PCB's if you zoom in).