msb

Probably my favourite bass to play!

My main gigging bass …

Pretty easy to guess what this might be …

Stingrays used to have a nice chunky Pbass style neck. Don’t know about recent ones.

With any clean amp you can add a gain stage , and tart it up. Not so easy the other way around.

We don’t have a high density population , few of the major tours come down this way , we’re way off in a corner of the continent. We do have an unusual number of bars for the population. So we don’t have many local musicians living here making big incomes , most are at best around sustenance levels. But we do have a lot of players. Most are working musicians rather than rock stars.

And the preamp , Monique Here powered by a Demeter Minnie , 800 watts.

There are amps that do not have any EQ , like this M Series amp by Jule. But they are designed to be used with a preamp with EQ . Like Monique. Someday I hope to run one of those rigs.

Some amps are relatively transparent though , others have more distinct character. My Forte sound is largely determined by the bass I’m playing. More so than some other amps I have. There are many that use a power amp with a completely separate front end /preamp. edit The Forte does not suck the vintage out of passive basses , if you want to add an additional gain stage you can simply add the pedal or preamp of your choice , I run mine just as it is. It possesses some serious slam , and I find the EQ on the Forte almost surgical when it comes down to dialling things in.

A transparent amp allows different basses to sound different , instead of running everything through a baked in sound. I went from a GenzBenz Streamliner 900 to a Bergantino Forte. The Benz has a three tube preamp , and does warm and tubey , or you can make it fairly clean however the Forte is a simple clean platform with some serious slam. With the Forte the individual character of different basses comes through much stronger. Two very different amps and I’ve gone for the Forte for gigs. I also have SWR , GK , and Darkglass amps. The SWR and GK have distinct personality , the Darkglass is a chameleon.