Acoustic Image Clarus 1 (v.III)

[mcgraham]

[u]Clarus Review[/u]

Unlike cabinets, amps have a fair few features, even the simpler ones, as such I won’t pretend to have this one figured just yet. However I do like it, but the reasons I like it will be the very reasons a lot of you won’t like it.

This amp is rated at 400W at 4 ohms. It is very natural and very transparent. Whatever you put in, seems to be what you get out, very little colouration. For it’s size, it’s weight and it’s power, it’s hard to beat. Combined with Schroeder I think it’s a winning combination.

For that reason I love it. I am a real clean freak, I want a good tone yes, but I believe it should come from you and your bass first (including pickups) and that colouration from amplification and effects (if any) should only be to taste, not the source of your sound. For this reason, the Clarus set to flat is awesome for me. It is neutral sounding.

Now, that is where my praise ends. As another BC’er posted, the eq is pretty awful, whilst I wouldn’t go that far, it doesn’t change the sound much at all without some pretty crazy dial rotations. I do like the mid control section as you can get (to my ear) a somewhat convincing Ampeg sound (or at least some identifiable elements of it) out of the amp with only a slight tweak. As a result of the less than stellar eq, I would definitely not dub this a versatile amp, hence a quality preamp + eq is on my next to buy list.

In short, you will hear the tone of your cab with this, so it will give you exactly what you want without any undesirable colouration or unpleasant sterileness (NB: avoided the use of the word sterility). If your cab has a good, useable, sound then you’re in luck. However there isn’t much room to manuevre with this amp. You won’t get grit, you won’t get a thick beefy sound unless it was there to begin with or that’s what you’re putting in.

In VERY short, it’s clean and clear sounding, and it’s musical. If you want something versatile that does that, look somewhere else. If you don’t mind an additional preamp (like me) I’d recommend it.

I will edit as and when it surprises me folks!

Mark

[synaesthesia]

I had one for ages. I got tired of it and traded it for something entirely different. But mine served me well for countless rehearsals and gigs. The EQ is awful, having said that I always carried a stompbox EQ but would seldom use it at rehearsals or gigs. I would use a variety of basses, but I usually bypassed the preamp and fed into the efx return, which sounded much nicer to me. YMMV.