GK Fusion 550

[ern500evo]

Is anyone out there using the Gallien Krueger fusion 550? What are your thoughts? It looks a decent bit of kit, but those motorised knobs do concern me slightly. Would be interesting to hear it head to head against a Hartke kilo and a Nexus FET.

[Raggy]

Tried one out a few months ago. Really impressed.

It had that 'typical' GK sound (which I like) with a really powerful strong low end. There are a couple of BC'ers on here who have one, cant remember their names, sorry.

[ThomBassmonkey]

It's a good head, as Raggy says it has that classic GK sound. I didn't play it as much as I should at LBGS (I was too blown away with the MB heads and spent the weekend on them haha) but what I did hear of it was that it was in the same league as the 700RB with sound and power, it obviously sounded a bit different because of the valves but with me hearing it with 20 people slapping over the top of me, it's hard to put my finger on exactly what.

The motorised knobs are very sturdy. As far as that kind of thing goes, I wouldn't be too concerned. GK gear is bombproof though so they should hold up well. The function of every setting on the amp changing when you swap channels is nice though, my 2001RB's OD channel has it's own EQ settings (only 2 band as opposed to the clean's 4 band) but things like countour don't change when I switch.

[ern500evo]

[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1177170' date='Mar 26 2011, 01:08 PM']It's a good head, as Raggy says it has that classic GK sound. I didn't play it as much as I should at LBGS (I was too blown away with the MB heads and spent the weekend on them haha) but what I did hear of it was that it was in the same league as the 700RB with sound and power, it obviously sounded a bit different because of the valves but with me hearing it with 20 people slapping over the top of me, it's hard to put my finger on exactly what.

The motorised knobs are very sturdy. As far as that kind of thing goes, I wouldn't be too concerned. GK gear is bombproof though so they should hold up well. The function of every setting on the amp changing when you swap channels is nice though, my 2001RB's OD channel has it's own EQ settings (only 2 band as opposed to the clean's 4 band) but things like countour don't change when I switch.[/quote]
I've heard good things about them, i'm a bit annoyed at myself as i was at LBGS but didn't try one out! I just happened to be in London that weekend and really only went to try out a Hartke Kilo( which was a waste of time as the only one they had in the UK had been shipped straight to frankfurt for the trade show there!!). I want something with a tube preamp and like the look of the GK, the channel switching is a cool feature too. Really want to try a Hartke Kilo before deciding though, and am being told by various dealers that it's going to be late May before they arrive in UK stores.At least that gives me chance to go try a Fusion so i've got something to compare the kilo to, if they ever arrive!!

[ThomBassmonkey]

I'm a GK endorsee and I spent the whole weekend on the stall and still didn't properly get to try one out, so if you think you're frustrated that you missed a chance, imagine my frustration.

But...the reason I didn't have a proper play with it was because I was blown away by the MB heads. If you're looking at hybrid heads, don't discount the MB Fusion. It's small, simple, it's still got two channels, still 500w. You'll be missing out on motorised knobs (which sounds like it may be a bonus for your piece of mind, it certainly wouldn't do mine any harm, I'm very skeptical about that kind of thing's reliability, even from GK) and bi-amping, which since you've not decided on a head yet, you probably won't have decided on a bi-amped cab either (and if you do go for a bi-amp compatable cab, you can run them on full range mode anyway). The best bit is it's tiny and only weighs 4.5 lbs.

[ern500evo]

But...the reason I didn't have a proper play with it was because I was blown away by the MB heads. If you're looking at hybrid heads, don't discount the MB Fusion. It's small, simple, it's still got two channels, still 500w. You'll be missing out on motorised knobs (which sounds like it may be a bonus for your piece of mind, it certainly wouldn't do mine any harm, I'm very skeptical about that kind of thing's reliability, even from GK) and bi-amping, which since you've not decided on a head yet, you probably won't have decided on a bi-amped cab either (and if you do go for a bi-amp compatable cab, you can run them on full range mode anyway). The best bit is it's tiny and only weighs 4.5 lbs.
[/quote]

Cab wise i'm using an Ashdown MAG 8x10 at the moment, which will probably be staying with me for a while if i'm looking at spending upwards of £700 on a head. When i do change it i may go back to a 2 cab setup(4x10, 1x15) for a couple of reasons, 1) the 8x10 can be a pain in the ass to transport and 2) it would give me the ability to use just one of the cabs for smaller gigs(pub landlords always seem to develop a worried expression when an 8x10 gets wheeled in!!). But as i said, i may have to keep it for a while so whatever head i do settle on it needs to be compatible. I think i've got a lot of weekends in music shops ahead of me, trying stuff out! Which isn't such a bad thing, as long as they can tell that 14yr old playing slipknot(badly) to turn that bloody dual rectifier down a bit!!

[martindupras]

I thought I'd chip in because I do own and use a Fusion 550.

I'll start by saying that I'm biased because I love it and it's my main head.

For comparison I also own and use an old Trace Elliot 12-band 4x10 combo, and Ashdown Evo II 4x10 combo and a Traynor YBA-200 all-valve head.

Personally, I think the GK head is superior in terms of tone to all of the above. As far as I'm concerned tone comes first, and the GK delivers on that front. I like a very bass-heavy sound but one that is not muffled and not boomy. I also like the sound and the playing feel of valve saturation, and none of my other amps is capable of both the low-end clarity and the great sounding distortion at the same time.

I will make an aside here: I've used the GK Diesel Dawg pedal for years, and have not been able to live without it until I got the Fusion 550. It was partly a quest to have the sound of the Diesel Dawg in an amp "channel" that led me to this particular head.

When I first got the head, I was a little disappointed by the sound of it until I flicked the input switch from "active" to "passive." I only play active basses so I had done that as a matter of course. I never run the amp in "active" mode; even in passive mode the range of gain between the gain knob and the master volume is enough.

There are a "bright" and a "deep" switch which do what you'd expect. I'd say that with them off the amp sounds very true; I have the "deep" switch on all the time and the bright one most of the time; to me they are what gives you the GK sound if that's what you're after.

The 4-band EQ is drastic. I found that even small changes affect the sound a lot. I think this is both really good and really bad. In my opinion, you're not going to be able to make quick EQ adjustments to your sound during a live gig. On the other hand spending some time with the EQ is really worth it. The fact that the motorized knobs retain their settings is key here. If the knobs were not motorised your settings might change slightly when you accidentally touch them in transport (say) but because they retain their settings, one you set a tone it stays that way from gig to gig.

I like the Horn Management feature (a 4-wire speakon lead feeds the 500w amp to your lows and mids drivers and the 50w amp drives only the tweeter.) I have rewired my Tech Soundsystems nd612 that way and that works great. It's subtle, though, because it's only affecting frequencies above 5kHz.

The footswitch allows you to switch between two "channels" which are in effect just two memories of knob settings, and a mute switch. Switching "channels" takes about one second. At first I thought it would be a problem. It isn't. Just don't expect to go from clean to distorted between the verse and the chorus. That's not going to work. The way I use the amp, I have a "modern, clean, deep" sound on one channel and a "warmer, motown-y" sound on the other, which I select per song rather than per song section.

The master volume gets saved for each channel. That is a little bit annoying because if at a gig you're too loud or too quiet, you can only alter the sound that is currently selected, so you have to switch to the other sound to change its master volume. [I'm planning to put a volume pedal in the effects loop precisely for that reason.]

The DI output is brilliant. Most of the ones that I used before are OK, but they don't sound that good. This one does, as far as I'm concerned. Live, if there is a house PA, I feed it pre-EQ and that sounds great (or so I'm told, I'm not in the audience.) For recording I use post-EQ and it sounds like I want it to sound.

One last thing: the pre-amp section is valves, and those valves are in a slightly different gain cascade than other amps, which is partly why it is capable of quite a lot of distortion without damaging your low end. However I wasn't 100% happy with the head when I got it because I felt the distortion wasn't increasingly smoothly and consistently enough as you dialled in more gain. I have had a very helpful chat with Andy (?) of Watford valves about it and he helped me decide on replacement valves. That made a lot of very audible difference to me and it made me very happy.

Feel free to message me privately if you somehow feel that I've missed something in the above.

- martin

[ThomBassmonkey]

[quote name='martindupras' post='1178226' date='Mar 27 2011, 01:15 PM']I like the Horn Management feature (a 4-wire speakon lead feeds the 500w amp to your lows and mids drivers and the 50w amp drives only the tweeter.) I have rewired my Tech Soundsystems nd612 that way and that works great. It's subtle, though, because it's only affecting frequencies above 5kHz.

Switching "channels" takes about one second.[/quote]


IIRC, the tweeter amp is actually 75w at 4Ohm and 50w at 8Ohm. It doesn't advertise that as it'd be too confusing with different resistances etc going on. It's worth remembering though if you're modifying a cab to use the 4 pin speakons.

It sounds strange that the tone doesn't change instantly (obviously I wouldn't expect the knobs to instantly change), I'd have thought that the knobs controlled a digital controller rather than being mechanical and changed by the motors. I've not played with it properly, but that sounds like a really big oversight in design if you're right (and it's not faulty).

[martindupras]

Thanks for the precision. You're right: tweeter amp is 8 ohm. The manual doesn't say that it goes down to 4 ohm, but that's really good to know.

As for the knobs, I don't have the amp plugged in right now so I can't double-check, but I'm pretty sure that I can hear the sound change as the knobs turn. I don't know the full story about the design but I'd be very surprised if it was an oversight.

In practice it's not a problem. I thought it would be but it wasn't once an issue. In effect, what you get is a smooth transition from one sound to another. In true channel switching you often get a loud click when you switch channels because of the sudden difference in gain. From what I know about guitar amp design at least, the main approaches are to live with it or temporarily mute while the switching is taking place.

Personally I'd much rather have no click and no temporary muting but have a smooth transition.

That makes me wonder how it's handled in the RH450. My guess is that they very quickly ramp the controller values, which is the same idea but without the slowness of the mechanical knobs.

- martin



[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1178239' date='Mar 27 2011, 01:25 PM']IIRC, the tweeter amp is actually 75w at 4Ohm and 50w at 8Ohm. It doesn't advertise that as it'd be too confusing with different resistances etc going on. It's worth remembering though if you're modifying a cab to use the 4 pin speakons.

It sounds strange that the tone doesn't change instantly (obviously I wouldn't expect the knobs to instantly change), I'd have thought that the knobs controlled a digital controller rather than being mechanical and changed by the motors. I've not played with it properly, but that sounds like a really big oversight in design if you're right (and it's not faulty).[/quote]

[ern500evo]

So am i right in assuming that plugged into my Ashdown 8x10 the tweeter section just wouldn't be used? Like i said earlier , at some point i will probably replace the 8x10 with a 2 cab set up again, and depending on what head i settle on would probably go for matching cabs. But for the meantime i'll be keeping the 8x10 for a while, so need to consider that before i go ahead and buy.

[ThomBassmonkey]

Yeah, if you use your Ashdown, you'll just be running the main power section, the tweeter power from the head won't be doing anything.

[martindupras]

ThomBassMonkey is right: you only get the Horn-Management System if the cab is wired for it. The only stock cabs that I know of wired that way are the GK cabs.

However: it's really straightforward to rewire your cab (you just unsolder the tweeter cable from the crossover and connect it to the speakon socket) and it's reversible.

You, of course, do not need the HMS setup to benefit from a tweeter in your cab. The only reason to use it is so that you can change the amount of tweeter sound from the amp itself.

- martin


[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1179542' date='Mar 28 2011, 02:25 PM']Yeah, if you use your Ashdown, you'll just be running the main power section, the tweeter power from the head won't be doing anything.[/quote]

[ThomBassmonkey]

[quote name='martindupras' post='1179589' date='Mar 28 2011, 03:04 PM']The only reason to use it is so that you can change the amount of tweeter sound from the amp itself.[/quote]

Don't forget that if you do this, the tweeters won't be drawing power away from your woofers (which I doubt will be a big problem anyway) and you'll have access to the shelving options for the tweeters that the GK heads have (I assume the Fusion has it too, all the RB series do).

[martindupras]

What do you mean by "shelving options"? I have not played with an RB series head, so I don't know. On the Fusion 550, all you have it the tweeter volume knob, the one labelled "Horn Bi-Amp".

- martin

[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1179621' date='Mar 28 2011, 03:30 PM']Don't forget that if you do this, the tweeters won't be drawing power away from your woofers (which I doubt will be a big problem anyway) and you'll have access to the shelving options for the tweeters that the GK heads have (I assume the Fusion has it too, all the RB series do).[/quote]

[ThomBassmonkey]

[quote name='martindupras' post='1179636' date='Mar 28 2011, 03:38 PM']What do you mean by "shelving options"? I have not played with an RB series head, so I don't know. On the Fusion 550, all you have it the tweeter volume knob, the one labelled "Horn Bi-Amp".

- martin[/quote]

Maybe they don't then. On the RB heads, the tweeter has a low shelf and the woofer a high shelf, so you can decide whether or not to send the lows (up to a point, I expect there's still a shelf in there) through the tweeters and the highs through the woofers. It adds a big more versatility to an already very versatile amp.

[ern500evo]

Thanks for all the help guys, i'd probably just leave the 8x10 wiring how it is and see how it sounds i think. I've got time to think about it as like i said in an earlier post i really want to hear an Hartke Kilo in the flesh before i decide what to go for. I have heard some really good things about the GK though so could be a tough call! Interestingly though, my wife's cousin who is also a bass player has just switched from GK to ampeg, which seems strange considering the amount of artists who are going away from ampeg due to the poor build quality of the new stuff.

[martindupras]

Ah, no, that's not on the Fusion. It probably would be nice to have, but I don't feel like I'm missing out.

- martin


[quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='1179691' date='Mar 28 2011, 04:18 PM']Maybe they don't then. On the RB heads, the tweeter has a low shelf and the woofer a high shelf, so you can decide whether or not to send the lows (up to a point, I expect there's still a shelf in there) through the tweeters and the highs through the woofers. It adds a big more versatility to an already very versatile amp.[/quote]

[john eland]

On 27/03/2011 at 13:15, martindupras said:

I thought I'd chip in because I do own and use a Fusion 550.

I'll start by saying that I'm biased because I love it and it's my main head.

For comparison I also own and use an old Trace Elliot 12-band 4x10 combo, and Ashdown Evo II 4x10 combo and a Traynor YBA-200 all-valve head.

Personally, I think the GK head is superior in terms of tone to all of the above. As far as I'm concerned tone comes first, and the GK delivers on that front. I like a very bass-heavy sound but one that is not muffled and not boomy. I also like the sound and the playing feel of valve saturation, and none of my other amps is capable of both the low-end clarity and the great sounding distortion at the same time.

I will make an aside here: I've used the GK Diesel Dawg pedal for years, and have not been able to live without it until I got the Fusion 550. It was partly a quest to have the sound of the Diesel Dawg in an amp "channel" that led me to this particular head.

When I first got the head, I was a little disappointed by the sound of it until I flicked the input switch from "active" to "passive." I only play active basses so I had done that as a matter of course. I never run the amp in "active" mode; even in passive mode the range of gain between the gain knob and the master volume is enough.

There are a "bright" and a "deep" switch which do what you'd expect. I'd say that with them off the amp sounds very true; I have the "deep" switch on all the time and the bright one most of the time; to me they are what gives you the GK sound if that's what you're after.

The 4-band EQ is drastic. I found that even small changes affect the sound a lot. I think this is both really good and really bad. In my opinion, you're not going to be able to make quick EQ adjustments to your sound during a live gig. On the other hand spending some time with the EQ is really worth it. The fact that the motorized knobs retain their settings is key here. If the knobs were not motorised your settings might change slightly when you accidentally touch them in transport (say) but because they retain their settings, one you set a tone it stays that way from gig to gig.

I like the Horn Management feature (a 4-wire speakon lead feeds the 500w amp to your lows and mids drivers and the 50w amp drives only the tweeter.) I have rewired my Tech Soundsystems nd612 that way and that works great. It's subtle, though, because it's only affecting frequencies above 5kHz.

The footswitch allows you to switch between two "channels" which are in effect just two memories of knob settings, and a mute switch. Switching "channels" takes about one second. At first I thought it would be a problem. It isn't. Just don't expect to go from clean to distorted between the verse and the chorus. That's not going to work. The way I use the amp, I have a "modern, clean, deep" sound on one channel and a "warmer, motown-y" sound on the other, which I select per song rather than per song section.

The master volume gets saved for each channel. That is a little bit annoying because if at a gig you're too loud or too quiet, you can only alter the sound that is currently selected, so you have to switch to the other sound to change its master volume. [I'm planning to put a volume pedal in the effects loop precisely for that reason.]

The DI output is brilliant. Most of the ones that I used before are OK, but they don't sound that good. This one does, as far as I'm concerned. Live, if there is a house PA, I feed it pre-EQ and that sounds great (or so I'm told, I'm not in the audience.) For recording I use post-EQ and it sounds like I want it to sound.

One last thing: the pre-amp section is valves, and those valves are in a slightly different gain cascade than other amps, which is partly why it is capable of quite a lot of distortion without damaging your low end. However I wasn't 100% happy with the head when I got it because I felt the distortion wasn't increasingly smoothly and consistently enough as you dialled in more gain. I have had a very helpful chat with Andy (?) of Watford valves about it and he helped me decide on replacement valves. That made a lot of very audible difference to me and it made me very happy.

Feel free to message me privately if you somehow feel that I've missed something in the above.

- martin

I do have to agree with you Martin, I used all kinds of amps over the years, Marshal, Sims Watts, Carlsbro  to Mesa Boogie, when I was looking for a new amp I heard the Fusion 550 head I was blown away by it's awesome sound, I bought it right there, I've never looked back, it reminded me of the Marshall's I used back in the 70's and I loved that sound, I don't go in for the kind of detail you have, but i know what I like, and this amp ticks all the box's.   

[Bigwan]