Ashdown MiBass 2.0 1x10 combo

[JapanAxe]

Mr Axe junior is about to start gigging in a blues trio in Madrid, and he needs a powerful rig that is portable enough to lug around on the Metro along with his Hohner Jack and a few cables. His budget was €500, which I thought was unrealistic until I came across a deal on Anderton's website - Ashdown MiBass 2.0 combo for £379! It is rated at 400W RMS into 4 ohm and weighs only 15kg. Having moved on from an ABM rig about 18 months ago, and read mixed comments on the original MiBass, I was a bit dubious, but while he was over in the UK we took a trip down there to try one out.

Well I was pretty impressed. I took my G&L 5-er for reference, and I had no problem in getting the sort of sound I favour. The amp has a lot of mid-range 'push', but you can turn up the bass EQ without suddenly running out of headroom, and there is plenty of top end available too. It's very hard to assess the volume of an amp in a small room (Anderton's bass basement) but I could still hear it upstairs with the door shut! I came to the conclusion that you would hear this over a drummer provided he wasn't going bananas. It is a 1x10 after all (with a concentric HF cone), but it I reckon it will be fine for smaller bars, and will be DI'd in larger ones.

For comparison we also tried -
MiBass 2.0 head with 1x12 cab - slightly bigger sound, but the cab on its own is heavier and bulkier than the combo;
TC BG250 2x8 combo - even more portable than the Ashdown, but far less volume available; and
Markbass Little Mark 1x15 combo (can't remember full details) - would have gone for this except that it is a large and unwieldy cube that you wouldn't want to be dragging on and off the tube!

Mr Axe junior booked the amp (well packed in its original carton) as hold luggage on his return flight, which worked out much cheaper than shipping it separately. The first proof of the pudding will be band rehearsal next Friday. I'll keep y'all posted.

[eude]

Nice one, looking forward to hearing how you get on.
I recently bought the MiBass 2.0 head and 2 x Mi10 cabs, and so far I'm VERY pleased with it.
I'm not in any danger of trying it all out in a live situation at the moment, but I'm confident it'll be more than fine

Eude

[JapanAxe]

Well that didn't go well. 90 mins into Mr Axe jnr's first rehearsal with the combo, it gave up the ghost. Further investigation revealed that the amp itself is fine, but the speaker works only very intermittently. I am told it was being played at or near full tilt, so maybe the speaker is trashed - it is rated at 250W and the 400W amp would be expected to put out about that much into an 8ohm load. He is going to get one of the rehearsal room bods to take a look at it. We are hoping it is something simple like a loose connection.

The Sale of Goods / warranty route is a bit of a non-starter because of the cost of getting the thing back to Blighty. If it [i]is[/i] Donald Ducked, his options would be to replace the driver with a more powerful unit (although there would be no way of knowing how well it would match the cab), or extract the MiBass head and acquire a different light-weight cab with a higher power rating. For the moment though, he is understandably gutted.

[gjones]

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1398466278' post='2434540']
Well that didn't go well. 90 mins into Mr Axe jnr's first rehearsal with the combo, it gave up the ghost. Further investigation revealed that the amp itself is fine, but the speaker works only very intermittently. I am told it was being played at or near full tilt, so maybe the speaker is trashed - it is rated at 250W and the 400W amp would be expected to put out about that much into an 8ohm load. He is going to get one of the rehearsal room bods to take a look at it. We are hoping it is something simple like a loose connection.

The Sale of Goods / warranty route is a bit of a non-starter because of the cost of getting the thing back to Blighty. If it [i]is[/i] Donald Ducked, his options would be to replace the driver with a more powerful unit (although there would be no way of knowing how well it would match the cab), or extract the MiBass head and acquire a different light-weight cab with a higher power rating. For the moment though, he is understandably gutted.
[/quote]

A word in the right ear might get you the help you need http://basschat.co.uk/user/11294-ashdown-engineering/

[JapanAxe]

[quote name='gjones' timestamp='1398479617' post='2434590']


A word in the right ear might get you the help you need http://basschat.co.uk/user/11294-ashdown-engineering/
[/quote]

Cheers!

[mike_b]

Not sure if you did manage to get this sorted but there has been a known issue with the MiBass heads, mine gave up the ghost too, get in contact with Andertons and they'll be able to fix it for you as I bought mine from them too

[JapanAxe]

[quote name='mike_b' timestamp='1405067456' post='2498418']
Not sure if you did manage to get this sorted but there has been a known issue with the MiBass heads, mine gave up the ghost too, get in contact with Andertons and they'll be able to fix it for you as I bought mine from them too
[/quote]
Well there is a bit of an update as it happens. I have just returned from a long weekend in Madrid, and took along a test meter and a soldering iron. First off, the 'wrong' internal speaker had been fitted, namely a 250W 4ohm driver. There are obviously 2 problems with this: (1) too much amp power for the internal speaker, and (2) too low an impedance if an extension cab is added. Second, there was an intermittent short in the internal speaker cable. I replaced the cable, and the combo now works fine (although I wouldn't want to push it to gig levels).

I have been in touch with Lee at Ashdown through this forum, and it is a bit of a mystery to him as to where the 4ohm speaker has come from - not least as one of the stickers on it proclaims it to be a 12-inch unit! He has very kindly offered to send out an 8ohm replacement, for which I am very grateful.

It is testament to the roadworthiness of Ashdown kit that the 250W internal speaker has survived a 320W pasting unscathed; and that the head has undergone repeated shorts across the speaker output and still works fine. That's sturdiness of Peavey-esque proportions!