Tonehammer bass response

[stevie]

I've had a Tonehammer 500 amp for a little while and really like it. However, I have the impression that the amp has a baked-in low end boost at, say, around 50Hz. I 'm just going from memory here, as I sold my LMIII at the same time as I acquired the Aguilar and haven't been able to do any direct comparisons.

I've never heard anyone mentioning this before, and I haven't seen any frequency response measurements of this amp anywhere. But I'm curious. Thoughts?

[Beer of the Bass]

Have Bass Gear magazine ever reviewed the Tonehammer? It might be worth checking, as they often measure the frequency response of amps and include the graphs with their review. That seems like a surprisingly low frequency to be boosting, since there are other amps which start rolling off around there. You'd think it would be asking a lot of the speakers!

Edited January 11, 2016 by Beer of the Bass

[stevie]

I did look for a Bass Gear Magazine review and couldn't find anything - it's the first place I looked. Yes, adding a slight low end boost would stress the speakers more but it would also make the amp sound "fatter", especially when partnered with a lot of today's smaller speaker cabs. I can understand why Aguilar might choose to "voice" their amp a bit differently to make it stand out from the competition. I don't have a problem with that at all, if that is in fact what they've done.

Edited January 11, 2016 by stevie

[JTUK]

If they did that I would expect someone to have flagged it as a power soak, tbh.

I recently got mine out of storage and found I liked it a lot.after I crossed ref'd it with my current choice
I even though about putting the TH in front of the new amp...but decided this was silly overkill and
and i just worked through the bass and EQ again.

This was caused by a new bass addition to the 'quiver' and it is asking quite a few different questions now..

Sometimes it is good to have to rethink a whole lot of stuff... rather than stay comfy..?

I also demo'd the amp for someone else and found this new 'perspective' useful as I had
to find what 'they' wanted as oppsoed to knowing what I wanted.

I still think they are very good amps at their pricepoint tho... and you need to spend quite a bit more
to see much better returns..

[ambient]

It doesn't go very high, I know that.

I find Talkbass to be an excellent repository of info on things like this. I'm pretty certain there will be a Tone Hammer thread with several hundred pages.

[chris_b]

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1452526540' post='2950813']
Have Bass Gear magazine ever reviewed the Tonehammer?
[/quote]

No.

Sadly, surprisingly Dave Boonshoft declined their request for an amp to review.

Conspiracy theorists might have a field day, but if I think an amp sounds good (and this one sounds better than most) then I don't care what's under the covers.

[wateroftyne]

Dunno if this TB post helps - there's probably more in the thread somewhere.

http://www.talkbass.com/threads/aguilar-official-tone-hammer-500-3-8lbs-500w-megathread.717712/page-92#post-13429280

[stevie]

Now that's interesting WoT. I just wasn't prepared to wade through 500 pages of guff to find the good stuff (there is good stuff on Talkbass, but the signal-to-noise ratio is ridiculous). It looks like the frequency response is mildly tailored, with a broadband 1/2dB rise centred at 200Hz. It depends how you look at it. It's +/- 1dB from 40 to 9kHz (ignoring the Gain knob). That's not really what I'm hearing, but you can't really argue with the measurements.

[Lozz196]

Must admit no matter how else I eq my Tonehammer the bass is in general at midday. Plenty enough there. On a very big stage I might push it round to about 1 o`clock if not going FOH, but that`s all.