Ashdown Little Giant 350

[Machines]

[b][size=5]Ashdown Little Giant 350[/size][/b]



The eagerly awaited, and also long awaited Ashdown Little Giant is finally here. It was announced by Ashdown on their website in February last year, and has taken nearly 12 months to get on-shore and into our shops. Many people are very interested in these following the somewhat ill-fated Superfly series, and these Little Giants are very much based upon them in form factor, but inside it's all very different.

2 models are available, the green 350w and orange 1000w version, it is the former I shall be reviewing here. Usually Ashdown would supply the head, however they're busy with NAMM at the moment and I didn't want to wait, so here we have one purchased by yorick only a couple of weeks ago from PMT, and virtually unused.

First impressions are that when sat on top of my ABM - the LG350 is tiny. It's 1/3 of the width of my head, however it is just as deep at 31cm. It weighs in at a paltry 3kg, not too much more than your average medium size multi-fx pedal. The head is satin black all over apart from the front of the head, where the green front is what appears to be a fairly thick sticker (with holes for pots/sliders etc). It isn't airbrushed on like I expected, but does seem fairly hardy and I wasn't able to find an edge that may start to peel over time. Most noticeable is the 'jolly green giant' next the output control, he looks a little annoyed - probably at being made to stand there in his pants.

Atop the amp is an 60mm fan and many ventilation holes, this for me seems a little risky, as foreign objects generally land on top of amps (liquids especially) and a normal amp may survive this as there is no way into the electronics, the LG350 would most certainly expire. Other amps that seem to negate this include the MarkBass LMII and Genz-Benz Shuttle 3.0, the LMII having one small rear fan and the Shuttle requiring no cooling function at all. I still wouldn't take a swimming test of either of these, but I could see the chances of their survival being higher. Naturally, all this can be negated by keeping any liquids away from your rig.

Going onto the controls, we have quite a lot of things going on. There are a mixture of different controls, knobs, sliders, buttons and switches galore ! There is a single input with active/passive switch (which i'm sure I don't need to explain), along with 2 EQ presets we can impose, those being 'DEEP' and 'SHAPE', more on those later. The gain knob is lined to an LED display which has the same function as Ashdown's infamous VU meter, going from green/yellow/red for monitoring clipping. Moving to the right we have a somewhat confusing array of sliders and knobs. Initially is a bass control slider which is set to 100hz. Next is a low-mid parametric control, which will change the freq from 180Hz to 1.6kHz, with the slider for this knob being to the right (each parametric EQ control's slider is always to the right) We then have a high-mid control with a scope of 750Hz to 7.5kHz and finished up with a 3rd parametric control for 3.5kHz to 10kHz.

The controls here were not intuitive for me, however I haven't used a parametric EQ before. The last feature is the power on/off switch with a red LED, I haven't decided yet if would prefer it at with the ports on the back. On the back panel is pretty much all most of us should need. There's dual jack/speak-on connectors. By this I mean you can use either a normal jack or a speak-on connector in each port, this is pretty handy - I wish my ABM had them. The head is 350w @ 4ohms, and probably around 200w @ 8ohms. There is also a DI port with pre/post EQ option, F/X Send/Return and Line In/Out.

Time to plug it in.

Startup is delayed by 2 seconds to prevent popping (shutdown is the same). I ran this head into my Ashdown MAG210T cab, EQ flat. Set the preamp level to my Lakland so it would only just clip if I pushed it and turned the volume up. Soundwise it's as you want with the EQ disabled - clean and untainted. The volume control could be turned up more than I would have expected before it felt reasonably loud. My ABM seems to have most of it's volume before half way, of course this is no indication of an amps power. The preshape button does as it does on the ABM series, boost the lows and highs, and scoop the low mids. This can leave the instrument a little undefined but I think works brilliantly for using a pick, especially in a hard rock or metal band. The 'DEEP' function adds a bass boost alone, I felt that when used as well as the PRESHAPE this was a little overpowering and didn't sound as good as either on their own.

The parametric EQ controls were interesting to play with. They do indeed change the frequency as advertised, but the pots do not feel linear. There is little audible change until half way on most of the knobs, and then a lot of freqency change is heard, much in the same way a volume or tone pot on a bass seems to do more at one end than the other. This for me means you can not assume that half way between the labelled freq ranges is the actual half way point between the frequencies, you would have to use your ears alone to determine this. It was possible to get some very good sounds using this system, there was little I could not do with the right tweaking.

[size=3][b]Summary:[/b][/size]
[b]Build Quality[/b] - Well made chassis, as solid as other lightweight heads in the category. No noticeble corners cut.
[b]Practicality[/b] - Lightweight but not as compact (in depth) as some other comparative heads, but still will (just) fit in a gig bag pocket.
[b]Sound[/b] - Sounds good clean and has plenty of sounds available with the parametric EQ. Perhaps not as much output as I was expecting for this power rating.
[b]Value[/b] - Can be found online for £200, it's the lowest price of it's competitors (Genz Benz Shuttle 3.0, MarkBass LM250 + LMII). However with the LG1000 being only £100 more and essentually 3x the power, it may be a more sensible option for most. If you just want a cheaper backup head then the LG350 may suit you well.

Many thanks to yorick for lending the amp to me .

[Musky]

Nice review.

Did you have any chance to crank it up to see how loud it would run? I'm a little concerned over some of the reports in the amp section that it seems a little quiet for the wattage.

Edited January 24, 2009 by Musky

[Machines]

Not at 4 ohms i'm afraid. I did take it to practise with the intention of running it into an Ampeg 810 at practise, but we were in another room with a flight cased ABM500/810 and the speaker lead was only 4 inches long (before it disappeared into the flightcase). Compared to my ABM (325w) through the MAG it is definitely quieter.

[bassmansky]

good review.think the lg1000 will be more popular tho, as you said for another £100 you get 3x more power.i would like to see ashdown bring out more 4ohm cabs especially a 2x10.they could do a 4ohm version of their classic neo 2x10 cab like they do the 4x10.this would give us more of a choice if we wanted to stick to an all ashdown rig!(other makes available!)

[yorick]

I'll be running this at 4 ohms tomorrow at gig volumes, competing with two guitarists at rehearsal, so i'll get back to you.

[Musky]

[quote name='yorick' post='390568' date='Jan 24 2009, 06:33 PM']I'll be running this at 4 ohms tomorrow at gig volumes, competing with two guitarists at rehearsal, so i'll get back to you.[/quote]

Cheers. I'd be interested to know whether it keeps getting louder as you wind the volume up, or whether it runs out of steam with the volume control past 2 o'clock like some other amps do.

[Linus27]

Nice review. I am looking at one of these to replace my MAG 300H. Not sure if this LG would be better or my MAG 300H would be better.

[Machines]

If size/weight aren't an issue for you i'd stick with the MAG .

[Linus27]

[quote name='Machines' post='392395' date='Jan 27 2009, 08:41 AM']If size/weight aren't an issue for you i'd stick with the MAG .[/quote]


Why do you say that? Just interested in your reasons why.

[Machines]

In terms of power it won't be an improvement - in terms of sound there probably isn't much change either since it has similar functionality to the MAG (bar the parametric EQ). Thus the only major thing it can offer you that's an improvement is portability.

[Linus27]

[quote name='Machines' post='392535' date='Jan 27 2009, 11:08 AM']In terms of power it won't be an improvement - in terms of sound there probably isn't much change either since it has similar functionality to the MAG (bar the parametric EQ). Thus the only major thing it can offer you that's an improvement is portability.[/quote]

OK, fair enough, thank you for your help. No real point in me getting one to be honest. It does look bloody nice though. I may still get one at a later date as a backup if I ever need one.

[MB1]

MB1.
Great review Mac!....sounds like "Theres Orangey!"....might have a little bit more....Yo Ho Ho!

[steve_fletch78]

Hey all - this is my second post ever!

After reading this thread I popped down to PMT Birmingham and checked out the LG. I have a heavy SWR rig (750x, Goliath 3 410 and Son Of Bertha 115).and would really like to downscale.

My impressions of the Little Giant were not great to be honest. I tried out the 1000Watt version into an Ashdown 4x10 8Ohm cab. TO me the Ashdown pre amp is just like my old Trace ones (I've had an SM130 and VA400 in the past - 7band and 12 band EQ respectively) in that without the pre shape switched in it sounds awful. No clarity whatsoever. Unfortunately it seems they have ballsed up the gain stage for the preshape on the LG. On pressing the shape button the tone improves but pre amp volume is cut dramatically. Like many other reviewers on this thread - I couldn't get the pre amp to go anywhere near the red (with the shops US passive Jazz bass), although you might be able to with some 18v active bad boy maybe?
Further bad news...power amp stage,,,many people has questioned the linearity of the master out pot, well I think your suspicions are justified. At half way round we got a reasonable amount of volume and at Vmax - well only a bit more volume... Good effort basschat cynics.

Build quality....where to start. All the main pots (input gain, freq' select for EQ and output) felt fine, but all the other switch gear and slider are terrible. Won't last ten minutes in a gig bag (which seems to be the idea of the sales pitch). It'd need to be racked this adding bulk and weight - and as others have already commented the it's narrow but very deep - so you'll end up with a weird beard flight case for this one I'm afraid. In terms of weight - it's amazing, but the build quality is very low rent.

For me the only good thing is the price. PMT were doing them for c.£285. If we forget the 1000 watts and consider it as 660 watts (into two 8 ohm cabs) then that's pretty good. But I'm sure that unless you're super careful with it then it's going to get broken pretty quickly.

Ratings:

Sound: 5
Build Quality: 3
Weight: 9
Cost::9

Which equates to it's cheap and it'slight but it's crappily built and the sounds a bit naff.

Also to clarify:
LG1000 will give 2 x 500watts into 2 x 4ohm loads, which equates to roughly 2 x 330 watts into 2 x 8ohm loads.
LG350 will give 1 x 350 watts into 1 x 4ohm load which equates to 1 x 220 watts into 1 x 8ohm load

No bridging so it's pretty tricky to get the full 1000 watts out of it. I wonder if you could bridge with some after market trickery - any one good at electronics???

An 4 ohm load can be two 8 ohm cabs run in parallel. SO if you were a psychopath you could run 4 8ohm cabs off this sucker.

[Terapeut]

How loud is it? the 1000 version
is it good enough, loud enough, to be used on gigs?

[Stylon Pilson]

[quote name='Terapeut' post='580373' date='Aug 25 2009, 04:10 PM']How loud is it? the 1000 version
is it good enough, loud enough, to be used on gigs?[/quote]

Depends what cab you put it with, and what kind of gigs you are doing.

S.P.

[steven444]

nice informative review

[Old_Ben]

Hey Guys
I've been using a LG350 for the last 7 months from brand new, I play it with a Warwick 411 4 x 10 cabinet speaker. I have found that this amp is very unreliable. The fan in it seems to just stop working and never cuts in when the amp gets too hot. Then the amp's safety features come on and cut the sound on the amp until it has cooled down. This has happened to me live, twice. I have had it repaired twice and am now going to replace it with something else.

When used in conjunction with a PA this amp is very very handy, you don't need to run it too high and there is the DI on the back which plugs straight in and your volume can be controlled from the sound desk and not put too much strain on your amp, in this situation it would be a very good back up amp, however don't rely on it when your playing a small venue and you have to compete with the other musicians, the amp gets over worked and can cut out. It usually lasts about 50 minutes before this happens though, so if your doing smaller sets then it should last you but I wouldn't take the chance again.