Class D - diabolical

[ern500evo]

2 minutes ago, la bam said:

 

Superb amp. Really great. One I regret selling, but needed the cash (thanks covid). Big, but not too heavy, but a glorious sound.

And an amp you rarely see,  which is surprising when you consider that everyone who’s ever played through one says that they loved it! 

[la bam]

17 minutes ago, ern500evo said:

And an amp you rarely see,  which is surprising when you consider that everyone who’s ever played through one says that they loved it! 

 

I think gk suffer from not being available to try in many mainstream shops. Plus I think they cost £1k+ when new.

[ern500evo]

3 minutes ago, la bam said:

 

I think gk suffer from not being available to try in many mainstream shops. Plus I think they cost £1k+ when new.

Probably not helped either by horror stories of just how bad Polar UK are at handling any warranty claims. I know GK stuff is very reliable, but I think if I was forking best part of £1k for an amp with motorised knobs, I’d want to know that they’re was decent dealer support in place 

[Lozz196]

Which is something that Ashdown are very good at, any problems and they’re always happy to help.

[ern500evo]

6 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Which is something that Ashdown are very good at, any problems and they’re always happy to help.

Even when their gear was getting a slating, people calling it ‘crash down’ etc, their customer service always got rave reviews. They do seem to have an impeccable customer focus 

[Tmg]

2 hours ago, Osiris said:

I'm more than happy with class D amps and their light weight form factor. Yes, there are some that aren't so great but there are some that are. For the past 5 years or so I've been using a Genzler Magellan and it has all the heft - I might as well be the first to say it - that I need and then some. Very much a deep, clear and weighty sound. I also have the 350 as a backup amp and have gigged and rehearsed with it many times too and have never come close to running out of power or struggling to make the bass be heard, that's playing in a moderately loud pub/function band. Certainly no depth or projection issues at volume. 

 

I think I've posted this before but the most gutless amp that I've had the misfortune to own was a Trace Elliot SMX head through a pair of 15" Trace cabs, back in the early 90's. These amps seem to be regarded as something magical these days but I have no idea why, it was at best a 1 trick pony, virtually no grunt or projection in the low end or the low mids and a seemingly constant spike in the 2-4Khz region that got fatiguing on the ears really quickly. A million tone shaping options on the pre-amp but nothing that really translated through the speakers into anything other than trying to make you sound like a clanky Mark King wannabe, albeit without any noticeable low end in your sound. A truly awful amp, IMO and IME.

 

And a couple of years ago I bought an Ashdown Little Stubby because we all 'know' valves are the best and that I must surely be missing out with my meager class D amps 😀. It was alright but nothing spectacular. It certainly didn't blow me away in the way that the internet had told me it would 😱🤷‍♂️😀. Trouble is that to get it sounding anywhere near what I wanted (classic 70's on the edge of breakup type rock tones) at home, the reason I bought it, you had to push it too hard and loud at to be unusable without annoying the family and the neighbours. But it wasn't loud enough to realistically use in a band context either. I'm sure it's a great amp if you're able to push it without annoying a lot of people around you but I wouldn't describe it as any sort of life changing mystical experience. Certainly nothing to sway me away from my Magellans. 

 

After returning the Little Stubby for a refund I picked up an Ashdown Touring 220 combo for a steal from eBay. It's an all valve pre-amp into (I think) a 220 watt class A/B power section - but I'm happy to be corrected on the technical details if that's not right. It's a much more pleasing amp to my ears than the Little Stubby was and the passive EQ stack is great once you get used to it. And as much as I highly rate the Touring 220 combo, it doesn't do anything, or have more heft or whatever, than my Magellans. 

 

We're all different, YMMV, horses for courses, each to their own, etc. 

Just thought I'd better get that in before the ratting of pitchforks starts 😁

 

[Tmg]

I beg to differ. The Laney DP150 head and cab that you sold me in the 90's must have been the most gutless amp that you've ever owned!🤣

[Mudpup]

5 hours ago, grandad said:

If you're right then I think maybe that touch of compression might make up for that. 

That would have exactly the opposite effect and compound the issue for me - it would squash the dynamics even more. The big old heavy amps keep the dynamics as you wind them up but the class D ones seem to flatten them out

[Osiris]

1 hour ago, Tmg said:

I beg to differ. The Laney DP150 head and cab that you sold me in the 90's must have been the most gutless amp that you've ever owned!🤣

 

Yeah, that was crap too, but it was cheap and very nasty - whereas the Trace rig was around £1200 even back then and had the bass response of a £50 mobile phone. 

[CJPJ]

2 hours ago, la bam said:

 

I think gk suffer from not being available to try in many mainstream shops. Plus I think they cost £1k+ when new.

Funnily enough, I came across this today . . . .https://www.andertons.co.uk/b-stock-bass-guitars/b-stock-:-gallien-krueger-fusion-550-bass-head-repair-116997-tatty-box

 

[ern500evo]

4 minutes ago, CJPJ said:

Funnily enough, I came across this today . . . .https://www.andertons.co.uk/b-stock-bass-guitars/b-stock-:-gallien-krueger-fusion-550-bass-head-repair-116997-tatty-box

 

They really are fantastic amps 

[BassmanPaul]

All of my Class AB power amps have been replaced by Class D units. I have no problems with them in power, tone or 'feel'. 

Edited April 30, 2022 by BassmanPaul

[rhysyjob]

7 hours ago, Ed_S said:

I reckon it's the overall design of an amp that matters - if the designer has a vision for the end result, understands the components they're working with for all they are (and aren't) and knows how to use them intelligently and to best advantage, then the fact that one of those components happens to be a commodity class d power module is neither here nor there. I just wonder how many amps exist for no greater reason than to present something with the company logo on it for sale in a particular area of the market, and how much they might unfairly sway opinion on the underlying technology if they fail to inspire.

 

 

At home I actively prefer Diet Coke, but down the pub I find all Coke tastes roughly the same. 🙂 

Clever. 👍

But it was down the pub that I finally fell out of love with digital switching Coke. 😊

[Bunion]

I have a handbox WD100 all tube amp for use with my Bag end cabs but I also have a lightweight rig with my Trickfish class D bullhead 1k and a Greenboy fearless F112 which although different sounds amazing. 
I tend to put the passive with flats through the tubes and the stingray/ACG through the Trickfish as they have the active pre for colour. 

Edited April 30, 2022 by Bunion

[alexa3020]

Class A/B amps for me due to a bad experience with a tc bq 500 class D. 
it just didn’t feel right at volume and that put me off class D.

That said Joe Dart does alright with the little mark head & mb410

[Lowend soldier]

On 29/04/2022 at 17:58, rhysyjob said:

The emergence of class D heads had me very excited! 800 watts in small box light box. No more lugging around huge transformers, great!

 

Except apart from the easy carry the rest of the story has been pretty erm stinky poo!!

 

Despite 8 years, five heads and every Eq patten under the sun. I simply cannot get on with the sound at volume. 😬

 

I”ve tried TC Electronics (BH 550) Aguilar (TH500) Tech 21 (VT) Markbass (Tube 800) and finally Mesa Boogie (D800) and no matter if you put a valve in front of them, a compressor before them, a neo or a ceramic speaker from them, or summon a religious cult behind them. They sound too direct at volume to my ears.

 

I tried, but I’m going back to my Class A/B happy place! 😊

1000% agree. Just brought another. Up for sale already. Can get a decent sound at lower volume as soon as i touch the volume its gone and it cant be dialled back in. It just doesnt clean up the way i like.

I think it depends alot on your desired sound. Alot of cats nowadays are tone monsters. Some have almost no bass in the signal. These amps are ideal for them.  Too my ears they just get boomier but boxier sounding.

I like the old school rounded low end oomph from the older suitcases. There is actually a science behind it and it lies with the power supply not the wattage.

[Waddycall]

11 hours ago, BassmanPaul said:

All of my Class AB power amps have been replaced by Class D units. I have no problems with them in power, tone or 'feel'. 

Could there be a difference between the quality of class d technology used in a large rack mount power amp and that squeezed into a tiny bass head?

[Wilco]

18 hours ago, Osiris said:

I'm more than happy with class D amps and their light weight form factor. Yes, there are some that aren't so great but there are some that are. For the past 5 years or so I've been using a Genzler Magellan and it has all the heft - I might as well be the first to say it - that I need and then some. Very much a deep, clear and weighty sound. I also have the 350 as a backup amp and have gigged and rehearsed with it many times too and have never come close to running out of power or struggling to make the bass be heard, that's playing in a moderately loud pub/function band. Certainly no depth or projection issues at volume. 

 

I think I've posted this before but the most gutless amp that I've had the misfortune to own was a Trace Elliot SMX head through a pair of 15" Trace cabs, back in the early 90's. These amps seem to be regarded as something magical these days but I have no idea why, it was at best a 1 trick pony, virtually no grunt or projection in the low end or the low mids and a seemingly constant spike in the 2-4Khz region that got fatiguing on the ears really quickly. A million tone shaping options on the pre-amp but nothing that really translated through the speakers into anything other than trying to make you sound like a clanky Mark King wannabe, albeit without any noticeable low end in your sound. A truly awful amp, IMO and IME.

 

And a couple of years ago I bought an Ashdown Little Stubby because we all 'know' valves are the best and that I must surely be missing out with my meager class D amps 😀. It was alright but nothing spectacular. It certainly didn't blow me away in the way that the internet had told me it would 😱🤷‍♂️😀. Trouble is that to get it sounding anywhere near what I wanted (classic 70's on the edge of breakup type rock tones) at home, the reason I bought it, you had to push it too hard and loud at to be unusable without annoying the family and the neighbours. But it wasn't loud enough to realistically use in a band context either. I'm sure it's a great amp if you're able to push it without annoying a lot of people around you but I wouldn't describe it as any sort of life changing mystical experience. Certainly nothing to sway me away from my Magellans. 

 

After returning the Little Stubby for a refund I picked up an Ashdown Touring 220 combo for a steal from eBay. It's an all valve pre-amp into (I think) a 220 watt class A/B power section - but I'm happy to be corrected on the technical details if that's not right. It's a much more pleasing amp to my ears than the Little Stubby was and the passive EQ stack is great once you get used to it. And as much as I highly rate the Touring 220 combo, it doesn't do anything, or have more heft or whatever, than my Magellans. 

 

We're all different, YMMV, horses for courses, each to their own, etc. 

Just thought I'd better get that in before the ratting of pitchforks starts 😁

I’ve got a Magellan 800 and it’s a stunning piece of gear all round. Totally agree on the ‘heft’ - night and day vs my TC head. 

[Merton]

As with everything there are good and bad implementations. My Glockenklang Blue Rock, for example, sounds bloody amazing even at war volume. No loss of “heft”, no thinness to the tone. It’s in the execution of the preamp and power stage.

Think back to the early Ashdown examples - the Little Giants I think? They suffered from a weak preamp. Ashdown fixed that with the MiBass series then moved on even further with the RM series.

 

The other thing to remember is the power amp class (A/B, D etc) is only part of the story. It’s the power supply where a lot of the magic can happen as that’s what needs to deliver to allow the power amp section to do its thing. The SMPS designs in many class D heads work differently from the traditional toroidal transformers etc but again, it’s in the design and implementation. Trace Elliot apparently used to use the big PSUs even for the lower rated amplifiers, which is one of the reasons those lower rated units could continue to deliver clean lower as they had headroom in the supply rails. Then you have the previously-mentioned Class A/B Markbass LM heads; they will have an SMPS for their power supply otherwise they wouldn’t fit in that box size - but clearly it’s been designed to work well

 

The newer generation ICE modules definitely felt to me to be a better design than the earlier ones, but my Glock uses something else entirely (I can’t remember what!) which is slammingly good.

[andy67]

On 30/04/2022 at 07:06, Newfoundfreedom said:

I have the Bugera Veyron, which is probably the cheapest 'powerful' class D on the market. 

 

Press the low boost, and high boost buttons, dial in a little bit of the built in compressor, get the mids where you want them, leave everything else around 12 o'clock, and the thing sounds absolutely sublime! 

I have the tube version, it is now my go to amp for practice and gigs. They are indeed sublime even monstrous in volume and tone.

[Woodinblack]

3 minutes ago, andy67 said:

I have the tube version, it is now my go to amp for practice and gigs. They are indeed sublime even monstrous in volume and tone.

 

And remarkably cheap!

[ezbass]

I was going leap in and promote my Class D, Phil Jones Flightcase (which is marvellous BTW) but live, I use it with a PB300, powered cab for more oomph, which, upon checking, is Class A/B (still super light though). Therefore, I have nothing to add except confusion. 

[BassmanPaul]

12 hours ago, Waddycall said:

Could there be a difference between the quality of class d technology used in a large rack mount power amp and that squeezed into a tiny bass head?

A. lot of Class D amps use a drop in module so the differences could be the pre-amp circuitry mated to them. 

[Newfoundfreedom]

8 hours ago, andy67 said:

I have the tube version, it is now my go to amp for practice and gigs. They are indeed sublime even monstrous in volume and tone.

 

I really need to get myself the tube version. Last time I looked they're was a good few weeks wait on Thomann. 

[rhysyjob]

1 hour ago, BassmanPaul said:

A. lot of Class D amps use a drop in module so the differences could be the pre-amp circuitry mated to them. 

Absolutely. The power amps are Full Frequency Flat Response (FRFR) which means all the tone colouration comes from the preamp. Depending on whether this has been lifted from

a pedal or worked as bespoke for the amp may make all the difference……