thisisswanbon

I had the same dilemma! The tube won out for me in the end though, the EQ on those AG1000 amps looks really useful though! How is it?

I thought the mid points seemed a bit high, with the high mid especially encroaching on treble territory... seems to work well though!

So I recently had a mid gig breakdown (https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/468243-mid-song-catastrophe/) which put the fear of god into me In the end, I bought a used Behringer BDI21 as back up for a great price locally, and pulled the trigger on a Mark Bass LM vintage 1000! First off, I must admit that I've forever been a class D naysayer, I'd tried various class D offerings from TC, GK, Ampeg and Aguilar but bought into the whole "class D lacks 'heft'" arguement (although I thought the Aggie sounded great through a pals Aggie cabs). There was likely an element of listening with my eyes and putting too much stock in other's opinions on local pages etc, but I always went back to my type A/B GK1001RBII. Anyway... Long story longer, I decide it's time to retire the 18 year old GK, and when looking on the standard online seller pages, 90% seemed to be class D! I'd forever been buying preamps and compressors to try and give the GK a bit of warmth, so figured a tube pre would be the way to go. After a bit of limited reading, I took a punt on the Lm vintage, and 2 days later it was here! Got to use it in anger last night, after 2 plug and play festival sets on the Friday night and Sunday afternoon. First thing to note was it held its own and more against a full p.a. set up with the gain at 11 and volume at 10 o clock, to the point I had to turn down. There's some serious warmth and weight behind every note. I was using a Nordy Acinonyx bass with both pick ups parallel, and an array of synth and octave effects. The EQ points were a concern beforehand (68hz Bass, 400hz Low mid, 2k hz High mid, 10k hz high), but with the bass and low mids boosted it was a really musical sound. This amp head has been labelled on forums as the markbass head for people who don't think they like markbass, and while I'm fully aware that it could be the honeymoon period, I think that's a pretty bang on description from early findings to be honest! 🤌

Great board! Do you find the ultra wave and aftershock, and ultrawave and C4 overlap?

Much appreciated Jack, thanks for the offer... I've decided to stick with my analogue set up and amp for the now. I'll drop you a message about your stomp though! I'd love to sell you my cab mate, unfortunately I haven't got the money for the dream cab to replace it 😆

Thanks for all of the info! I've tried the speakon, and FX loop fix but alas it made no difference... I've had it repaired a couple of times in the past for dry joints and scratchy pots, so I've decided it's time to upgrade and have a Mark Bass Little Mark vintage 1000 coming. I've tried to warm the GK up for years, so seems a good time to change tack.

So I suffered my first ever real amp issue mid gig tonight... Playing a cracking wedding, right in the middle of "Omen" by The Prodigy, there's suddenly no bass! I don't use FOH support as my amp set up has always more than coped, so there was suddenly NOTHING... My set up is a GK 1001RBII into a barefaced big twin II. I turn around and the blue light is shining away nicely. I do the obvious thing, I make sure my tuner hadn't turned itself on, then I make sure the cable hasn't been kicked out, then I make sure the output cable to my amp hasn't been kicked out. Still nothing. I check my cable at the amp, still nothing. I figure it must be my bass so at this point I'm panicking, so I mine the rest of thep tune. Song finishes and I rush to change bass, but still nothing! Then while I'm franticly scratching my head, our keys player starts the next song. Another song of mining and I'm no further forward. I shout to the singer to stall while I try a fresh cable, direct from bass to amp and it's still dead. Next up it's straight to FOH, so I run over with my cable and plug in. The signal is too weak! If only I hadn't sold my two notes le bass a few weeks ago 🤦‍♂️. In the end, I crank my ampeg opto comp, and crank my hot tubes side of the hot wax while turning the drive down for what can only be discribed as the most flabby yet farty and downright offensive bass tone I've ever heard. no idea what's gone on with the GK; but at 18 years old I think it's served me well. Now do I look at a new amp, or sell my cab and give the modelling stuff another go 🤔

I'd assumed it was a data cable, but checking the cable I use for my pc set up would probably be a good shout!

Hey Quatschmacher, Yeah both app and pedal are latest versions. I'll drop them an email. The app just doesn't seem to acknowledge that the pedal is plugged in so doesn't show me anything that's on the pedal, my phone does though.

Having a couple of C4 issues, anyone came across these? 1. There is no two way communication between phone and C4 via usb (C4 running 1.21) 2. Using SA tap tempo to control my tremelo on a patch for bonkers by Dizzee rascal; the tap tempo doesn't seem to track what I'm punching in, sometimes it jumps by 20 BPM or more, and I'm not THAT bad with timing. Issue I have is our drummer is over excitable, and comes in a good 10~15bpm faster than the intro sample, and when I tap the new tempo in it doesn't just speed up the tremelo, it seems to restart it and puts it out of sync with the rest of the band before I can get it back under control. I've tried setting it to restart when triggered and not, but no difference. I thought the tap tempo would just slow it down or speed it up in real time 🤯

Thanks for the shout, Andy!

I understand what you mean about the mids... I always thought my barefaced big twin II and Tonehammer 500 was great until I tried a friends Aguilar DB112 set up (Tonehammer 500 and 2 x DB115). I couldn't believe the mid response on his cabs, it was a lightbulb monent! Still use my barefaced due to funding, but I'm less than stellar on it. Doesn't answer your question, but for a vintage sound I'd be looking elsewhere. What about the Aguilar SL range?

What a belter set up! Those Jive Pre amp pedals look tremendous from what I've seen, Gregor at Basstheworld did a really good video on them.

Thanks man! I can see why your rock band don't want you doing synth stuff, but you're totally missing out! I have more fun playing synth stuff then the normal bass stuff! You'll always hear the arguement of "all you need is a bass, a cable and an amp"... But I couldn't do a lot of this stuff with that set up 🤣

Thanks Lewis! I've tried absolutely all sorts including going the helix route... but the cheaper analogue EHX stuff does it for me to be honest. The octabvre mini is a dream, I use it solo'd for a fair chunk of our set. Between that and the C4, I seldom use a dry bass sound. My C4 covers filters, a more bass heavy sub octave than the octabvre, tremelo and saw wave stuff as well as some FM synth stuff... it's marvellous! Our latest promo (hopefully below). Was done first half C4, second half octabvre.

Far less exciting than the other boards on this thread, but it's taken a lot of swapping and changing (and pedals being moved on at a loss) to come to this set up, and I'm finally happy (for now!)

Those hyperdrive's are fantastic! I had one as an always on drive for years. I met James Lomenzo around that time and couldn't stop talking about how tremendous it was. Currently getting my distortion and drive from a EHX Sovtek Big Muff Deluxe and Hot Wax... the amount of options available between these two is fantastic, especially the Sovtek. Between the clean blend, footswitchable-sweepable-active mids and noise gate, it's just a well thought out, fantastic thing and all analogue. Form factor for both is a bit huge, but worth the real estate IMO.

I Tried, but the modulation aspect always got the best of me, I always found the chorus etc used to take too much away so it wouldn't sit right. Sure I would've got there with a better chorus. I get a great synthy bass sound from my EHX Sovtek deluxe with the mids engaged if that counts? I also may be cheating, but I feed my Octabvre Mini into a saw wave C4 patch with clean mix 60/40 gives some filthy results!

Also interested in this... question to all of the folks who use these to go straigh to FOH though; do you also use drives? If so, how do you tame them?! Is there an alternative to using cab sims?

I bought one as a cheap replacement of a broken Cog T16, it was alright... but didn't cut the mustard as a solo'd octave down oc2 type thing (I'd read several reviews to the contrary). Can do some great octave stuff though, they're far more than just a standard octave pedal.

How on earth do they put things like this out and make any sort of money?! Surely they'd have to sell at massive volume for any sort of return... not that this matters to you of course! 😁 Congrats on what is hopefully bargain of the century, I hope it sounds great... but even if it doesn't, 10 quid!

I've had a similar issue in store to be fair with an EBMM sterling 5. It had been in the shop for a while, so they discounted it by around £300. I snapped it up, foolishly without checking it properly. Got it home to find the nut had been damaged and looked like it'd roughly filed. Their distributer gave me a couple of sets of strings to make the issue go away which I accepted. Then the phantom coil in the pick up stopped working, so every 1/3 times you plugged it in, series sounded thin, parallel sounded thinner, and single coil didn't exist. Seemed to correct itself if you pushed the pick up until you got an audible click. Had it sent for repair 2 times to come back unfixed. Third time I told them I wanted the bass exchanged. At this point, they couldn't honour my previous deal and would only give store credit. The bass I wanted was now out of budget and money I otherwise wouldn't have spent was tied up in store credit. Ended up putting a bit more money down on a Sandberg, which I heavily modified to suite my needs before moving on at a fair sized loss. The most I'll buy from PMT now are accessories and lower cost pedals.

While my barefaced cab hasn't caught fire, I did have an issue with one of the cones sparking and causing a loud crackle when I used any sort of low frequency effect (oc2 etc). Contacted Alex who basically said I was wrong and it couldn't be. (I wasn't, it was.) Took it to a local electronics wizard who found a break in one of the driver connectors; meaning only 1 cone had been working. Said it had to have been there from point of manufacture (bought this second hand), and as the low frequencies were physically vibrating the connector it was catching and causing an arc and the broken cable crackling. Emailed Alex to let him know the findings, but no response 🤷🏻‍♂️. Safe to say my next cab won't be a barefaced...

I'll definitely check them out in that case! How does it compare to your Ashdown "heft" wise? I'm not sure I completely believe in the A/B vs Class D thing, but after having a few class D I have reverted back to my 20 year old GK 1001RBII head.