Al Krow

My thanks to @Dad3353 for 'refreshing' this old thread so that the earlier posts are easier for everyone to read. So 5 years on from my initial post - I'd still be happy to recommend a Markbass Combo given the quality of the product (the AC 121 Lite did me proud over 4 years), but this time around I'd likely jump for the newer Marcus Miller CMD 102 500. The MM series seem to have nailed the EQ centre points, which were my only real gripe with the older LM3 based combos. If you want amazing value for money then the TC BG250 series, is worth a look - heard one being played with a MTD bass and a full jazz brass band outdoors today and it sounded really good! I was genuinely surprised when I wandered across and saw that it was a 'humble' TC BG 250 - which was actually the first combo I ever owned. And although I've never owned this, I would also be very tempted by the Rumble Stage 800:

Take your point about R&D Cam, but I think the first part of what bassfan said hits it on the head for me. If you want a great PJ bass which brands would you think of? Well Yammy would be right up there for a lot of folk. The Yammy PJs are arguably as good as any on the market, certainly at the price points they pitch them at. If you want a great J bass, well where do you start? The choice is endless and as well as being a very crowded space, Yammy could potentially just end up with a relatively run of the mill J-bass, which might even lower their stellar reputation with bassists if folk found them a bit meh? I think Yammy have played a very canny game and done it well over many decades. They have a dedicated following with both their BB and Line6/Helix brands and quite a lot to digest and sharpen-up with Ampeg now in the fold.

Oh dear, dear, dear....and then you're going to want to get it all midi capable and maybe wireless would be nice? Maybe I should save you a LOT of trouble and just sell you mine? 😂

Ok that's several things to check out then! SVT 4 Pro, Moogerfooger, ZeroAmp BDI You've clearly not read the script have you?! The Stomp is supposed to save you money on pedals, not cost you extra! 😂

Like the OP, I've always been a little bemused that the Akai seems to command such high prices from willing buyers, when there is a modern equivalent in the form of the Future Impact which starts with the 9 preset sounds that the Akai provides and then adds a further 90 presets and a whole bunch of options to edit and create your own effects patches with a much more powerful synth engine inside. However simple supply and demand come into play - the Akai doesn't come up for sale that often. And at some point any product that has a degree of scarcity can become a collector's item which transforms its value. You only have to look at classic car prices to see the effect. PS: while I'm on the sibject, a little plug for the FI, if I may: it's better than any multi-fx synth engine I have tried so far, including Helix, @HazBeen is currently on his fourth one (sequentially not all at once, I should hasten to add!); we have an expert in residence in patch creation and editing in @Quatschmacher who has been engaged by FI to create new patches for their (hopefully!) soon to be released Firmware 3.0 upgrade. And our own @GisserD has designed a neat smaller housing for the FI which has sold in numbers both here and in the USA.

You managed to find a workaround? I note the manual is still showing as 'for use with firmware 2.65' so hasn't been updated for 2.71 or 2.80 yet. Been having a clear out of some of the HX presets today - but one of the 2.71 direct amp & cab sims - the Hiwatt 100 ('WhoWatt100') guitar valve amp with a massive 4x12 cab sounded great and is definitely not getting culled. Dunno if anyone else is a fan of this one and will be using? Apparently Pete Townsend and Dave Gilmour were big into Hiwatt, so it's clearly got quite a guitar pedigree but, must admit, I'd never really considered pairing a guitar valve amp with bass before - wonder whether it works as well in real life as it does on a HX simulation?!

Actually I can go one better, with something I actually own and would match the Marcus Limited head nicely 😂

In defence of gold knobs! 😁

+ Mesa M6 from Wat. So how smug am I gonna be for the rest of the weekend, given that my two amps just happen to be a ... Mesa M6 and Darkglass M900? 😂

What a great skill-set that 'drummer' has - any bass player who also can also put together decent drum lines gets my respect!

Oh for sure, and a car is typically the second most expensive thing someone buys after their home (maybe that's not true for us bassists!) so you want to get something that looks, feels and drives well. But the main job of an amp in my books is there to help you sound great. In some ways it's a bit like the engine in a car, although obviously more visible. If it can look good at the same time then that's a bonus - and frankly there's no good reason for it not to be designed well. But in the scheme of things a 5 band EQ with semi-para mids and 600W at 8 ohms in a portable package that hopefully sounds great on that Marcus Limited, more than offsets the fact that it's not as pretty as some amp heads. I would buy it over less pretty & less capable heads every time, so yup @fretmeister you can give me first dibs on your amp - it would make for an outstanding back up / alternative to our DG M900s! Oh yes, that's exactly why you're buying it in the first place! The look and feel of a bass, now that's a different matter! But maybe that's just me speaking - if I have an emotional attachment to any of my gear it's my basses. The rest of my gear is there to help me and my bass sound great; if they look good then that's an added bonus. E.g. I keep my BF SC because it's an excellent cab and weighs just 21 lbs! I wouldn't rate it as the prettiest cab in the market, but that really doesn't matter. There's no other 112 , as far as I know, that can match it in terms of power handling and output at a broadly comparable weight. Tbf I didn't always hold that view (I was originally quite scathing about how BF cabs looked!) But I've come to relegate the importance of looks, on everything other than my basses, to how well the piece of gear performs.

My understanding is that these two Zooms have the most up to date Zoom processors. Having had both the B3n and the B1X-4, the sound quality of the effects, which are all shared, should be the same.

Well I'm gonna find it hard to disagree with you, given that the very capable DG M900 is my (and indeed @fretmeister's) main gigging amp! But do looks really matter?** Markbass is most definitely not to everyone's taste, but their previous bold colours have given them instant brand recognition and their gear has a great reputation and strong following. **I mean in particular for an amp. A bass, on the other hand, I totally appreciate that look and feel are 'up there'.

Get one of these cabs to go with your Marcus Limited and you can have a colour coordinated rig! Which btw I supsect is gonna sound pretty much as good as any other rig on the market. Besides, apart from us fellow bass players who are rarely if ever gonna be in your audience, who notices what the appearance of a bass rig is anyway? So as long as you're happy with it, weather the slings and arrows of others' snide comments and enjoy the sound!

Come on then gents, show us a frontal pic of what a good looking amp (any current make) should look like!

+1 ^^ I suspect most of the patches I'm going to be using in a band mix will be created ones; that's part of the fun for me anyway. But looking forward to finding out what new effects are now available. But I guess it's a completely different ball game if you are going FRFR.

Maybe I was lucky then Installed the updater (otherwise you can't go from 2.71 to 2.8). Didn't bother backing anything up, but there again tbf I've not anything much that wouldn't take 20 mins to pull together. 2.8 uploaded and no presets affected at all: all the stock patches I'd deleted were still deleted and all the presets I'd created were also all still there.

This is perhaps the best looking of the recent line up. Has a 7 band EQ + 12Ax7 tube premap + 600W @ 8ohms + Markbass quality => likely to be a great amp too!

Yeah, but there's something wonderfully archaic and satisfying about twiddling about with pedal knobs when you've got HX Stomp, FI, SA Manta and Aftershock all needing PC editing and / or midi. That's quite enough deep menu diving for one pedal board thank you! Haha - FI for a DAY!!! That's gotta be a record 😁 The 2019 bass synth-lover world is going to split into two camps: the Boss SY-1 and Source Audio C4. Cavaliers and Roundheads. If you're a bass synth-lover which one are you? All good fun. You heard it here first

Neither I got the Q\Strip in a trade for a bass - I had heard really good things about it and was curious. However, consensus with a couple of BC buddies is that, whilst it's a great pedal, it didn't really bring anything additional to the party over and above what is available on the HX Stomp and Grizzly Bass in terms of tone shaping - although tbf I find always being able to adjust pedal knobs easier and more 'real time' than PC editing. It's therefore already been moved on and the funds (and space) will be applied to the new Boss SY-1 synth pedal, due out in a couple of months, which looks amazing!

Yup, absolutely. Just add any Darkglass pedal into the mix and, hey pesto, you'll have a delightful metal sauce.

Look forward to hearing how it stacks up against your DG M900! 😎

Promises, promises...😀

The Source Audio C4 is $239 in the US but a slightly eye watering £249 over here. The SY-1 $200 in the US so I'd kinda expected it to be £200+ over here (following the same logic as the C4), but for some reason they've kept it down to a more affordable it's £175 (and you can get for that price with free delivery from G4M) I guess the advantage to pre-ordering is that it protects against a collapse in the £:$ over the coming 3 months and locks in that £175 price.