SamPlaysBass

I may be able to help - I've run an Aguilar Tone Hammer 500 and a Markbass AG1000 on rotation in my wedding band this year, over around 50 gigs. I've played them both through my TC RS112 cabs, RS210 cab, and Markbass Ninja 2x12 cabs in a variety of settings. They both do a great job of making your bass sound good live, but you can feel the different DNA when you use them. The Aguilar is very smooth, with EQ points that are more in line with vintage or valve amps. The treble control doesn't get 'spiky' until you're nearly at 100%, and the bass doesn't get boomy until 80% or so. The bass EQ point carried with it some extra mids, so when you boosted the lows you felt a bit more girth to the sound as well as bottom end. The mid controls were something and nothing for me - sweepable mid frequency didn't really get me any extra mileage playing live with PA support, but in a studio setting I imagine it would be a lot more useful for dialling in a sound. In all, it's a very flattering EQ. Volume wise, it had plenty of poke, but the Markbass' supposed 1000 watts felt bigger and had more headroom. The Aguilar also had a better DI in my opinion - more airy and natural sounding. It's also a very light head. The Markbass is a very good tool, but it can be razor sharp. The EQ points on the AG 1000 are different to other Markbass heads and I prefer the EQ points on the AG1000 over the LM3 I had years back. I'm also playing active 5 string basses and get a kick out of that 'zing' you hear lots of gospel players using (though my skills are very much lacking in comparison). The Markbass EQ was very much what you put in, you get out. Whereas the Aggie's was flattering, the Markbass did exactly what it said it would do, and I found that the bass sound out the front of the band was more 'in your face' and solid sounding. It gave all of my basses much more authority. The EQ points should be exercised with caution as there is more to give compared to the Aggie, but the overall sound pushed through a mix much better with the Markbass. The live-in bag is also much better designed than the Aggie's carry case, and the level knob for the DI is extremely useful on the Markbass which the Aggie was lacking. It's a very modern, forward sounding head that can take your eyebrows off with high end or induce earthquakes with lows. In my experience, the mids on the Markbass are more useable in a live context than the Aggie's, but I mainly used the mid controls for taming harsh/resonant rooms rather than overall tone shaping. I kept the Markbass and sold the Aguilar because I'm in a 4 piece wedding band with a full PA, click and backing track mixes, and I wanted to push through that mix. If I was playing more classic rock, used passive basses or wanted a studio tool, I'd probably have kept the Aguilar. Both do a great job, but I'd finish by saying the Aguilar is more classic and flattering to the low end, whereas the Markbass is more modern and uses it's more interesting mids to push through a full mix to allow the bass to be heard.

Not sure if this will make you feel any better, but time and use will help. I bought a wiffy cab from a wiffy house earlier this year. The house was a mixture of years old damp and two extremely wet, smelly border collies who had free roam of the place. I kept the cab in the garage, brought it out for gigs (after some initial cleaning) and fortunately the smell dissipated after a couple of months. Airing out and baking soda work well!

Tempted to go down one of these routes for a living room practise tool. The Positive Grid stuff looks amazing and satisfies my hatred of wires. Dare I ask, if you had to say out of your lot which is the ‘best’ (not necessarily bang for buck but which is the best outright), which would you choose?

I hated Markbass amps when I was a younger, more naive man. Everyone seemed to have one, and I was once loading out my Ashdown CTM 100 all valve head into the back of my Corsa when a chirpy ‘older’ bass player on before me pointed to his 1x12 Markbass combo said ‘you want to get rid of that, get one of these! Does everything that one does but lighter!’ - despised them from that moment on. Why would I not use a big, gritty valve amp instead of some horrible little yellow thing? Anyway, here’s my AG1000 head and Ninja Cab. It sounds so good in a mix with minimal tweaking, it’s got handles in the right places on the cab, carry bag is hideously convenient for the head. Preferred this set up to nearly everything else I own apart from my SVT and Bassman 8x10, but it annihilates everything in terms of portability, quality of sound and ease of use, second maybe only to the stupidly lightweight GR Bass stuff.

How hard is it to get hold of Markbass speakers replacements? Gigged my Markbass AG1000 and Ninja cab last night and it made a funny noise that wasn’t my playing for a change. It did this a few weeks back at another wedding gig - very distorted at gigging volume and the ‘bottom’ speaker seems to be throwing itself far further in its trajectory compared to the top speaker, leading me to think that the speaker/s need replacing. As a side note, I’ve tried the AG1000 on several other gigs with different cabs since that initial wobble and I can confirm that it’s not the head or the bass etc. the only difference was the cab. How tricky are Markbass spares to get hold of? I haven’t contacted Markbass yet but just wanted to know where to start looking. Ideally, I’d like to convert the cab to 4 ohm to get the most out of my Aguilar Tone Hammer 500, and I know the old NY122 cab was nearly the same spec as the Ninja 122 but with a 4 ohm load as opposed to the 8 ohms of the Ninja. Any Markbass speaker stockists happy to help?

At this point I'll take any technical knowledge I have (not hard), throw it out of the window and use purely anecdotal evidence, which is of course, always valid... I had a GP12 SMX 4x10 combo for a few years and adored it. It was the loudest thing in the universe as far as I was concerned. I'm not sure what component of it made it so loud; the conservatively rated power section, or the fact that it was the fact it was on wheels and wielding now old-fashioned 10" drivers way off the floor made a difference, but it carried its sound like nothing else I've ever played. It didn't have super subby lows, but it was perfect for the bands I was playing in at the time where our PA was so crap that all of the bass sound had to come from the amp. And WHAT a sound - lovely, focused bass sound filling the air in big old Workingmans Halls and Clubs around the Valleys. They had lovely mids and a very good 12-band graphic EQ. It's a shame that Trace lost its reputation for 'underpromise, overdeliver' when it came to sound, loudness and quality. The closest thing I've owned that puts me somewhat in mind of the Trace is the Markbass AG1000 through a Ninja 2x12 cab, but I'm sure if Trace designed it, they'd market it as having measly 150 watts or so. If I had the space, I'd buy that GP12 SMX combo back in a heartbeat.