basstone

Marshall 200 Dynamic bass system combo, Completely refurnished to better than new condition, recovered with black satin Tuffcoat paint, new corners and all metal handles. Originally a 4 x 10 but the speaker has been upgraded to a Beyma SM212 12" driver which works well in this rear ported cab. The original crossover and piezo treble horn have been retained with the rear panel horn volume control. Great sounding solid amp featuring mixable solid state and warm valve preamp, graphic eq and built in compression. The amp is rated at 200W but the power amp design allows 400W peak output which should be adequate for most situations.

Thank you Mike for all your work on this and making the only decision possible. Looking forward to resuming on the other side of this, meantime everyone stay safe. Good opportunity to polish up the bass chops and learn some new parts.

I think postponement is the best option, looking at what has happened in Italy and Spain. You can have this virus and be spreading it to others for 5 days before you even get any symptoms. It would be difficult to keep all the basses and gear clean throughout the day not to mention sharing the food. Happy to help cover costs if applicable.

Yes it was faulty power valves. One eventually shorted completely and totally destroyed the protection fuse and its holder in the cathode circuit of the valve. There is a lot of stored energy in the HT power supply so thankfully the fuse did it's job and no other components were damaged. A new set of power valves, a new fuse holder and fuse and all up and running with the bias nice and steady on both valves. It's a nice touch on the CTM to use the VU meter to set the bias which can be done separately for each valve.

Yes, I had exactly the same problem. I even tried negative numbers and 0. nothing worked, so I phoned instead and spoke to a very helpful Dave Green. I think that the 4 digit CTM serial numbers relate to manufacturing sequence- first 2 digits, year of manufacture - third and fourth digit.

Indeed, funnily enough I also have a 1960's Reslo ribbon mic that was used with my Father's Ferrograph series 6 tape recorder 🙂

Having checked out the SVT with the cab, I thought it would be interesting to try out this. It is a General Electric PA amplifier, made in 1935. 4 KT66 cathode biased output valves and rated very conservatively at 30W. It was my first amp when I started playing well over 40 years ago! My father had just bought a TV and cycle shop business and we found this old (even then) amp languishing in the loft. It needed a good service, jack connectors adding for input and output and a matching transformer for the 100v line output. It weighs nearly as much as the SVT and back in the day was paired with a massive 1 x 12" cab with a slate baffle from an old billiard table with 1 1/4" chipboard for the rest of the cab and a pine frame around the front, painted gloss purple! The cab is long gone but I still have the amp and it still works. The valves are all original except for the driver. I've changed a couple of leaky caps and added some new smoothing caps to help the originals. It's not as loud as the SVT but has a smooth slightly compressed sound. A peek inside for the tech minded. Very neat and easy to work on.

I just had to see how my cab sounded with the SVT classic amp that I just repaired for a client, and what better way to demo the amp. It almost looks made for the amp to sit on when on its side. I needed to add the 1 x 15" polytone cab to get the 4ohm load for the amp. Imagine 2 Basschat cabs stacked with the SVT (top cab with horn rotated 90 degrees and bottom with low pass filter and no horn?). It would make a great looking and great sounding rig! Needless to say it did sound great, a nice rounded full tone but with plenty of definition. Shame about the weight (of the SVT that is :-)) but great valve tone is never going to be lightweight.

There is not much out there that is. It will be interesting to see if modding the tone stack on the Ashdown to the later spec makes much difference.

I have used Ashdown gear for many years as well as repairing them in my amp tech business. Ashdown have always provided excellent support both with information, schematics and spare parts. The amps are well made and easy to work on not to mention sounding great to me!

which wire you connect to + or - will in practice only really matter if you connect more than one cab up to the amp. If you do connect 2 cabs together and mysteriously loose loads of bottom end then you will know the speakers are out of phase. Although most “vintage” amps and cabs used TS 1/4” jacks for speaker connections, I’m not a great fan as it is possible with metal bodied jack socket designs to short out the amp output whilst inserting / removing the jack with the amp switched on..

Cover has arrived from Roqsolid. Only took a week from placing the order 🙂. Now when's my next gig.... Here's the link again for anyone interested in ordering one. https://amplifiercoversonline.com/tinyurls/6 Remember to use the discount code "basschat" to get free delivery.

My G K cabs have an aluminium grille which has folded flanges on all sides. These make it rigid and space the grill off the baffle without the need for a frame. The grille is also fixed from the sides of the cab giving a really clean look. It would be more expensive to get made for sure, but just a thought?

Just popped the template with 150mm round cutout for the handle in the post to Roqsolid 🙂