agedhorse

Virtually no difference IME.

As long as the noise from the fan is REASONABLE, but Paul, you know my feelings on what real world reasonable are. Everybody has a different take on what's reasonable.

You might be surprised

Beware that the fan's voltage, current, CFM and static pressure ratings need to be very close on any fan that uses feedback speed control. These parameters are an important part of how well the fan speed tracks temperature. It's possible to really screw things up by focusing on the quietest fan, resulting in an amp that will either shut down (if you are lucky) or fail (if you are unlucky).

As power levels increase and size decreases, fan cooling becomes more and more necessary. This is something that the pro audio industry has dealt with for decades. There are good implementations with fans and poor implementations with fans, noise level being the most objectionable issues. Fan cooled amps do not need to be noisy.

That's how that designer chooses to do it, in general it's the exception to the rule. It's no easier or harder to do it pre or post gain control, it's purely the designer's choice, which may relate to what else (voicing filters, effects loops, etc.) they may wish to include in the pre-eq signal path. I'm just suggesting that most choose to take the signal post input buffer and pre gain stage. If it's an issue to have the signal pre or post gain stage, it's good to know this before buying the amp.

It it's switchable, then in the pre-eq position it will almost always be BEFORE the gain control, not after.

Which one is this?

This is generally correct, gain is gain as far as gain before feedback is concerned.

For post-eq DI, that would be always after the preamp. For MOST pre eq-DI's it's before the gain stage. Of course there can be exceptions, but my experience it's about 95% give or take.

On most amps, this is unlikely to be much of an issue unless the gain is really low. Also, if you take the DI pre eq, most amps pick off the signal pre gain control, so this won't be an issue at all. This could only be an issue using a post eq DI out.

Probably not.

If you are hearing "fur" or distortion, then you are clipping something in the preamp. Turn the gain down a bit and you will be fine. Noise is independent of power amp topology or class. Designs (at least many) have gotten better in this regard.

It says the same thing about high impedance pickups running into low impedance inputs. Guitar/bass amps generally don't have low impedance inputs anyway - unless they have a line input which is typically only 20kohm or so. Both hi/lo level/sensitivity inputs on amps tend to be at least 500kohm (high impedance) or so, so there won't be a problem. Actually, this is only sometimes the case. Depending on the design, it's not uncommon for an active input to have a lower input impedance of say 50k while a passive input may have an input impedance of 1Meg. This is often the reason why many players view the active input as a "tone suck", not because of the lower sensitivity but because of the lower input impedance (especially an issue when using both with passive pickups).

Yes, the fans all in the Subway amps are MUCH quieter, almost silent.

Agreed. To this point, much effort was put into making the controls of the Subway line more intuitive.

The M-2000 is capable of a range of tones, but within the family of the BB and Titan (and the Buster/Bass 400 to a lesser extent). It's really an amp that you need to get to know personally, not an easy amp to get along with but if you do, it's hard to beat. Some of the tones, especially the overdriven tones, are fairly unique IMO.

The M-2000 was kind of its own animal, so many options that it's not really comparable IMO to any one amp. That's what made it desirable but is also what turned other players away from it.

I've done this on some past designs and it's become less and less asked for, especially on amps that have effects loops and where line level rack mounted effects are being used. Otherwise, a front input only covers 99% of these applications. For those rack mount tuners that do not have a front parallel output and/or do not have a rear panel input to take advantage of the rear panel tuner output provided by many amps, that's something that would be more useful for that specific need IMO.

That's a good question. The M-2000 is quite a unique amp and not very intuitive to use because of so many options for signal routing within the basic signal path. There is a lot of stuff going on, it was an expensive (actually very expensive) amp to build, it's difficult to work on and it's generally fairly expensive to repair (depending on what's wrong of course). If the M-2000 does what you want and fills your needs, than I would certainly recommend that you get some kind of estimate to see where you might stand on the cost. If it isn't your "must have" amp, there is certainly a market for such an amp as it does have its fan base. Some of these folks might be willing to buy it not working because if they want one, there are a very limited number that were built and are otherwise difficult to obtain. You will have to make this determination based on your own personal tastes, needs and circumstances.

Your amp is being built now!

If you go to our website, there is a tab for international service centers. If you search on "Europe", on the left side is a list that includes many pages of European service centers including quite a few in the U.K. This list is increasing every week. We have had several complaints about "only 4 service centers in all of Europe???" when looking at that landing page, without realizing that there are MANY additional pages of European service centers. Hope this helps.

To clarify, I never said anything about being idiotic. There are certainly common tonal themes across most of the bass amp models, going back 50 years. That's bound to be the case of course, given that the designers of those models were consistent over most of those years. The exceptions are (imo and ime) the Carbines, Big Block and Titan (which were very much a more modern take on bass amps, paralleling the rectifier series popularity), the Strategy/Prodigy (which focused on a tighter approach to bass amp overdrive while maintaining the aggressive voicings of the Carbines), and to a lesser extent the Walkabout (which was distinctly different in many ways). I was brought on board to bring more focus into the bass amp/speaker products without the distraction and workload of designing guitar products at the same time. My goal is to take the best, most popular elements of a particular amp family and combine these with new features, new approaches, refinements and to update the products so that they meet the needs and expectations of today's players. For players this doesn't work for, that's fine. There is no shortage of good used amps of all types (and at bargain prices too... a bonus to players that these amps appeal to).

There is a fair amount of truth to what is posted on his website. A couple of errors though: 1. The term music power, peak music power, peak to peak power were all used starting in the 1960's not the 1980's. This is the reason for the FTC (U.S. Federal Trade Commission) rules requiring standardized power rating testing for HOME audio (hi-fi) products. This does not apply to pro audio or audio products used in the musical instrument markets (which are a tiny fraction of the size of the domestic audio market) 2. The term "route" mean squared is actually ROOT mean squared, and is a mathematical approach to a specific type of average power that is independent of waveform shape.

The amps are exactly the same size. I don't know for sure, but it's possible that they used the basic chassis size with one and the size with knobs, switches, handles and feet on the other, but thanks for pointing this out as they should be identical.