Aliwobble

Sounded good in the shop. I took in my old Eden D210xst, and compared it to this Trace, and some Aguilar cabs. The Aguilar DB115 was heavy++ and for the life of me I could not find a tone I liked in it, which was disappointing and surprising. The Aguilar SL210 was very very nice, but cost more than double the Trace. The Eden D210xst was significantly louder than the others, and also sounded very good. so, the Trace wins for being affordable, easily portable, compact, and sounding good.

So, I was vaguely in the vicinity of the local music shop the other day (only for about two hours). Somehow, this little puppy followed me home... Can I keep it?

I play in a classic covers band and as I am essentially lazy and always pressed for time I like to start with everything at noon (amp and bass). It should sound “ not bad”. Then I make small tweaks to suit the situation. With my GK mb500 and Eden D210xst this usually gives a tight, slightly mid-scooped sound with too much treble and not enough high mids. Roll off the treble, a small boost of high mids and bass, and a small low-mid cut and I’m set. Usually the eq controls of my amp are between 11 and 1 o’clock, except the treble at 9 o’clock. In my opinion, a good quality modern SS head into a good cabinet will rarely need extreme eq. Tube amps, however, seem to be completely different beasts.

Three Trace Elliot elf’s. 🤣

Hard to disagree with this.

My Eden D210xst has done hundreds of gigs, sounds great, and more or less portable at under 30Kg. If I find another one I will snap it up in an instant. It has seen of challenges from Markbass and GK.

Give it its first gig at the weekend. Played through an Eden 2x10, with full PA support. Just loud enough, and sounded fabulous. I’m thinking that with a 4x10 it would have a little left in reserve. My usual amp is my GK mb500, which is a great modern sound. I would describe my little bastard as having a classic tube sound- an altogether different flavour of yum.

Thanks for your input guys. I’ve decided to let it slide as I would not have been able to test it. now, if I can get my hands on another Eden D210xst...

There is a Warwick Hellborg 2x12 cab for sale down here in NZ. They’re not common in these parts and I can’t test it before buying. Who’s got one, and what’s it like? Thanks in advance. A.

My recently acquired Ashdown Little Bastard. Tried it at rehearsal tonight, sounded lovely through my Warwick WCA 211 pro.

None of these heads are bad. My two faves are the GK and the GB. The laney has a good solid sound, and a ton of great features. Probably the most versatile stand alone amp.If you could only have one amp and no pedals then probably the one to get. The fx are very useable, and the eq is powerful. Tube pre amp allows you to overdrive, if that’s your thing. Also USB connectivity. the elf is super compact and has a certain sound. I’d happily use it. It seems to prefer passive electronics. I Could not get a nice tone out of it until I bypassed the active electronics, and then it was very nice. It’s my backup for live gigs. Perhaps a one trick pony, but that’s fine with me because once I’m dialled in for the night I hardly touch my amp anyway. the GK sounds “right” to me. My fave sound for live work. Compact, powerful and awesome sound. My go-to amp for 5 years now. The GB is a recent acquisition for me. I love the way this amp sounds, seems to let me hear more of the wood in my basses. It has now become my practise amp in a 1x10 cab. For solo practise you can really hear details that the others just don’t give.

So I was looking for an amp with the compactness of an elf, the sound of a GK, but with built in fx of the Laney, and the eq of a Genz Benz. Finally, this (and a roll of duct tape) and I have the perfect amp head. Actually, I just got a bit carried away in a bit of a post lockdown splurge.

I’ll put a good word in for the tech 21 vtbass combo. 1x12, compact ,light, sounds awesome. The fender rumbles didn’t do it for me.

Ibanez Prometheus 500 - lovely sound, but died after only 18 months. Still got the cab that it came with. GK mb500 - This is the one I keep going back to. Laney Nexus - lots of features, but somehow just doesn’t do it for me like the GK. I’ve just acquired an Elf and a GB shuttle 3.0 second hand. I might have to do a shoot out.

Valid point about the cool factor though. We could stack all those glorious cabinets up either side of the drummer and not even bother hooking them up. Just run straight to PA.

On a more technical note. I’ve often wondered if having a bigger speaker array gives better projection. My 1x10 cabinet has a sensitivity of x dB at 1W at 1m, and the spl drops every time you double the distance from the speaker. However the calculated reduction is based on the inverse square rule, and assumes a point source. If the source of sound is (say) a 8x10 fridge, how does that alter the reduction in Spl over distance?

Depending on your situation you should be able to gig on this. It Weill depend on the efficiency of you cabs, and the size of your guitarists cabs. I regularly gig with a GK mb500 so 300W at 8 ohms (2x10) and it is not turned past half way so probably only using 100 Watts or so. I would expect 200W into 2x 2x10 to handle most situations.

But won’t the universe implode if we mix driver sizes? How reckless of you, Stew 😛

The size of the cabinet is probably more important than the size of the drivers. Multiple small drivers can produce low frequencies - just ask anyone with an old 8x10 sitting around. Pretty much anything should work noodling at home as our ears are not very sensitive to low frequencies at low volume anyway. In my experience you get what you pay for in small amps.

How about a boss ms3? You get a whole bunch of digital goodness and three loops.

Ok, so there are not too many upsides to this Covid-19 lockdown, but here’s one: my home studio has never been tidier 😃

Swapped out an Aguilar Agro for a Pork Lion. Very happy with the result, although yet to be tried in a live situation although the recording sounded great. You know how it is . . .

This, although I would aim higher than a TX208. The TS series is better quality for not a lot of money. Gives you a handy little stage monitor too.

Perfect 😅

The TS212 should be fine for pub gigs. Adding a sub (any sub) will make the difference, especially if you are micing your kick drum. You can try things like adding low pass filters on all you mic channels (except kick, although even a 40 Hz high pass is not a bad idea here) - we set ours at 120Hz for vocals, and 80Hz for guitars. It helps keep low freq mud out of the PA. This will let your 12 inch cabinets do what they do best - mids and highs.