BassManGraham

13 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

And then there were two!

Hi Dave, yes loved it so much had to have another, sadly your Epic is still in UK until I can get ferry over in the New Year!

22 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

@BassManGraham I have a pretty good idea that if you had to choose between keeping your limited edition Alembic Epic (pic please!) and your Quilter 800, which one you would save... 😄 

I love them both, but if I had to choose the Epic would be a no brainer.  I have been complimented on it's sound at every gig by sound engineers, using a variety of rigs . It is very distinctive and really cuts through the mix. The band love it and it sounds great even on iPhone vid clips etc. 

2018 is / has been another very gaseous year for me. My 2019 resolution is reduce my emissions. 

Best amp considering performance, cost and exceeding expectations was QUILTER BASS BLOCK 800. But the MESA SUBWAY 800 plus is lovely but cost twice as much so edged into second place.

Best bass: A limited edition Alembic Epic, have also acquired an Aria SBR-60, and a KAWAI FIIB both pristine. I love 80s Alemibesque Japanese basses.

Worst basses either Epiphone Toby Deluxe, which is great value fun bass for dodgy gigs, so I am keeping it,  but not is same league as other purchases.

Or Marcus Miller P7 which I traded for a Chowny, but didn't like it and immediately p/x'd it for a Marcus Miller M7.The P7 was a good bass but just not as good as other Sires I have tried or owned. The M7 is lovely.. 

On 12/12/2018 at 08:36, Woodinblack said:

Sounds a bit like someone with one should ask TC what is going on with it!

I have done just that. I will share their response as and when they get back to me. 

On 17/11/2018 at 23:44, roblpm said:

I am wondering about one as a backup amp. Anyone got one yet?! 

My BQ500 arrived this morning after waiting several weeks. I will gig it later this week, but early signs are promising. For the price this really is a great value little head. It has a clean and punchy sound which I really like. The 4 band EQ has a good tonal range. It doesn't do gritty overdrive, so if that's what you want a pedal would be needed. I am not a fan of compression and prefer sound with little or no THRUST! The active and passive switch appears to be reversed which seems counter intuitive, but not a problem. I can wind the gain up to 2 o'clock on passive setting before clip light flashes and that is with an Alembic with quite a hot active ouput. The DI out seems nice and clean and doesn't colour the sound of my bass.  I have just tried it thru a pair of Eden EX112s, this makes a superb, punchy, portable small footprint rig for under £600!  OK this is no MESA or QUILTER etc, but for the money it's a no brainer. and so far I am quite impressed and prefer the sound of this amp to previous TC Electronic heads I've tried.

PM sent

Agreed Sires are amazing value for money I have had a V7 and a P7 both great value for under £500. Personally I would not bother trying to upgrade these as they are pretty much optimum as they come and I suspect the routing cavity may differ from a Fender for which the J Retro was designed.

A real quality but cheap alternative to upgrade would be an SX Jazz. Most players think my upgraded SX sounds and plays like an American Fender. I have just fitted a tortoise shell pickguard and Badass bridge. The original pickups are great. I would try the East J Retro before anything else. You probably won't need different pickups,  the East Retro will work wonders even for Squier or Mex Jazz pickups 

HOWEVER I do love John EAST J Retro Preamps and have fitted them to four Fender Jazzes. 2 Mexicans, an American Standard and even an American Active Deluxe. They're easy to fit and require no mods to body at all, I kept original circuits so they can be returned to original in a few minutes. I did not hesitate fitting them to a US Fender, they sound like a Fender on steroids!  I much prefer the East Active circuit to the stock Fender one. The Deluxe Jazz has the battery compartment which saves having to mount the PP3 battery under the J Retro chrome control plate. That said the batteries last for ages and there is the passive option.

So in conclusion it won't hurt trying one in your American Fender, but an SX Jazz which should cost you less than a new East J Retro, might be worth a punt! 

BEWARE you may prefer an SX or Mexican Fender with a J Retro to your American Standard!

Good Luck 

These are superb basses, light, nicely balanced, beautiful necks and that wonderful Alembic piano tone for a very fair price.

I recently relieved Bass Direct of one, otherwise I would be interested. GLWS.

Damn I've been keen looking for one of these for weeks, but have literally just bought something else! Lovely bass. GLWS

On 27/10/2018 at 18:37, Bluepigbass said:

No fret markers missing Graham 

PM sent 

On 23/10/2018 at 20:45, Bluepigbass said:

The width at the nut is 40 mm. The string spacing at the bridge is adjustable to taste etc. Currently 16 mm between E and A then 19 mm between other strings, set up for 80s  slap and pop. It is very easy to adjust the bridge to any string spacing from about 15 mm upwards. 

Many thanks. Very interested in this bass. Have you owned since new? What condition are frets in?

Is there a dot marker missing on 12th fret, has there been any drying or shrinkage of finger board to cause this? 

Best regards Graham 

Hi, what is neck width at top nut and string spacing at bridge please. Cheers 

The GK MB amps are very loud. An MB500 certainly seems to hold its own against other more powerful rated heads. They seem to have a lot more gain than most of their contemporaries which means too much treble and high mid EQ can produce audible hissing! Not noticeable when playing, but mildly irritatingly at idle or quiet passages in studio. 

The D800+ has wonderful tone and plenty of volume for my needs, but on balance probably not as loud as a GK MB800, or the Markbass Little Marcus 800 either. No front of house engineer ever likes me playing anywhere near that loud on stage anyway!

Make sure you check out the DI out specifically unless you intend using a separate DI box.

Fender Rumbles are good value a second hand Markbass combo is worth considering. I've had a CMD 121P and a CMD 102P both excellent with great DI outs. 

I have had two T.C Electronic combos despite being fine little combos the DI out was noisy and unusable on both. No ground lift and considerable mains hum.

If weight is not an issue you could do a lot worse than one of the bigger Hartke combos. The tiltback facility is very useful too. 

Good Hunting. 

On 29/08/2018 at 09:41, Musicman20 said:

The D-800+ was £899 at Andertons for a few hours, then I think they realised it was the wrong price!

Haha yep that's exactly when I bought mine! Checked their site the next week, it was out of stock with another £250 on the price! Bargains like that exacerbate my G.A.S. Sound engineer at a regular gig was very complimentary on my 800+ first outing, and he usually doesn't enthuse about much at all!

1 hour ago, urbanx said:

I've just taken delivery of a BQ500. 

Tested it briefly in the garage (just to make sure everything's working) and it's chuffin' loud compared to my Hartke HA3500. 

Will keep you all updated to the finer nuances of sound quality after a rehearsal. In the garage it rattled everything 😛 The aux in sound wasn't great, although I'm putting a lot of that down to a 410 cab not being designed to play music from an iphone. The knobs on the front do not alter the aux-in sound, only the bass guitar. 

Well that sounds very promising indeed as the HA3500 is quite loud and punchy for a 350W amp. Only ever used one a couple of times when it was provided backline but fairly impressive, only avoided getting one due to the weight of the things. It may be that the BQ500 can surpass my fairly moderate expectations! 

I have been generally underwhelmed by all T.C Electronic heads and combos I havd tried. OK tone print is clever and fun, but power wise they do not come close to GK, Markbass, etc.

I have a BH250-208 which is a tidy good value little practice combo, but even with an extension cab cannot compete with our drummer!

But, I see Thomann are currently selling the BQ500 for €205 / £175 (free delivery) which to be fair is less than a decent preamp, DI or FX pedal!

At this price GAS and curiosity get the better of me, so I am setting THRUST to stun, and getting prepared to be underwhelmed all over again.

I will report further when it arrives in several weeks time!

Running an amplifier into too low an impedance is definitely not advisable, the amp could run hot and you could blow the output stage of of your power amp.

On 16/09/2018 at 19:04, PJ-Bassist said:

I've read this a lot about the little Marcus's but I'm just not sure I can live with the design of them.  I don't want a picture of some dude 😉 on my amp!!

I did direct comparison between several heads earlier today. LittleMark Tube 800, Little Mark 800, Little Marcus 800  Aguilar AG700, Aguilar Tonehammer, Darkglass Microtube 900. Loved the AG700 but not sure it justified around £400 more than Markbass offerings. The Darkglass had really great drive and grit if you like metal etc, but I would rarely, if ever, use that much dirt .

I too really disliked the logo of Marcus Miller on the Little Marcus 800, but at similar volume and all controls at 12 o'clock with VLE/old school and VPF/Millerizer off it seemed to have greater volume and punch than the other two Markbass amps. The mute switch is much better, and the low bass control excellent, so that is what I bought.  But do try a Quilter BB800 they are probably the best vfm head out there right now.

On 07/09/2018 at 16:14, Leonard Smalls said:

I've plumbed my new Crown 1502 into its rack along with BBE amp and DBX compressor.

Tried it first as a single channel into my Markbass 102 and huge Yamaha/15"Precision Devices cab. Didn't seem any louder than with the Marshall, just noticeably less noisy.

Then I tried it bridged into the 2 cabs, very loud, very clean - could hear every nuance of the effects board.

Then I tried it as input Y with ch1 to the 102 and ch 2 to the Y/PD15, with high pass on 1 above 100Hz and low pass below 300Hz on 2. Lawks! Bit louder than the Marshall could go, but incredibly clean, almost hifi. And there's virtually no hum at all, even with the Crown turned up to 3/4 on both channels and the BBE on 1/2. The only noise not being produced by the bass was a very slight hiss from the pedals which I could never hear before. I like it...

Glad you like it. I have never tried my Crown 1002 in biamp mode, partly because I wanted a loud one cab solution (with Barefaced Super 12) and unbridged it gives considerably lower output..but will definitely give it a try now, with a pair of Vanderkleys. 

17 hours ago, jazzyvee said:

Yes I agree i had one of those QSC PLX2402 amps and sold it due to it being too heavy in my 6u rack with the rest of my gear. The weight meant it didnt get used much so i recently replaced it with a crown Xls1502 which is also a good amp but to my ears the qsc wins hands down seems to have more power in the low end and more density in the sound overall. Maybe i should have kept it and bulked up at the gym🤔😂. 

But we live and learn and now i use the crown in my big rig and have a smaller 3u shallow rack with a Synq 1k0 1U class D amp in  with a F1-x preamp for travelling light to gigs with a backline provided as the heads usually are raspy. 

I generally use one cab on gigs but where there are two i use one on each side of the power amp in the mode where one input drives both channels. My pre amp has a crossover so i could bi amp but not at the moment. 

 

QSC power amps are great,.

In fact I use my Quilter Bass Block 800 (from Patrick Quilter, the Q in QSC) far more often than my Sansamp/ Crown rack unit these days, it just so handy!

3 hours ago, la bam said:

How do you find the sound with the crown running the pre amp (with it being class d)? Is it just ok? Good, or as good as a quality A/B style amp?

Hi the Crown it is good, clean, loud and powerful and very good value for money.. The Sansamp ceates the tone, and sound engineers love them . I can't honestly compare the Crown with many A/B style amps as I have been using Class D stuff pretty much exclusively for 12 or more years and I am always DI'd through a PA so the power sections of all my amps are there to provide on stage sound. The bass and preamp are key in shaping sound/tone , the power amp and speakers deliver volume and 'heft'. With the right speaker cab this Sansamp/ Crown set-up is plenty powerful for most venues without going thru PA if you want a deafening sound on stage! 

I did try my Sansamp with a friends A/B style t.amp power amp before buying the Crown. The t-amp sounded OK, but to me the Crown sound was much better, and had far greater flexibility with high pass, low pass, bandwidth selection etc. Unable to compare with a high quality A/B amp.I sometimes wonder if the finer nuances are lost when a full band and drummer kick in?

Personally I like class D amps. I have had valve heavyweights but even back in the day I preferred my solid state Acoustic 220 to my valve Fender Bassman 135 for cutting thru the mix,. I dare say you could get marginally better results by spending a lot more money. Demeter spring to mind. You just have to let your own ears judge what's best for you.

14 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

I'll just weigh in here on the bridged/parallel thing on the Matrix.  I'm not point-scoring, but the solution is a bit more elegant than the Crown.

If you look at the Matrix below, you have an area to the bottom left that's your INPUTS (confusingly marked B & A, but I suppose this is the reverse of the facia controls) AND output type selection toggle switch (Stereo, Parallel and Bridged).  In the middle, there's three Speakon outputs left to right channel A, Bridged, Channel B.

Flipping the output toggle to BRIDGE activates the centre Speakon output and the unit delivers 1000w into 8ohms.  There's no wiring up to terminals.  Obviously you can only use a single source input (into B or A on the left) in bridged mode.

You can run the amp in switched parallel mode (single input, B or A), switch to Parallel, single or pair of speakers attached to channel A&B or A or B, same signal to both OR switched stereo mode (different input sources to B & A), switch to STEREO, two enclosures individually attached to channels A & B.

Longterm I'm looking to run a pair of 1x12" cabinets to utilise the switched stereo mode to take full advantage of the GED2112 pre-stage.  The ease of switching/outputs just makes it easy to run a single input into bridges as well.

 

 

 

Just for the record (and to satisfy my pedantic OCD) a more elegant and aesthetic option is possible for the Crown . Channel 1 is wired for both channels so it can be used for BRIDGE mode wiring (or stereo wiring of two speakers using one 4 pin speakon plug) I use the rock-wire Speak-on to Speak--on with bridged terminals 1+/2+ and white sheath to avoid incorrect connection. The Crown is very flexible and excellent crossover allows bi-amping if you want to be reallly flash! 

58 minutes ago, la bam said:

did you buy a different cable to run in bridged mode?

thats the bit i fell for - itll let you set up bridged mode, but wont actually be operating in bridge mode unless youre using the correct modified cable as in the instructions.

Hope pic helps, cheers Graham 

There are two simple options for connecting speakers to the power amp in bridged mode. This is explained in the online  manual. But briefly

1. You connect a standard speakon cable or Jack plug on one end (speaker cab connection) with bare wires to amp connection to the pair of bridged +ve and -ve red terminal posts. 

2. I also got a special speakon cable made up by Dave (obbm) on this very forum. It's just different connection to terminals on the speak on plug. This then connects to speak on output on power amp.