Jack

When I listen to a recording of a tube amp it sounds great played back through my class D hifi speakers. This confuses me.

Total pet peeve of mine, but no it can't, because there's no input on the back. I saw the aux input and thought 'finally!' but it's for an mp3 player or something, not for a bass.

If you have a PJB cab already then it'd probably sound fine, better than most bass or guitar cabs anyway. If you're looking to buy though then I think you could do better for the money. What's a PJB cab new? £400 or so? Some very good powered pa cabs around for that or not much more.

That's such a good deal. My mic is already better than my voice so there's no reason to upgrade. But. Must. Resist. Bargain.

6 ohms.

It's mitigated by the facts the GK amps are themselves inherently reliable so they don't break often and the nature of their construction means that they can often be worked on by independent techs when they do.

As has been mentioned ad nauseum, Polar are awful. They're worse than awful but there's a swear filter on this board. Maybe point Bob and Jason at GK to this thread? GK themselves are brilliant.

400W internal, 800W with another cab, 2x10", the same modelling pre as the studio 40, <20kg, <£700. It's a brilliant bargain.

And the Prodipe TT1!

When I asked this years ago on PSW a wise old owl told me to that you always spend 50% more than the big ticket items. In other words, if you've got £3k for this, don't spend any more than £2k on mixer, speakers, monitors. That way you've got £1000 left for accessories. I thought this was overly cautious, but several PA purchases later I've realised it's great advice. A good speaker stand is £30 minimum. Roqsolid or similar cases can be £75+ per speaker. That's £450 if you've got 2 mains, 2 subs and 2 wedges. If you're micing all of the drums and all of the instruments then that's 10 cables easy, the more for the mains and monitors (IEMs normally use more cables than wedges) so maybe that's 20 cables, 25 with spares. That's £300+. Don't get me wrong, £2-3k is a decent budget, it's all doable, but don't spend a grand each on two nice mains and one nice mixer, because there's a whole lot more to it than that! Everyone will have their favorite brands and specifics, but the general advice above is to go digital mixer and powered cabs and I 100% agree. We don't do too many weddings, maybe 2-3 a year, but we do a lot of other functions, birthday parties, biker rallies and such with the following. Behringer XR18 (£400 used for me, they've come WAY down in price now to less than that new) American Audio Media Operator (£100, backing music between sets) MikroTik hap Mini (£25, a must as EVERY digital mixer router is carp....) All of the above in a 4U Gator shallow rack (£60 or so) This rack is mine rather than the band's and I use it with other speakers in other projects. Mains: 2x Alto TS115A (£500 used) Subs: 2x Alto TS18A (£500 used) Mons/Fills/Etc: 2x Alto TS115A and 2x Alto TS112A (can't remember the prices and we don't often use all 4) We mix and match the 4x 15s and the 2x 12s, often use the 12s as tops for instance. If I'd have had my way we'd have gone for 2 nice tops (and no subs) like the RCFs mentioned above, but I was outvoted as the band balked at the price and "we need subs". I'd like IEMs in principle but I have an hearing problem in one ear and I find any headphones disorienting and really uncomfortable.

I really like Da Tuner Pro as I like a strobe. Before that I used the free gstrings. I'm sure they're all fine.

I found one on the other forum a while back, someone designed a 2x8 with an integrated cable, I think it was blue.

Disclosure: I've not played the amp live, I've only briefly used it in a shop to demo a bass. Is there a chance that the amp is simply not loud enough for your uses? If you really have to set the controls into clipping to get into a usable volume the you might just need a bigger amp. As standard I'd assume the advice all of the users have given here is good: drive off, eq at noon, gain to just below clipping, master to set volume. That's pretty much true for any amp. If that still doesn't do it then you might just need more amp.

@CameronJ, am I right in thinking you have a full fat helix already? I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on what separates them.

Live is why I fancy the Stomp too. I love that everything that I need fits in a 15kg rack, I'm so spoiled compared to the 45kg combo I started off gigging with and that should be enough for me. But 15kg is still heavy and the idea of a <1kg pedal is so tempting. But then it'd have to go on a board with a wireless and whilst that would certainly be lighter than the rack it probably wont be any smaller and so the merry go round continues!

There's always going to cork sniffers who feel superior because their latest handmade-by-craftsmen pedal cost £600 and there's always going to be cheapskates that feel superior because their ebay special is just as good and costs £19.99. The reality is that most of us are somewhere in the middle. I think there's enough people buying pedals to keep a lot of pedal companies in business.

If you measure the port (and between that and the box size you work out the tuning) then winisd will let you see what each driver will do. Alternatively one of the many DIY enthusiasts may be able to eyeball a good suggestion. Nice to see a fellow local, there aren't many of us on here!

I think where you may be slightly confused is that, when using bridge mode, each channel of a dual channel amp sees a load of half the total impedance. Your QSC will bridge into 4R, which means each channel sees a load of 2R. This pans out, because your amplifier is rated to work in to 2R stereo. You won't see a spec for each channel at 1R as this is below the minimum rated impedance for the amp, this is why you also won't see a spec for bridged into 2R. So, in your situation, with a 6R cabinet, the amp is bridged into 6R total, delivering somewhere between the 900W it produces at 8R and the 1400W it prouces at 4R. Let's go with 1200W for the sake of ease. That means each channel of the amp is producing around 600W into a 3R load. Does that clear things up a little? Either way, your cab is 6R, nothing you can do about that. Also, it's 'impedance' rather than 'resistance' or 'ohmage'.

I give it a week. Being serious for a second, I stand by the fact that if I didn't have a helix and I was buying one, it'd be the Stomp. I'm sure you'll love it.

Yeah that's how it starts. I just wanted a GK amp and a overdrive pedal and so I ended up with this:

Never. I once lost a preamp tube sometime between practicing at home and soundcheck, but thankfully I managed just fine by playing my pedalboard into the effects return. This hasn't stopped me from carrying some sort of backup to every gig though. Sometimes an amp, most often just a Behringer BDI.

That's the annoyig thing. I can do without the IO, the switches and the controls, but I'm used to the superlative amount of stuff I can have within a preset. My basic rock preset is 12 blocks.

Home practice? Definitely. Rehearsals? Doubt it. Then I think you will find the total volume of the amp lacking ime.

What do you mean by 'for gigs'? I play in a loud heavy rock band and a not-so-loud indie/poprock band and the BG-208 was within a rounding error of being totally silent on those gigs. A DI box would have been louder. I never tried it with an extension cab but I'd be worried that the little 8" speakers would be crying out for mercy long before any extension cab would be even idling. Regardless, a lot of my gigs are entirely through the PA so I was able to use the great DI output and technically I did gig the amp a lot, but it's not really the right tool for the job. If there's a proper drummer on your stage and you need stage volume then I don't think you can go much smaller than the 1x12" combos from GK, they're brilliant. Add another 1x12" or a 2x12" when necessary.