dumelow Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Am a bit giddy about this one. Took the plunge and ordered an Ampeg Portaflex 350 along with an Ashdown ABM115 from andertons in guildford. Placed the order earlier this afternoon and it should be with me tomorrow. Very very excited to try this out, just gutted I gotta wait til saturday to try it with the rest of the band. I'll make sure to keep this updated with a review for anybody who is interested anyway Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
munkonthehill Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 [quote name='dumelow' post='1178628' date='Mar 27 2011, 07:31 PM']Am a bit giddy about this one. Took the plunge and ordered an Ampeg Portaflex 350 along with an Ashdown ABM115 from andertons in guildford. Placed the order earlier this afternoon and it should be with me tomorrow. Very very excited to try this out, just gutted I gotta wait til saturday to try it with the rest of the band. I'll make sure to keep this updated with a review for anybody who is interested anyway Cheers[/quote] Bit curious why you went with the ashdown rather than the matching ampeg portaflex cab!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dumelow Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 andertons are out of stock till further on in the week, its about £50 more and theres also somebodies topic on this forum showing some quite shoddy quality problems with them. Ive used an ABM speaker before and really liked it so just thought i wouldnt risk going for the portaflex. The storage feature looks really cool on them though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indiegrungesound Posted March 28, 2011 Share Posted March 28, 2011 Do keep us posted on these please! If they're any good, I wouldn't mind getting one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dumelow Posted April 4, 2011 Author Share Posted April 4, 2011 Right then, Sorry about the long wait for this review but I wanted to wait until the end of the week so that I'd tried it for a few different things Initial reaction out of the box = hell this thing is tiny. Its not as tiny as the GK MB200, I cant fit it into the pocket on my bass bag but it fits into a backpack easily. Its really well made and I reckon it could take a drop or two; not that im willing to test that theory. Now this is my first experience with Ampeg. Closest thing to an Ampeg amp ive used before is presets on podfarm and a tech21 PBDDI. It doesnt have any growley gain too it. Its a very clean, solid state sound. That being said, it sounds beautiful. At home im pushing it through an Ashdown ABM115. This thing pushes out a lot of bass, even if you leave the bass control flat. The other thing I noticed whilst practicing, and whilst recording through ProTools, is that it has a LOT of mids to its sound. You can cut this obviously, which i have being doing slightly, but it still has a very punchy, clear midrange sound to it. (it might be worth noting that the mid control cuts and boosts at 500Hz) Personally, I love it. For recording this thing is absolutely beautiful, the DI out is post EQ and the volume control on the amp does not affect DI output. If I get any time, ill upload some samples of what this baby sounds like. I also want to point out, that the bass Ive been using with this thing is an Ibanez with an active pre. The manual says that if the "peak" light on the front of the head lights up often, you should use the pad button, which I have been doing. This obviously cuts the volume by -15dB. I imagine that with a passive bass, this head could be pushed a lot more. Saturday night, I got to use this head at a large practice room, with a hard hitting drummer, two guitarists and a singer through a PA (should have seen ther faces when i whipped out this little tiny head out of my backpack). I didnt take down the Ashdown cab, I was using a Trace Elliot 1x15 cab 8ohm (so was running the head at 250w). When i first plugged in I panicked a bit, cause i had to put the gain and the volume almost on full to hear it. This wasnt too much of a concern because the peak light didnt light up at all, but the limiter button was pushed in and the light to tell you that it was kicking in was doing so on every note played. Now i know this might seem strange, but after about 15 minutes, I dunno if it was my ears settling or the band getting quieter or what, but I turned the volume and gain down to about half and it was cutting through brilliant. Huge amounts of bass being pumped out, very midrangey punchy sound and even through a 1x15", the highs were very clear and audible. We were playing rock/funk covers, and we even played some reggae at one point. This head is very versatile, im over the moon about it. Next step on my list is to buy a 4ohm lightweight cab and run this thing at 350w so I can have the gain and volume knobs running even lower! I really dont know what people are comparing this head to when they claim that it is quiet for a 250w. It seems as loud as any 250w combo ive ever used. So to sum it all up, I definitely recommend this amp, wether it be just for a nice clean recording tool at home or in the studio, or for gigging. Id venture a guess that this thing would struggle at large gigs without a PA, but saying that, Im yet to run it at 350w. This is my first ever review! Sorry if it is structured terribley, and please ask any questions if I havent covered something youd like to know about this head. Cheers 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lozz196 Posted April 4, 2011 Share Posted April 4, 2011 Nice review, been waiting for some info on these amps. Re lightweight 410s - I bought an Eden Nemesis 410 from the Bass Merchant. They come in either 4 or 8 ohms, and the spec is very good. It`s 52 lbs in weight, so not too bad (considering Trace/Ampeg/Peavey are all 90 lbs plus), comes with castors, and has an adjustable tweeter. Link below: [url="http://www.bassmerchant.com/item_detail.php?product_id=451&category_id=2"]http://www.bassmerchant.com/item_detail.ph...p;category_id=2[/url] I`ve not used it "in anger" yet, but using the same settings with my amp that I had through my Ampeg SVT 410HE, it sounds really nice, very comparable to the Ampeg - which is a recommendation in my view. The tweeter is very smooth, no "mettalic hissy twang" just some added highs, and tighter lows because of it. May be worth a look. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indiegrungesound Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 Your review was very good Mr Dumelow! These heads continue to sound very promising! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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