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Hartke lh500 review


stubass
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Well, tonight I got to put my new hartke head through its paces. Happy! I purchased it from dv247 via some advice from some learned folks on here. I paid £250 for it by requesting a price match from musik productiv. I must say, its probably the best value ive come across. The sound stays sooo clean, even when I attempted to deafen everyone! Its a basic head but im not that into the fiddly stuff so its 3 band eq does fine for me. Its pretty good on the mids, certainly a match for the ampeg pf I used to use, if not slightly better. The bright switch didnt make much difference imo but I'm not fussed. Its a big heavy son of a bitch, solid as hell, can see it lasting the pace no problem. I ran it through an ashdown 810 which is reasonably new and it sounded sweet. Its just a great sounding amp, great tone and you can't really go wrong! The most pleasing thing for me is that I practice with a wee vox pathfinder which I adore and I can get that same kind of tone out the lf500, I kinda struggled to achieve that with the portaflex. Anyway, I'd recommend it if your in the market for a new, great quality amp and your willing to sacrifice some features for the value for money. I was and im bloody delighted. Thanks again to those who advised me on this. :)

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Its different I'd say. I did like the ampeg sound but I was on a budget! I'm surprised at the quality for the money though, that's why I compared the two. The ampeg wins with its on board features but as I said, I like a simple set up. The ampeg is definatly less scoopy but the lf500 has that tubey sound I was after. I think I will invest in a sweeper at some point to even things out. Got a 3 hour job tonight so we'll see how that goes, its a notorious room for sound!

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I'm considering one of these - have you tried it with any pedals to add some grit?

I'm also looking for a tubey, fat/warm/punchy amp on a budget, so this appears to suit. But some for some songs I need a little bit of drive, so I'm thinking of adding something like a VT Bass pedal, anyone tried this?

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Yeah, I run a crappy DigiTech bp50 and have a boss overdrive too. The bp50 is actually OK apart from it being plastic. Some nice effects in there. Once we've finalised our set I might get some specific pedals but it does for now. I fancy trying vox stomplab sometime though. Heard good things. Tonight went really well again, I am really happy with the head. Had the frickin pa speaker in my face but it was punchy enough to cut through.

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  • 1 month later...

They are lovely and simple. When I had Trace Elliot of Ampeg amps I used to spend forever faffing on with graphics and tone settings... With my LH500 I may occasionally need a bit of a tweak to the bass or treble settings, but that's all. It allows me to concentrate on more important things! B)

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