Ashdown B-social 75w version. New b-stock in Italy. £200

[Bigwan]

28 minutes ago, vinorange said:

Since asking if anybody got their amp sims to work with the apptek socket. I've trialled several amp sim apps and got to a very happy place with my amp. I got Bias Fx, Bias Amp, Jamup Pro, Amplitude and Ampkit to work perfectly with mine - Bias Fx being by far the best due to the ability to import other people's tone / cab setups from the tone cloud.

As a stand alone bass amp, of course it's not up to much (unless it was loaded with some far better speakers) but was that ever the point of this thing? At £600 I wouldn't even go near it. At £200 it's a brilliant bit of kit that works as a desktop rehearsal amp / modelling amp and a good bluetooth speaker. It's particularly handy if you play lead guitar too as you definitely get no farting out then and the sim apps are targeted for guitar far more than for bass. Mind you mine doesn't fart out anyway.

Excellent news that! I'll get the ipad hooked up over the weekend. Bit of high pass filter in bias might help this thing no end. 

 

12 hours ago, Maude said:

Mine arrived today as well. First impressions, hmm, if I'd paid £600 I'd be seriously pee'd off. 

Little bit buzzy on low notes but that seems to be cabinet rather than speaker. The front panel was offset to one side by 2-3mm and the VU meter was rotated from upright. These sort of things really bug me as there is no need for it, especially on a £600 unit. I removed the front and realigned it and reseated the meter in the correct position, at least now it looks right. Time to sort the buzzing cabinet, and this where Ashdown's QC has really let them down, and I am an Ashdown fan having owned a lot of their gear. Problems so far which could all add to the cabinet noise. The front panel rests against the rim of the speakers which appear to be plastic, no anti vibration gasket, the plastic lens of the VU meter is just held in place by the front panel pushing against it, so lots of plastic vibrating against the MDF front panel. Let's take the back off then to see what's going on inside. Oh dear Ashdown, really not good at all. The speakers have earth wires screwed to the speaker chassis, one of which has been sheared of so is just hanging loose, the large transformer is held to the back panel with a 10mm nut, which is loose enough that the transformer clunks  around inside the cabinet, lots of wires are just laying across the back of one of the speakers, the damping material is not held in place by the double sided tape used and is just floating around inside and just generally a very untidy looking interior. With some proper damping around the speakers and VU meter behind the front panel and a lot of tidying up and proper tightening of internal components it should be a lot better, but this really shouldn't need doing on a unit of this price, Phil Jones Bass this certainly is not. 

Must have a look inside mine. I'm not averse to using a screwdriver but, as you say Maude, not for £600... For £200 I'm much more willing 

[edstraker123]

But you shouldn't have to tinker with it to get it right at any price point. If you watch the demo video below, Mark Gooday states its a professional quality product not a toy and they didn't release it until it was perfect. That certainly is not what Maude found under the hood. Maybe I'm better than Doug as I blew mine up effortlessly !  They should have called it the Rattle and Hum ( I guess U2 wouldn't have liked that ). It gets 2 fingers up rather than thumbs from me !

 

[edstraker123]

At least I got my money back without issue.

[Maude]

51 minutes ago, edstraker123 said:

At least I got my money back without issue.

Did you pay full whack for yours? 

[edstraker123]

£230 from the Ashdown ebay store.

[Maude]

I reckon that's about all they should be sold for as long as it's fart free. 

Now mine's sorted its a handy little amp but around the £200 mark is all its worth really. 

Like you say, at least you've got your money back

[wateroftyne]

The sad thing is, we predicted this nearly three years ago...

[Ashdown Engineering]

On 1/5/2018 at 01:18, Maude said:

Mine arrived today as well. First impressions, hmm, if I'd paid £600 I'd be seriously pee'd off. 

Little bit buzzy on low notes but that seems to be cabinet rather than speaker. The front panel was offset to one side by 2-3mm and the VU meter was rotated from upright. These sort of things really bug me as there is no need for it, especially on a £600 unit. I removed the front and realigned it and reseated the meter in the correct position, at least now it looks right. Time to sort the buzzing cabinet, and this where Ashdown's QC has really let them down, and I am an Ashdown fan having owned a lot of their gear. Problems so far which could all add to the cabinet noise. The front panel rests against the rim of the speakers which appear to be plastic, no anti vibration gasket, the plastic lens of the VU meter is just held in place by the front panel pushing against it, so lots of plastic vibrating against the MDF front panel. Let's take the back off then to see what's going on inside. Oh dear Ashdown, really not good at all. The speakers have earth wires screwed to the speaker chassis, one of which has been sheared of so is just hanging loose, the large transformer is held to the back panel with a 10mm nut, which is loose enough that the transformer clunks  around inside the cabinet, lots of wires are just laying across the back of one of the speakers, the damping material is not held in place by the double sided tape used and is just floating around inside and just generally a very untidy looking interior. With some proper damping around the speakers and VU meter behind the front panel and a lot of tidying up and proper tightening of internal components it should be a lot better, but this really shouldn't need doing on a unit of this price, Phil Jones Bass this certainly is not. 

Now I don't mind tinkering with this at the price I paid but how the release of this unit was pushed back and back and when finally released it was this shoddy mess I don't know. At first look I thought I had bought a counterfeit the build was so bad, but after checking all the usual things, this unit is genuine. 

Once sorted this will be a very handy little amp but I've no idea what Ashdown are thinking pricing this at £600, I can only see it damaging their reputation. 

If the chap on here from Ashdown reads this I'd love to know his thoughts on the terrible QC on the B Social. I realise mine was B stock but the seller assured me it was bankruptcy stock, but if it was a return, how can it have this many faults? 

One other thing that seems so obvious as soon as you use it I can't believe nobody at Ashdown thought to add it, is that the wireless dongle that plugs in your bass needs charging via a USB lead, why didn't you add a standard USB port so the dongle can charged from the B Social rather that having to plug in a separate charger? 

Hi Maude et al,

Very sorry to read this. Here is the honest and unabridged story of the B Social from start to finish, you may want a hot beverage and a biscuit before you start, you definitely will by the end...

So after an evening with our Japanese importer in early 2013 it became apparent that due to the increasing number of players living in small apartments (Japan especially) traditional bass amps for the home were simply too bulky and often too loud for their desired application. However despite players attempting to get around this by using very small bass combos or going down the iPad into headphones route there was still a desire for a premium amp for the home that would not look out of place whilst providing high quality performance.

So with these thoughts in mind we set out to design what would become the B Social. We knew from the start it should be more than just a bass amp and that it should also be a premium stereo Bluetooth streaming music player so that it can also take up that role for people where space is limited. Also from the beginning we felt it was important to have two inputs for song writing sessions/jams and perhaps most importantly so the B Social could used by music teachers, both can plug in etc, play music/backing track via Bluetooth etc, encouraging players to write and record easily together(Hence Be Social) We then expanded on this by having the built in audio interface for direct recording, again we thought it would be great for jammers and teachers/students as the interface will split the audio from the separate inputs so resulting in two separate recorded tracks. Then we had the thought to make the set up as ‘clean’ as possible it would be great if the unit had an integral wireless system to remove the need an instrument cable. I don’t think this had been done on any guitar/bass amp before? Boss have just done it 3 years later on their new Katana Air... Lastly the addition of our AppTek input meant certain Amp Sims and FX could be used expanding the overall possibilities.

So now we knew what we wanted and then there was just the challenge to get all that into a small stylish box with perfect performance and no noises interference etc. Music streaming needed to be of high quality whilst retaining the instrument reproduction/performance we would expect etc etc. Whilst it may not seem it from the outside this was a huge and ambitious project for a company our size bearing in mind we have one full time engineer and another part time(Roland/Boss alas we are not) but we wanted to make the best product that we could and move things forward for today’s generation of ‘Pro’ home players. We also added two 4ohm speaker outs so the B Social can be linked to and drive two 4 ohm cabs if really big bass/volume was ever required. A B Social driving 2 x 810s is much fun indeed.

It was by no means an easy challenge but move forward to mid 2014 and after months of coffee fuelled late nights, weird noises and copious swearing we had a final prototype that did everything we wanted beautifully(in fact it still does as it’s on my desk playing music as I write this). So far so good...

Of course once you have a prototype you have to cost it and then mass produce it consistently to the standards we have set for ourselves over the past 21 years. The cost we knew would be higher than was ideal purely to the amount of tech in it and the fact the only speakers that we were happy with were the Italian made SICA Dual Concentrics of which are alas not cheap. Because of the tech/home consumer aspects of the B Social we felt it would be best to not build it in our factory but a factory more used to manufacturing this type of product. (I will come back to this)

The final costs however did come in quite higher than what we had originally aimed for and if using our normal margin/mark up would mean the B Social would have to retail at roughly £800... Way too high it goes without saying. We weren’t however prepared to cheapen the product after all the work so instead decided that we would cut our own margin on the product by around half of what we would expect to make on a regular product which meant with distributor and store margins factored in we could get the price down to what we felt was a more realistic and achievable £599. 

So fast forward to January 2015 NAMM show, we launch the B Social and the reaction is fantastic, everyone trying it loved it and we were happy, price was never scoffed at by anyone who tried it.
However despite not a single person in the UK having seen let alone tried one at this point this happened:

 

Now we will always take these kind of threads with a pinch of salt but also naturally we do listen to the feedback taking on board what we can etc. So this did hit a nerve more than perhaps it does normally with people suggesting we should be selling the unit for less than what it costs us to make...The costs meant we were not making a great deal per unit and yet despite this we were being chastised for how much the unit was. A PJB Double Four is around £400 with no Bluetooth, no wireless transmitter/receiver, no recording interface, no secondary input, no IOS app connectivity etc, no independent EQ for the music being streamed etc etc. So it truly amazed us the toxic reaction to the price point.

Regardless we move forward and thankfully sales and feedback were very good. For many of our artists it’s the perfect on the road companion and a large number of our artists have bought and use the B Social nightly in the dressing room on the road. some have even had flight cases made for their B Socials which is always nice to see. 

Fast forward a couple of years and lots of B Socials have been sold and all is well. We did however start to notice that whilst the vast majority of units were built as spec and all good we were finding the odd one where there were issues, mainly small things but a number of units were actually not shipped out because of this. Easy to do with our stock in the UK as we spot check every shipment but more tricky on direct shipments from the factory to distributors overseas as it is up to them to do the same as us and spot check shipments. Whilst I am sure the majority do this there are also some I would think do not... 

Because of these issues and after much arguing with the factory we began to lose faith that every unit was being built properly and to spec. (Remember this is/was not our normal factory) Because of this we have sadly now been halted production and it is highly unlikely we will use that particular factory ever again. The majority of units out there should be and will be great (hence the guys saying theirs are fine) but majority is not good enough. 

The two units from here that were sold on Ebay before Christmas were both B stock sold at a highly reduced rate as they had been loaned to a school previously but all was assumed to be ok with them, of course as laid out clearly here they weren’t and those items have been refunded and will now not be resold at any price. 

Hope this helps to clarify the situation somewhat.

Time for a beer.

[yorks5stringer]

Respect to Ashdown for coming on here and giving the background to it all. I suppose they're just Being Social...?

Edited January 12, 2018 by yorks5stringer

[AndyTravis]

I bought a second hand mk500 head and had a minor issue, Mark Gooday sent me a message and offered a free service.

Turns out I could solve it myself - just a dusty pot. 

But still.

I’d say they’ve shifted enough gear to have the one or two problems as described...nothing without a good explanation...i know much bigger companies with much worse service/support records, and more “boutique” brands with hilariously bad service in comparison.

I’ve used their gear for a long time, and haven’t had anything other than a good time.

I suppose there are 1000’s of their punters having a trouble free time who aren’t compelled to write about it.

 

[edstraker123]

Hi - I do appreciate you taking the time to explain the history in detail and as a concept the B- Social is a magnificent thing and I do applaud you for trying to produce it .The b stock item I purchased was reduced in price, but as you have noted above, it was actually a second hand unit and would therefore never have commanded the full price irrespective of the subsequent issues encountered.

The delivery of my item was delayed as your engineer was off work ill and you told me you needed to wait for his return as every B stock product is checked prior to dispatch. This check clearly never happened,  presumably due to the backlog of work and the volume of orders to be processed before your Christmas closedown. So with the initial delay, a faulty product and the no show courier wasting my last day's holiday , you can understand my frustration - which you have apologised for and I have had a full refund with no quibbles.

A previous Ashdown purchase was a CTM-15 head which hissed like crazy when the gain was turned up -  a problem which seemed to be encountered by numerous users having googled the issue. Like BigRedx in the other B-Social post, my recollection was of poor customer service in relation to resolving this issue, but similarly this was a few years ago and I have no email trail relating to it.

Maybe I have just been unlucky, as I can see there are many happy Ashdown customers out there,  but in a competitive market it would seem to make no business sense for inconsistent quality control and customer service.

[Muppet]

Seeing as you quote my original thread from 2015 it's probably appropriate for me to reply. The main gist of the thread was, from the very beginning,  around the price. You announced the product, you announced the price, you made a song and dance of it ant NAMM but no one could touch or feel it so opinions were formed basd on the information out there. That's what happens in the world. It works the same for cars and washing machines too.

You went on about the quality components in the product and no one disputes this, but, and I hate to labour the point,  the market will react to the price. You may be happy about the number of units you've sold at that price, you may not.  Just because you say it's worth it does not mean others agree. 

I did actually buy one. And I did actually review it positively, but you've skipped over that so I post a link to it here. (formatting got screwed a bit in the migration)

I have had no quality issues. I like it. I like it a lot. But not at the RRP. 

[Andy Turner]

I bought one too from Italy for £200, it arrived yesterday.  When I opened it I was convinced it was a fake.  The MDF front was warped so much I could slide a £1 coin through the gap.  The white paint finish is horrible and rough. This images on the internet did not match mine.  The graphics on the VU meter were different.  The input board is different as is the vinyl covering. I looked on the Ashdown website and their images actually did match my amp. There appears to be two versions of this amp, one with curved handles, 20svu printed on meter and jack socket at the top middle of plate and one with flatter handles without 20svu on meter and jack sockets at left side of plate.  This is a poorly made Chinese product. It is possible to make fantastic high quality products in China like Nikon lenses or Apple products.  This is old school China with poor quality control.  I have never owned Ashdown product before and I didn't know whether they were quality products. I own a Sonos 5 which is a similar sized speaker box and amp for £400.  It is amazing in every way.  I realise it is not the same type of product as the B social but comparisons are valid when Ashdown are asking £600 rrp. I would value the Ashdown B-Social at about £100 and that is assuming the front panel is not warped. Oh and the sound? Not impressed.

[basskit_case]

8 minutes ago, Andy Turner said:

I bought one too from Italy for £200, it arrived yesterday.  When I opened it I was convinced it was a fake.  The MDF front was warped so much I could slide a £1 coin through the gap.  The white paint finish is horrible and rough. This images on the internet did not match mine.  The graphics on the VU meter were different.  The input board is different as is the vinyl covering. I looked on the Ashdown website and their images actually did match my amp. There appears to be two versions of this amp, one with curved handles, 20svu printed on meter and jack socket at the top middle of plate and one with flatter handles without 20svu on meter and jack sockets at left side of plate.  This is a poorly made Chinese product. It is possible to make fantastic high quality products in China like Nikon lenses or Apple products.  This is old school China with poor quality control.  I have never owned Ashdown product before and I didn't know whether they were quality products. I own a Sonos 5 which is a similar sized speaker box and amp for £400.  It is amazing in every way.  I realise it is not the same type of product as the B social but comparisons are valid when Ashdown are asking £600 rrp. I would value the Ashdown B-Social at about £100 and that is assuming the front panel is not warped. Oh and the sound? Not impressed.

Are you getting any vibration through yours, mine had a touch of that if I tried to boost the bass.  Main reason I sent mine back

[Muppet]

4 hours ago, Andy Turner said:

I bought one too from Italy for £200, it arrived yesterday.  When I opened it I was convinced it was a fake.  The MDF front was warped so much I could slide a £1 coin through the gap.  The white paint finish is horrible and rough. This images on the internet did not match mine.  The graphics on the VU meter were different.  The input board is different as is the vinyl covering. I looked on the Ashdown website and their images actually did match my amp. There appears to be two versions of this amp, one with curved handles, 20svu printed on meter and jack socket at the top middle of plate and one with flatter handles without 20svu on meter and jack sockets at left side of plate.  This is a poorly made Chinese product. It is possible to make fantastic high quality products in China like Nikon lenses or Apple products.  This is old school China with poor quality control.  I have never owned Ashdown product before and I didn't know whether they were quality products. I own a Sonos 5 which is a similar sized speaker box and amp for £400.  It is amazing in every way.  I realise it is not the same type of product as the B social but comparisons are valid when Ashdown are asking £600 rrp. I would value the Ashdown B-Social at about £100 and that is assuming the front panel is not warped. Oh and the sound? Not impressed.

@Andy Turner can you post some pictures of yours? It sounds very different to mine and I have a white fronted one.....

[Maude]

There is an earlier version with a different input/output side panel. 

The different coloured fronts are just vinyl covered MDF. 

[Muppet]

1 minute ago, Maude said:

There is an earlier version with a different input/output side panel. 

The different coloured fronts are just vinyl covered MDF. 

The front on mine is white gloss paint. Ashdown told me it was Ford Polar White.....

[Maude]

Oh maybe then. 

I have the wood one and it's a vinyl wrap. 

[Muppet]

Here's mine. The wee chip in the paint was me.....:(

 

 

[edstraker123]

Despite saying I'd never buy another Ashdown product I've just bought Burno70's Little Bastard 30 - it actually works and sounds like a bass amp !

[floFC]

I think I have the same as @Muppet.

So, what’s with the knobs? Why is there no 5? I still haven’t worked it out 

[Muppet]

12 hours ago, floFC said:

I think I have the same as @Muppet.

So, what’s with the knobs? Why is there no 5? I still haven’t worked it out 

Arrgh, I haven't noticed that til now.  I'm not sure I can cope now I know this........