New TC Electronic heads

[anzoid]

1 hour ago, eude said:

Did anyone else spot this little head on top of the new 2X8 cab on their site?
It's a rendering, not a real thing (yet) but it seems to be called a BAM200, can't find anything else on the interwebs though...

 

Eude

That BC208 cab looks rather nice - if it would fit size-wise under a BG250-208 then I reckon I might give one a spin.

[Status09]

On 31/10/2018 at 11:22, SleepyOne said:

Could you write the update, i'm really interested in it? I'm about to buy this head with a K212 but can't find any decent review or opinion

Hi mate, I was thinking of getting the BQ500 but not sure as to which cab would be suited power wise.

 

Would you recommend the K212 or 210? The amp  wouldn’t blow the cabinet would it? Sorry, not much of a tech head! 

[CameronJ]

36 minutes ago, Status09 said:

Hi mate, I was thinking of getting the BQ500 but not sure as to which cab would be suited power wise.

 

Would you recommend the K212 or 210? The amp  wouldn’t blow the cabinet would it? Sorry, not much of a tech head! 

Either the 212 or 210 will both work just fine. I believe they’re both 8ohm cabs so you’d only be getting around half the power of the amp through either one of them, and even then you’d have to be running the gain and master volumes at max to be putting that wattage through the cabinet anyway.

Long story short, the BQ500 won’t blow the K212 or K210. The 212 will probably  give you a little more volume.

[Guest gazzatriumph]

Not the old wattage chestnut, I've had the RH 750 with two 2x10 cabs for three years now no GAS for anything else, it very loud, never above half at gigs,  much louder than the Ashdown ABM and 6 x10  I had, with good tone and easy to lug about. I don't take notice of the blurb any of the manufacturers put out, I use my ears.

Edited November 1, 2018 by gazzatriumph

[SleepyOne]

9 hours ago, Status09 said:

Hi mate, I was thinking of getting the BQ500 but not sure as to which cab would be suited power wise.

 

Would you recommend the K212 or 210? The amp  wouldn’t blow the cabinet would it? Sorry, not much of a tech head! 

Hi,

i don't have any experiences yet  Both K210 and K212 is a 400Watts cabinet. I have ordered it yesterday with a K212, i think it could handle better my 5 strings.

As someone mentioned earlier it's an 8Ohm cab (both of them), which means the amp unable to fry it  At 8 Ohms the cab delivers about half of it's wattage. If i would have two K212 (or any 8Ohm cabs though...) with the BQ500 then it would be possible. But only if you crank it up fully. But that level the cab should clip which you hear and then you should lower the volume/power of the amp.

[Merton]

On 31/10/2018 at 11:23, eude said:

Did anyone else spot this little head on top of the new 2X8 cab on their site?
It's a rendering, not a real thing (yet) but it seems to be called a BAM200, can't find anything else on the interwebs though...

 

Eude

Looks like a direct competitor to the Trace Elliot Elf & 2x8 cab doesn’t it!

[anzoid]

2 hours ago, Merton said:

Looks like a direct competitor to the Trace Elliot Elf & 2x8 cab doesn’t it!

As long as they don't charge TE prices for it...

[Jack]

14 hours ago, SleepyOne said:

Hi,

At 8 Ohms the cab delivers about half of it's wattage. If i would have two K212 (or any 8Ohm cabs though...) with the BQ500 then it would be possible.

Not entirely sure I follow you here. The BQ500 is 500W at 4R and so around 250W at 8R. The cabs are both 400W and both 8R.

 

So if you have one cab, the cab can take 400W and it'll get roughly 250W from the amp, so all should be well. This you've said and this I agree with, the bit I disagree with is the bit in bold. If you have two ofthe cabs, then they can still take 400W each, and the amp will be at 4R so it'll be putting out 500W of juice, shared between the two cabs they're only getting 250W each, so really it's no different to just having one cab...

 

[Chienmortbb]

On 13/10/2018 at 09:38, JapanAxe said:

That does make sense for the bass guitar, as a clean bass note starts with an amplitude peak which falls away to a much lower sustained level, then decays away. The TC Active Power Management blurb describes how the system heavily limits the initial peak, so that they effectively only have to amplify the remainder of each note.

EDIT: Although we should all probably stop worrying about power, and listen to how loud an amp is and whether we like the sound, inevitably we are always going to want numbers to compare.

TC Active Power Management ios either compression, limiting or a mixture of both. Lots of amps have those and don't inflate the power ratings. However to be fair to TC and other manufacturers they just use our gullibility in their marketing. Sell an XYZ-250, XYZ-500, XYZ-450 and we will all think the numbers = watts.

Of course much of that beloved Valve Sound is partly due to the natural compression that is inherent in many valve amp designs, so dialled in compression may not  be a bad thing especially if you are trying to emulate a valve sound. The slight of hand is then claiming that you have gained power over a similar SS amp that does not have dialled in compression.

[Jack]

It happens more and more. In a very unfortunate former life I worked for a company car scheme. 90% of cars are straight about the engine size. You want a BMW 3 series with a 2l engine? That's a 320. The 1.8l is a 318. Mercedes though decided to hell with it. The A180, A200 and A220 are all 2l, just with different turbos. Lexus use their model numbers to give 'equivalent engine sizes', so a 4l petrol + hybrid car is billed as a 600, 'equivalent to a 6l'.

 

I wish companies would just be straight with us.

[SleepyOne]

4 hours ago, Jack said:

Not entirely sure I follow you here. The BQ500 is 500W at 4R and so around 250W at 8R. The cabs are both 400W and both 8R.

 

So if you have one cab, the cab can take 400W and it'll get roughly 250W from the amp, so all should be well. This you've said and this I agree with, the bit I disagree with is the bit in bold. If you have two ofthe cabs, then they can still take 400W each, and the amp will be at 4R so it'll be putting out 500W of juice, shared between the two cabs they're only getting 250W each, so really it's no different to just having one cab...

 

Oh sry, my bad. You are right. The total resistance with 2 8Ohm cabs paralell will be 4Ohm which means the amp can output the 500W, but the two cab will share this power (50/50). so 250W/cab will happen. You can't fry it

Thx for the correction!

[Chopthebass]

wonder if they still use Behringer watts

[Status09]

I really want to get the BQ500 but ideally I would need a 4ohm cab to get the best (and full / close to 500W) output from the head.

An 8ohm cab (like most of the TC cabs) would only mean an approx. 250W output from the head.

So, what 4ohm cabs would you guys recommend? 

[Al Krow]

Guys - coming very late to the party, but a few Qs from me:

1) are any of the new amps providing the "Tubetone" feature that is in the much loved RH450 / 750 heads (and seems to me to sound best of all on the monster  Blacksmith amp!)

2) does the  “MOSFET preamp for that valve sound” come close to the "Tubetone"? Is it pretty much the same thing?

3) is there a TC pedal that captures the Tubetone sound? Not sure the Mojomojo really quite gets there...

[Woodinblack]

I assume that the preamp - the Spectradrive Bass Preamp & Drive Pedal does

[Al Krow]

5 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

I assume that the preamp - the Spectradrive Bass Preamp & Drive Pedal does

@dave_bass5?

I've not heard particularly positive comments about the drive on the SD from folk who have bought the preamp so far, and currently no possibility of using Toneprint to tweak the drive. 

[dave_bass5]

7 hours ago, Al Krow said:

@dave_bass5?

I've not heard particularly positive comments about the drive on the SD from folk who have bought the preamp so far, and currently no possibility of using Toneprint to tweak the drive. 

It’s better than my first time around with this,  there are better tone prints for OD, but its not a pedal I would use for OD unless i had to. There is a tone print that has been designed for clean boost, and this is the one ive been using. It’s perfect for just making the tone louder, with a bit of an extra edge to the tone. Very usable but not a drive/OD effect really. 

 

[SleepyOne]

On talkbass someone wrote that, the BQ500's gain is really sensitive  (beside the active/passive switch is reversed). He says when it set to passive(which is active :)) he can barely can turn up the gain without clipping and with active setting(which is the passive in this case) it clips almost immediately.

Has someone similar experiences?

[urbanx]

On 14/11/2018 at 06:53, SleepyOne said:

On talkbass someone wrote that, the BQ500's gain is really sensitive  (beside the active/passive switch is reversed). He says when it set to passive(which is active :)) he can barely can turn up the gain without clipping and with active setting(which is the passive in this case) it clips almost immediately.

Has someone similar experiences?

The gain is fairly sensitive, but never a problem to balance it with volume. 

Not had any actual clipping problems, I think the clipping LIGHT is very sensitive! I don't think there's any settings where the light isn't permanently on when I'm playing, but the sound is perfectly clean, even at high volumes. 

 

Oh, I play an ACTIVE Jaguar bass. 

Edited November 15, 2018 by urbanx

[SleepyOne]

Found a new review. 

 

[BassBunny]

Looks like Bax Shop are knocking them out at virtually 50% off suggested retail.

£144 for the 250 and £178 for the 500.

[roblpm]

5 hours ago, BassBunny said:

Looks like Bax Shop are knocking them out at virtually 50% off suggested retail.

£144 for the 250 and £178 for the 500.

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

[afterimage]

 

_{https://bassmusicianmagazine.com/2018/08/tc-electronic-introduces-bq250-bq500-bass-heads/}

[BassManGraham]

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.

[jezzaboy]

On 14/11/2018 at 06:53, SleepyOne said:

On talkbass someone wrote that, the BQ500's gain is really sensitive  (beside the active/passive switch is reversed). He says when it set to passive(which is active :)) he can barely can turn up the gain without clipping and with active setting(which is the passive in this case) it clips almost immediately.

Has someone similar experiences?

Just picked up one of these from Thomman as I got some Crimbo cash. The active/passive switch is still the wrong way round and in passive mode, the red gain light comes on constantly even when the gain is at zero!! Passive P bass. Any ideas?

Edited December 11, 2018 by jezzaboy