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Tiny amps like the Blackstar Fly Bass.


fretmeister
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I had the original Fly 3 guitar version which was fine for its intended use and surprisingly quite passable for bass on the clean channel at sensible volume. When it fell out of use for guitar I decided I’d swap it for the bass version so I could maybe get some more volume - that turned out to be a mistake as it was just farty and distorted at pretty much all settings and volumes; I was much better off with the guitar version. Maybe the bass one was broken.. who knows - I pulled a mildly disgusted face at it, pulled the batteries out, stuck it in a cupboard somewhere and haven’t seen it since.

Smallest amp I’ve got that’s any use to me is a Markbass 801, which is great, but of course several orders of magnitude larger, more powerful and more expensive than the Fly, so not much of a fair comparison.

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Smallest I have is the Ashdown B Social which I really like.  Then I'm up to a Ashdown Studio 10.  Neither is travel portable really. I guess a small pedal preamp with headphone/aux in is an alternative...

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Having had one, I’d actually recommend getting something like a backbeat... the haptic feedback resonates some bass through your body, and even without headphones you can hear the notes you’re playing. You can sit in front of the tv, feel like you’re playing quite loud and not bother anyone! 
 

It also means that money has gone on something useful for gigs, and with its aux input it’s a great practice tool too. Just an alternative thought!

Edited by knicknack
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The Yamaha THR10 will sound fine with 4 string basses but if you have a low B in your arsenal then you may as well forget about it. I bought a PJB Double Four and haven’t looked back. If you want your bass to sound like bass in a package the size of a shoebox, theres is no better amp out there.

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I use a Roland Microcube Bass RX which has some nice valvey amp sims. It is small but not as tiny as the blackstar, but it can run on batteries or via a mains PSU. Mine was £100 secondhand and I use it every day for practice and/or noodling. It sounds remarkably good, my favourite tones are the fliptop & SVT emulations, and it can go a lot louder than the specs would suggest.

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I really am looking for tiny.

I already have a PJB headphone amp, and Amplitube on my phone but headphones get tiring quickly and it's not great for telly watching.

The Backbeat is too expensive for my purposes. I've got an old Roland Cube but it's too big to take with me and surprisingly heavy.

 

I might order the Blackstar and give it a test run. I'm not massively fussed about a brilliant bass tone, more for noodling and doing a bit of reading practice.

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7 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

I really am looking for tiny.

I already have a PJB headphone amp, and Amplitube on my phone but headphones get tiring quickly and it's not great for telly watching.

The Backbeat is too expensive for my purposes. I've got an old Roland Cube but it's too big to take with me and surprisingly heavy.

 

I might order the Blackstar and give it a test run. I'm not massively fussed about a brilliant bass tone, more for noodling and doing a bit of reading practice.

Have you thought of getting one of those Bluetooth speakers? There are plenty around with line in so latency isnt an issue. Me and my son used to jam at home using a couple of these as amps, sometimes direct in, more often through a Zoom B1 pedal. You can get a very nice low end out of these little things.

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I have the Blackstar Core ID Beam.  It has a couple of bass amp models (modern and vintage), compression and a few bass optimised drive effects, not to mention bluetooth for jamming along with.  One of the acoustic models is actually completely flat, which is quite handy if I want to hook my Helix up to it for more in depth home practice.

Only issue I have is to properly edit patched and tweak eq settings you need to hook it up to a computer via usb which is a PITA. Plus,  blackstar appear to run about a year or so behind MacOS releases and the software isn't guaranteed to run properly if you regularly updated you mac.  By the time they pull their collective finger out and release an updated, their still a macos release or too behind.   If you're running windows, you'll have no such issues.

PS, I'm rather smitten by those new mini beatle stack, although they are rather larger than you're looking for.  That said, I'm tempted to trade my blackstar in for a vox adio air BS.  Looks like a more user friendly practice amp than my blackstar.

Edited by Greg Edwards69
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3 hours ago, lemmywinks said:

For a leftfield solution to noodling around the house and hotel room playing  have you thought about a uke bass? I just use my acoustic when I want to spontaneously pick a bass up and play for a few minutes, no cables or anything.

I sold it!

:D 

 

  • Haha 1
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