NAD - Markbass Little Mark Vintage 1000

[thisisswanbon]

So I recently had a mid gig breakdown (https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/468243-mid-song-catastrophe/) which put the fear of god into me  In the end, I bought a used Behringer BDI21 as back up for a great price locally, and pulled the trigger on a Mark Bass LM vintage 1000!

 

First off, I must admit that I've forever been a class D naysayer, I'd tried various class D offerings from TC, GK, Ampeg and Aguilar but bought into the whole "class D lacks 'heft'" arguement (although I thought the Aggie sounded great through a pals Aggie cabs). There was likely an element of listening with my eyes and putting too much stock in other's opinions on local pages etc, but I always went back to my type A/B GK1001RBII.

 

Anyway... Long story longer, I decide it's time to retire the 18 year old GK, and when looking on the standard online seller pages, 90% seemed to be class D! I'd forever been buying preamps and compressors to try and give the GK a bit of warmth, so figured a tube pre would be the way to go. After a bit of limited reading, I took a punt on the Lm vintage, and 2 days later it was here!

 

Got to use it in anger last night, after 2 plug and play festival sets on the Friday night and Sunday afternoon.

 

First thing to note was it held its own and more against a full p.a. set up with the gain at 11 and volume at 10 o clock, to the point I had to turn down. There's some serious warmth and weight behind every note. I was using a Nordy Acinonyx bass with both pick ups parallel, and an array of synth and octave effects. The EQ points were a concern beforehand (68hz Bass, 400hz Low mid, 2k hz High mid, 10k hz high), but with the bass and low mids boosted it was a really musical sound.

 

This amp head has been labelled on forums as the markbass head for people who don't think they like markbass, and while I'm fully aware that it could be the honeymoon period, I think that's a pretty bang on description from early findings to be honest! 🤌

 

[Lozz196]

Looks great, and I think those eq points are pretty well thought out, maybe treble a bit high but imo all a fair bit more useable than how they used to be. The stock Markbass sound is one that always seems to fit nicely in a mix.

[fretmeister]

Nice.

I was tempted by one of those while I was dealing with the delays in getting my AG1000.

[thisisswanbon]

On 29/08/2022 at 23:44, Lozz196 said:

Looks great, and I think those eq points are pretty well thought out, maybe treble a bit high but imo all a fair bit more useable than how they used to be. The stock Markbass sound is one that always seems to fit nicely in a mix.

 

I thought the mid points seemed a bit high, with the high mid especially encroaching on treble territory... seems to work well though!

[thisisswanbon]

2 hours ago, fretmeister said:

Nice.

I was tempted by one of those while I was dealing with the delays in getting my AG1000.

I had the same dilemma!  The tube won out for me in the end though, the EQ on those AG1000 amps looks really useful though!  How is it?

[fretmeister]

I've had pretty much all the non-tube MB amps at some point and this is my favourite so far.

The EQ centres are quite different to other amps and it works really well. 

 

I'd definitely buy another one if it got stolen.