TC Electronic BQ250 upgrade?

[jramm]

I've been playing the BQ250 into a BC208. I love the cab, but have qualms about the head. I've found that beyond about halfway on the gain and master volume, I'm starting to get unwanted saturation. 

I know it is rated at 250W for 4ohm and the BC208 is 8ohm, but I would still expect it to do a bit better than half? I'm guessing they are playing a bit with the specs since they don't specify how much THD.

The compressor (or 'Thrust' as it is labelled) also introduces distortion - this may be intentional given its name, but I would prefer clean, fast compression. 

 

I borrowed a 500w head from a music school to test it is not the cabinet and found that the 208 can take a whole lot more than the BQ250 was giving before saturation

So I am looking for an upgrade to pair with the BC208. I want clean headroom for my funk/jazz band. I dont need loads of watts for the BC208 (I made add a second one in the future, or a different lightweight 2x10) - I was thinking around 300-500w?

And my budget is around the same - upper limit of 500 EUR. 

 

In this range I have seen:

- Ashdown ABM 300 EVO

- Ashdown RM 500 EVO 2

- Ashdown Original 300

- MarkBass Nano Mark

- MarkBass little mark IV 300

And a whole bunch of hartke - TX300, TX600, LX8500, LX5500, LH500

The Ampeg PF-500 is maybe possible - I've seen a large variation in price for this...

 

 

My local music store has pretty much nothing but MarkBass and TC Electronic heads, plus some combos. 

Any recommendations? 

[StingRayBoy42]

Markbass stuff is really good - I'm taking delivery of a Nanomark tomorrow, I'll let you know how good it is!

[BassBunny]

Most modern amps are designed to give virtually full output with the gain around half. It's a marketing thing to make you think there is a lot more to come.

Notable exceptions being EA gear and the Ashdown Retroglide.

Another 208 would make a massive difference as the additional speakers will shift more air and 2 of the same speaker cabs is the way to go.

Regarding a new amp, I was a massive Mark Bass fan until my last one went faulty and the only place to get it fixed, (same company TC use), made it an uneconomic repair.

I switched to Ashdown and had a RM500 and Retroglide 800. Both great amps and Ashdown customer service is legendary. The will repair any of their products at reasonable cost.

There's a Retroglide for sale in the amps section. Nothing to do with me I stress.

[BassmanPaul]

For a SS amplifier a reasonable guesstimate would be it will output approximately half its output power at 4Ω into an 8Ω load. This is not the whole story of course but it does enable a player to ball park his/her amplifier's performance. TCE have been known to fudge their ratings in the past but not this time I believe.  As advised above adding a second identical cabinet to your first will all more performance due to coupling of the cabinets. Add to that the fact that the amp will be able to output its maximum power into the 4Ω load the two boxes will provide. A win, win situation.

Edited April 3 by BassmanPaul

[lemmywinks]

Warwick have released a 600w version of the Gnome

https://www.thomann.de/gb/warwick_gnome_i_pro_600w.htm

 

[Baloney Balderdash]

On 03/04/2024 at 12:51, BassBunny said:

Another 208 would make a massive difference as the additional speakers will shift more air and 2 of the same speaker cabs is the way to go.

This is true!

 

Would give you much more extra output power than getting an amp with double the power rating (500W, as that would only equal to just about +3dB).

 

Edited April 7 by Baloney Balderdash