Ashdown Touring 220 combo with twin valve pre-amp and solid state power amp. Open to reasonable offers. £250 Lovely Wellingborough

[Osiris]

This is an excellent condition Ashdown Touring 220 combo. It's a 1x15 setup featuring a twin valve pre-amp with a 180 watt old school power section, people more clued up than me can clarify whether it's solid state, class AB or whatever. It's definitely not a class D light weight unit! It has a 3 band passive tone stack with switchable bass and mid frequencies plus a bright switch. Tonally, it's big, warm and clear but isn't designed for full on valve distortion. 

 

It's in excellent condition with one superficial scratch in the tolex on one side and a couple of minor pulls in the grill cloth. It's lived in the bands private rehearsal room where it has never been abused. 

 

I have no real idea of the value of this so I'm asking what I think to be a reasonable £225 - or sensible offers - collected from the Wellingborough area, NN29. It's not exactly light weight so unfortunately I am unable to drag it out for posting. Potential buyers are welcome to try it out and the kettle will be on. However, I'm also happy to meet up somewhere up to an hours drive from Wellingborough.

 

I'm ideally looking for a straight sale although I could be tempted with a trade for a Genzler Magellan preamp/DI pedal or maybe a Sire U5 short scale. 

 

Edited Saturday at 06:05 by Osiris
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[MrPring]

About 10 years ago I bought one of these, stuck some castors on the bastard and have toured it all over the UK and Europe ever since. Incredible setup! Don't sleep on this. GLWTS

[Beedster]

That's a very decent price for an amp that will make your bass sound rather lovely  

[Chienmortbb]

That looks like it uses the amp section from the original Rootmaster series. That was a class A/B amp, although the 500 and 800 versions were class D.

[Pow_22]

14 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

That looks like it uses the amp section from the original Rootmaster series. That was a class A/B amp, although the 500 and 800 versions were class D.

I think the spyder series (220, 330 and 550) all share the same pre but the power sections are - 220 = Electric Blue, 330 = MAG, 550 = ABM.  Brilliant amps, i used a 330 head live for years and had a great tone

[Osiris]

@Chienmortbb @Pow_22 Thanks for the information.

 

With all the talk of valve tone and the thump of class A/B power amps and the heft - there, I said it 😱 - that you get from old school amp designs like this, coupled with what I think is pretty much a give away price, I'm surprised this is still hanging around. Someone somewhere mentioned that this series of amps wasn't particularly desirable but given that they doesn't suffer from the wooly sound some folks complain of with Ashdown amps I think they're an underrated gem. But as I gig almost exclusively on IEMs these days and have a light weight amp and cab for the occasional dep gig with backline, this is sadly in the way and needs to go to a new loving home.