TC Electronic BC208 cab and BQ250 head

[AlanG]

I play either guitar or bass most weeks in my local church.

We hire the local community centre hall so it's a weekly setup/tear down.

For bass I go through a Spectradrive and DI straight into the PA.  It probaby sounds ok out front, but my sound is, not unsurprisingly, rubbish in the small onstage monitor.

I have an Ashdown MAG 250 but my back is shot (likely needs a fairly major spine fix) so looking for a light (make that very light) setup.

It's essentially just a monitor for me and the group.

Andertons have made a fairly derisory offer on a px, but I wasn't expecting very much.

I'm looking at the TC Electronic BC208 cab at a back friendly 10kg and either the BAM200 or BQ250.

The BAM200 is very simple and I have the compressor on the pedal if needed.  The BQ250 is a little more versatile and there is only £30 between them.

Any thoughts or experiences?

[Mickeyboro]

Hi Alan

 

I am a fan of ‘lunchbox’ amps like TE Elf, Warwick Gnome and GK MB200.

 

The BAM is I imagine similar, and probably adequate for your needs. Cant say I am a great fan of the brand though, so haven’t tried one. 

[Lozz196]

I think I’d go for the BQ250 as the eq has both low and high mids, just that bit more versatile. 

[AlanG]

16 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

I think I’d go for the BQ250 as the eq has both low and high mids, just that bit more versatile. 

That's what I was thinking for just a few quid more. Do you have, or tried one?

[lemmywinks]

There's also a used BH250 on sale in the Marketplace here for £100 including a Gator bag, has the smart EQ, mute function, tuner and Toneprint option.

 

 

[AlanG]

24 minutes ago, lemmywinks said:

There's also a used BH250 on sale in the Marketplace here for £100 including a Gator bag, has the smart EQ, mute function, tuner and Toneprint option.

 

 

Thanks for that, I had already spotted this.  Looks fairly scuffed, which suggests that it's not been looked after for something so small that could have easily been protected. It's probably perfectly ok.

Also, no interest in faffing with the toneprint stuff, I could do that with the Spectradrive but have never bothered.

[Franticsmurf]

I have a BAM200, bought as a lightweight amp to see me through a couple of hernias and thence to be a back-up for gigs. I have gigged it (through a pair of TE 1X10" also part of the lightweight strategy) with a trio at cabaret/club gigs and regularly rehearse it through a 1X15" with drums, guitars and vocals at fairly high volumes. I'm not sure I'd use it for a loud pub gig, and most of the gigs I play these days have dedicated FOH which I DI into. I have also used it as a guitar amp (with the tone controls set to 10/2/10 o'clock for a neutral sound as suggested on a different thread) with a guitar pre-amp. 

 

I've not used the BQ250 but it seems to offer a couple of extras ('Thrust' and the low and hi mids) and a Speakon connector at the back (the BAM200 has a jack).  

[Lozz196]

54 minutes ago, AlanG said:

That's what I was thinking for just a few quid more. Do you have, or tried one?

Not got one but I’ve used a good few TC amps at gigs (maybe one of these who knows) and always found them both powerful and to have a good sound, def preferred the ones with both mids.

[neepheid]

2 hours ago, AlanG said:

Thanks for that, I had already spotted this.  Looks fairly scuffed, which suggests that it's not been looked after for something so small that could have easily been protected. It's probably perfectly ok.

Also, no interest in faffing with the toneprint stuff, I could do that with the Spectradrive but have never bothered.

 

BH250 user here - I enjoy having my little beastie very much.  I use it as my backup at gigs, at rehearsals, for practice at home where it especially excels - so convenient with 3.5mm jacks for line in and headphones, built in tuner, and Toneprint (worth it for the Spectracomp alone).  And a blessed mute switch!

 

That one for sale in the marketplace may be scuffed, but the price is commensurate with the condition IMO.  I'd have bought it in a heartbeat if I didn't already own one!  I can't speak for previous owners, but the current owner/seller is a tip top chap who I know personally and vouch for, if that helps.

[AlanG]

33 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

BH250 user here - I enjoy having my little beastie very much.  I use it as my backup at gigs, at rehearsals, for practice at home where it especially excels - so convenient with 3.5mm jacks for line in and headphones, built in tuner, and Toneprint (worth it for the Spectracomp alone).  And a blessed mute switch!

 

That one for sale in the marketplace may be scuffed, but the price is commensurate with the condition IMO.  I'd have bought it in a heartbeat if I didn't already own one!  I can't speak for previous owners, but the current owner/seller is a tip top chap who I know personally and vouch for, if that helps.

Many thanks for the advice and info. No offence meant to the seller and I have bought and sold a fair bit of guitars/amp/pedals etc over the years (don't all musicians have GAS tendancies...?).  Second hand is always a bit of a punt. I have sh stuff that I bought 15 years ago and still works perfectly, but then I bought a portable mixer for the church a while ago for 'off site gigs' that worked perfectly for a couple of months and is now very unreliable and too old to be serviceable.

It's often a balance between the costs/risks/benefits/good luck of sh, or the comfort of a warranty on new stuff.

[neepheid]

2 minutes ago, AlanG said:

Many thanks for the advice and info. No offence meant to the seller and I have bought and sold a fair bit of guitars/amp/pedals etc over the years (don't all musicians have GAS tendancies...?).  Second hand is always a bit of a punt. I have sh stuff that I bought 15 years ago and still works perfectly, but then I bought a portable mixer for the church a while ago for 'off site gigs' that worked perfectly for a couple of months and is now very unreliable and too old to be serviceable.

It's often a balance between the costs/risks/benefits/good luck of sh, or the comfort of a warranty on new stuff.

 

I totally get what you're saying second hand vs. new.  I wasn't suggesting you had anything against the seller - just trying to put your mind at ease, that's all.

 

But if you'd like another data point for your investigations - my BH250 was also second hand.  Probably doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but just giving you all the info I can think of which is relevant.

 

The BQ250 does also look like a great shout, but it's always a compromise.  I did consider it when I was looking for a backup amp.  With the BQ you get a more controllable preamp gain (being a pot rather than a switch between two levels on the BH), a clip light, an extra band on the EQ and built in compression (which, arguably you can have on the BH if you load up the Spectracomp toneprint).  But you lose the built in tuner, the mute switch and the Toneprint of the BH.  For me, the features found in the BH were more important to me than those found on the BQ

 

Believe me, I was sceptical about the simple passive/active gain switch vs. a knob - but it works well for me in practice so I guess the two levels the switch works at were well chosen.

 

Both amps are probably great.

[AlanG]

10 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

I totally get what you're saying second hand vs. new.  I wasn't suggesting you had anything against the seller - just trying to put your mind at ease, that's all.

 

But if you'd like another data point for your investigations - my BH250 was also second hand.  Probably doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but just giving you all the info I can think of which is relevant.

 

The BQ250 does also look like a great shout, but it's always a compromise.  I did consider it when I was looking for a backup amp.  With the BQ you get a more controllable preamp gain (being a pot rather than a switch between two levels on the BH), a clip light, an extra band on the EQ and built in compression (which, arguably you can have on the BH if you load up the Spectracomp toneprint).  But you lose the built in tuner, the mute switch and the Toneprint of the BH.  For me, the features found in the BH were more important to me than those found on the BQ

 

Believe me, I was sceptical about the simple passive/active gain switch vs. a knob - but it works well for me in practice so I guess the two levels the switch works at were well chosen.

 

Both amps are probably great.

There is probably very little in it between the two, tiny amps, light cabinet, sounds good.

My regards to Aberdeen, I was last there in the late 70's as a Petty Officer on the frigate HMS Scylla (affiliated city going back to WW2).

HMS Scylla was sunk as a diving site in 2004.  Although I am a scuba diver, I have never dived it and now prefer the Red Sea or the Maldives to the English Channel!

All this has absolutely nothing to do with bass amps, just an 'uncle Albert' dribbling into his pint glass......

 

 

[bigthumb]

9 hours ago, AlanG said:

Thanks for that, I had already spotted this.  Looks fairly scuffed, which suggests that it's not been looked after for something so small that could have easily been protected. It's probably perfectly ok.

Also, no interest in faffing with the toneprint stuff, I could do that with the Spectradrive but have never bothered.

Consider it as 'road worn' 😉

 

I've never used the tone print or had any inclination to figure it out. I've never done effects in almost 40 years of bassin' so it's no issue to me. It's just a handy little amp with a built in tuner that is small enough to keep in your gig bag as a back up should the worse happen to your number 1 amp. 

[lemmywinks]

Rather than viewing the Toneprint as a replacement for an effects pedal you have to constantly change consider it as a way to add a fixed feature of your choosing to the amp. It's not something you have to figure out or mess with much, just add compression, drive, chorus etc to your amp with its own dedicated knob and crack on. For me the Spectracomp vastly improves the amp and makes a massive difference to achievable volume/depth when using a small cab, I wouldn't use the BH250 without it.

 

The smart eq requires more figuring out than the Toneprint feature IMO.