Laney Nexus Tube & Nexus 8x10 with Flight Case...

[binky_bass]

This is a cheap CHEAP brute... essentially a UK made Mesa Boogie Strategy Eight:88 for pennies on the pound. 

 

https://ebay.us/m/ucAP4L

 

[BigRedX]

Because it's big, heavy, out of date and collection only.

[binky_bass]

13 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Because it's big, heavy, out of date and collection only.

It is big, it is heavy, it is collection only. Out of date - I disagree. These genuinely are excellent amps. Having owned a Mesa Strategy Eight:88, an Ashdown CTM300, a Marshall VBA400, an Orange AD200B, a Trace Elliot V6 and a Laney Nexus Tube, I can confirm that the latter holds up to the best of these valve behemoths. It is an underrated amp. £500 for the full rig is (if you have the spine for it) excellent bang for buck.

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, binky_bass said:

It is big, it is heavy, it is collection only. Out of date - I disagree. These genuinely are excellent amps. Having owned a Mesa Strategy Eight:88, an Ashdown CTM300, a Marshall VBA400, an Orange AD200B, a Trace Elliot V6 and a Laney Nexus Tube, I can confirm that the latter holds up to the best of these valve behemoths. It is an underrated amp. £500 for the full rig is (if you have the spine for it) excellent bang for buck.

 

By out of date I mean big rigs in general. Anyone who is regularly playing venues big enough to warrant having something of this size will almost certainly be using IEMs for monitoring and the FoH feed will at best be taken from the DI out on the head. So that's a huge 8x10 cab doing essentially nothing for the sound but taking up space on stage and in the band transport. Maybe the head would be worth using if it is possible to run it into a power soak with the FoH feed taken at the speaker outputs, but I'm sure there are smaller and lighter devices that will be able to achieve the same sound in a band mix. I just don't see who would realistically want to have one and actually use it nowadays.

[binky_bass]

Me 😆

 

I do love a big, full fat, monster of a valve rig... I'm down that way in Jan, have made a bit of low offer which they've accepted on the basis of no one else buying it in the meantime which suits me fine. 

[Max Normal]

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

By out of date I mean big rigs in general. Anyone who is regularly playing venues big enough to warrant having something of this size will almost certainly be using IEMs for monitoring and the FoH feed will at best be taken from the DI out on the head. So that's a huge 8x10 cab doing essentially nothing for the sound but taking up space on stage and in the band transport. Maybe the head would be worth using if it is possible to run it into a power soak with the FoH feed taken at the speaker outputs, but I'm sure there are smaller and lighter devices that will be able to achieve the same sound in a band mix. I just don't see who would realistically want to have one and actually use it nowadays.

I have an Ampeg stack and a wee Markbass cat D CMD212 combo which sounds amazing. I also had a Helix which had an Ampeg SVT and 8x10 cab simulator. I have to say, while you can somewhat replicate the tone of big bass stacks in miniature, you can never really get the feel of them. The way they pulse the air, the harmonics, the bloom and the trouser flapping.  Whether or not you think your tiny amp sounds like a big amp, it kind of does, but really doesn't. It's like looking at a video of an OLED TV though an LED monitor.  For recording or hifi pop, yes I agree a small amp will do. For driving rock, funk, blues and metal it really isn't the same.  Modern live music calculus says that you should mix everything through FOH, but not everyone wants to sound modern.

 

Edited yesterday at 12:47 by Max Normal

[BigRedX]

Not withstanding the fact that I haven't worn trousers with enough surplus material to "flap" for over 45 years now, I think had I ever been in a band that required me to play at volumes that produced a noticeable shift of air from my rig I'd be even deafer than I am now!

 

I've owned a big rig in the past, although it was made out of smaller component parts than the example for sale, but each of the three individual items was still a two person lift for ease of moving, and without a road crew there is no way I would contemplate having one again. Then again if I was in a band successful enough to be able to employ a road crew I'd be playing places where even a big rig would be an irrelevance. From experience something like the rig for sale needs to be running close to max volume to get the benefit of the power amp valves and therefore is too big for most small venues, and due to the poor dispersion characteristics of the cab in bigger venues will only work as a personal monitor so long as you are stood directly in front of it. Your band mates will still need to have your bass in their foldback and you'll find that the moment you are not stood directly in front of it you'll get more from the foldback than you do from your rig. And that's if you're not using IEMs. Add to the fact that very few PAs will mic up bass cabs of any size and, if they did, a close mic on one driver is not the same sound as the full cab from a couple of feet away, so what your audience hear will have little to do with the rig behind you. 

 

I'm now a Helix user and I only use amp and cab models as a special effect, as IMO most of the time they make my bass sound worse, which re-enforces what I have thought for a long time is that instrument amplification for bass guitar is the weak link in the signal chain. These days I straight into the PA from the Helix and it sounds great both on stage and FoH. I have plenty of dirt when I need it but I can also sound super clean if I need that too. Most of the time I'm somewhere in between these too extremes.

 

Finally if you need "The way they pulse the air, the harmonics, the bloom and the trouser flapping." for the right atmosphere, then I would suggest that the songs you are playing are not up to scratch.

[aniki]

What a fantastic bargain for someone! Always had a soft spot for the Lexus amps and cabs.

-

I can honestly say that pretty much every band I've seen this year (roughly around 40 gigs, mostly in the UK) have used 'big rigs', regardless of venue size. Most being small to medium.

None of them have used IEMs. National bands have all had roadies. 

I use a 'big rig' (well 2 at a time if I'm honest, 2x amps and 4x 15's) for one of my bands regardless of venue size. They are alway mic'd as the amps don't have DI outs.

The FOH sound is always near identical to the sound coming from my cabs.

To summarise, in my experience, big rigs are most certainly not out of date...