Bargain amps for a Fearful 12/6?

[mid_life_crisis]

I'm planning ahead to the day when I am ready for a "real" amp/cabinet. As an amateur woodworker, I have no qualms about building the cabinet for a Fearful, and it looks like clearly the best bang for the buck approach. As part of this planning, I need to figure out how much $ I'm going to need to squirrel away for that cabinet and an amp. The cabinet is pretty cut and dry.
The amp is another story.
I don't like buying used things that I cannot easily fix myself, so I am gunshy about buying a used amp.
I would like to use an active equalizer as I consider passive crossovers to be a waste of power to be avoided if possible. Ideally I'm looking for a two channel amp that can run one Fearful biamped or thinking even further down the road, two Fearfuls biamped in parallel.
Keeping in mind the budget nature of this endeavour, think powerful, affordable, minimalist amp. The crossover/preamp can have the "tone tweaking" circuitry, I hope.

[rpsands]

If you're going to buy an amp, crossover, and preamp, I'd suggest getting a preamp or power amp with built in crossover stuff.

I'd roll with a Crown XTI 2000 and a cheap preamp. Best bang for your buck there. My current thoughts for cheap preamps off the shelf: Markbass super booster pedal and a nice eq pedal.

[mid_life_crisis]

Originally Posted by rpsands

If you're going to buy an amp, crossover, and preamp, I'd suggest getting a preamp or power amp with built in crossover stuff.

I'd roll with a Crown XTI 2000 and a cheap preamp. Best bang for your buck there. My current thoughts for cheap preamps off the shelf: Markbass super booster pedal and a nice eq pedal.

Ideally, it would be an amp with nothing but a volume control and everything else in the second component.

[mid_life_crisis]

On second thought, after checking out those amps, I may not need anything else. The onboard bass controls and a couple stompboxes should provide all the tone control I need. That is one amazing amp.

[rpsands]

Yeah, the XTI series is epic for the biamping bass player.

They are super cheap closeout on ebay right now too last I checked.