New GK410mbe 4ohm in the house! First impressions

[luvpbass]

For the past five years I've been gigging steadily with a top 40 country cover band and have been using a variety of cabs including a pair of Ashdown mag series 1x15s, then their 4x10 cab; followed by a SWR 2x10 and 1x15 stack; and rentals including an Ampeg hlf and SVT 4x10, which I bought and used for three years. All had their merits, but were pretty heavy. After experiencing back trouble and getting tired of forking a portion of my cut to have the soundman roadie my gear, I pulled the trigger on the GK.
When I picked it up at my local music shop after a three week wait for delivery, the owner, who is a very good bass, guitar and piano player, took me up to the bass room to demo the 8 ohm mbe 4x10. He plugged a passive P bass into a mb500 and ran through a bunch of eq and knob settings playing a variety of styles. It sounded fantastic. Lots of tight low end with no rattles or farting. Bright and glassy when he set the amp that way; clean, solid mids when he finger popped, and plenty of great tones in between. I started forgetting about the cab purchase and was ogling the mb500. The amp was surprisingly loud through the GK, considering the amp was only putting out 350 watts in to the 8 ohm cab. He did an a/b with GK NEW version of the 8 ohm 4x10. It, too, sounded fantastic. Whether it is worth the extra $150 is for the buyer to decide. But honestly, I could not hear much difference. He felt that the extra $150 could easily be taken up in the cost of routing and fitting the heavy duty side handles and the adjustable horn. He said the margin, though small on all GK stuff, was a little fatter with the NEO. One last test was to have him A/B the GK mbe with an Ampeg SVT, the same as what I had been using. Sorry, I swore by Ampeg, but it did not have near the clarity of the GK. I'm not sorry that it's gone. Now, given that the bass room is set up to provide optimum sound, I hauled my new GK - with one hand - and brought it home. Since I had to sell off my Sansamp RBI to buy the cab, I had to test the cab out with a Carvin DCM 1015 PA power amp that puts out 1k watts bridged mono. I drove it with a Digitec RPB pedal, which sounded fine. But I've never liked that pedal. Then I drove it with the line out from my rehearsal amp, a Trace Elliot Commando 1x12, which is very sweet sounding. The line out was too weak to drive the pa amp very hard, but it sounded great. Maybe someone can tell me how I might use that amp in a loud, live stage situation. My last test was an ART Tubepac, which is a combo pre/compressor. Let me tell you, that set up shook the freaking house and with a little tweaking on the 15 band eq on the power amp. I'll probably gig with that set up until I can decide on an amp, but I'm thinking mb800. So, time will tell if the mbe cabs can hold up to steady gigging, but so far, so good.

[B-string]

Nice post! Thanks for doing it