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Best amp you played through

#121
Ironbar said:
In the spirit of the other thread where people listed their worst amps, I'd now like to switch gears and have everyone list the BEST amp they ever played through. If this thread gets over 10 pages, I'll again tabulate the results and post them up.

I'm going to throw my own vote in there for a TC Electronic BG250 combo. I have no complaints about the thing years after buying it.

GO!
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Wow! Great topic Ironbar. I have always used Ampeg bass amps and have 4. BA112, BA210sp, B100R and Micro VR (with 2-2x10 cab.) The BA210sp is currently my favorite amp but that changes from time to time especially when I play any one particular amp for a few hours. To my aging ears the 210sp has more "thump". (moves more air) I have not played through many other makes of amp so I had no real basis of comparison.

I recently picked up a Hartke HA2000 head and matching 4x10 Hartke cab with the aluminum coned speakers. (thank you again craigslist). I liked the fact that it has both a tube and solid state preamp. I was concerned when the tube preamp started distorting (more like "farting" for lack of a better term). I removed the stock Sovtek 12AX7 and replaced it with a JJ ECC83 S and that cured the problem.

I find the Hartke to be a totally different animal than the Ampeg (duh). It's a nice amp. The 4x10 cab is almost 100 lbs so I put wheels on it for ease of handling. This is not something I would haul to a gig due to its size and weight but in my studio it works well. It's loud and I rarely turn the volume up past 3.

Back to the topic... I would have to say that the Ampeg BA210sp is my favorite amp. The Hartke comes in a close 2nd. (in truth, I love them all)

I imagine that most who read this have multiple bass amps and enjoy comparing one to another. I know that there will be more amps in my future as well.
 
#122
JimmyM said:
All my amps are quite good. Some are amazing. This one, however, rules supreme:

Oh man... an Ampeg Heritage SVT ... it doesn't get any better than that. I checked out the heritage B15N and if I had $3000 to spare it would be here now.

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#123
I've played through a number of bona fide badass rigs over the years, including a couple of state-of-the-art fullrange PA systems that were scaled down (only slightly!) for onstage bass amplification, Trace-Elliott's top-of-the-line monster rig from the late 1980s, a gorgeous Epifani/Lab Gruppen/Aguilar stack that one of the local rehearsal studios keeps as its house bass rig, plus all the cool stuff I own or have owned over the years...

...but the one that immediately springs to mind when I think Best Amp I Ever Played Through was a bog stock Ampeg SVT from ~1975 that belonged to bassist Matthew Gruenberg and lived in a rehearsal studio tucked away in the back of a woodshop in an industrial warehouse in Hoboken NJ. That freakin' thing sounded amazeballs. It made every bass I plugged into it sound better than it had any right to.
 
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#128
What is weird is that for all the tooling around I do with basses, strings, and pedals, I really don't care a whole lot about amps or heads. The best one for me is the one that sounds the least bad.
Because of their sizes, a wide variety of amps and cabs aren't easy to come by. GC and Sam Ash have pretty much the same stuff, and even the Bass Exchange doesn't have super weird\exotic stuff. Really, the most out there equipment I've tried is just plain old Aguilar, which I like, but not more than what I have for the price and weight.
My Shuttle 9.0 and GK Neo 112 cabs are the most exotic things I ever see at any of the shows I play. Most of the time its just Ampeg and Markbass. I saw an Orange rig once, and a Sunn rig. I've never seen a 4x12 cab in person, or any of these weird @$$ brands people bring up on TB. The only thing I'd like to improve in my about my personal sound is if I had a GK Neo 8x10. I played through one at the Viper Room and liked it.
 
#129
I have a TC electronic BG250 and it's pretty good as a starter, only started playing a year or so ago.

Having toyed with waiting for the Darkglass Microtubes 700W I have now developed serious GAS for Hartke LH1000 and the HyDrive HX410 cab
 
#130
#1 - Ampeg SVT Classic through an Ampeg 810 cab. I don't own one, but I've played a handful of gigs with them before.

#2 - Mesa Subway D-800 through a Mesa Subway 115/112/112 stack. This is actually my current rig.

#3 - Aguilar Tone Hammer 500 through an EBS ProLine 810. The TH500 was mine, and the EBS cab was backlined on a gig.
 
#138
Ironbar said:
In the spirit of the other thread where people listed their worst amps, I'd now like to switch gears and have everyone list the BEST amp they ever played through. If this thread gets over 10 pages, I'll again tabulate the results and post them up.

I'm going to throw my own vote in there for a TC Electronic BG250 combo. I have no complaints about the thing years after buying it.

GO!
Click to expand...


This one
IMG_0441.jpg
 
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#139
Solid State: Tie between my MB200 and 700RB-II, both sound fantastic and have their strong points. I prefer mine through an Avatar Neo cabinet.

Tube: Orange AD200B w/ Orange 4x10s. I've played some tube rigs but none that sounded as good as that one did on its own. Haven't played one in the mix though, that would be the real test. That one aside, I'm sure that an SVT stack would sound fantastic as well.
 

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