OK, my BX1200 got another gig under it's belt. Yet another wedding gig in a huge hotel. Same scenario as most of our past weddings...start out slow, quiet and placate the blue hairs until the crowd literally demands LOUD rock music.
But we were at a pretty high volume by the third or fourth song already. Dance floor was packed from song one. This family has hired us twice before for weddings knowing full well that while we can do a variety of music, they hire us specifically as a rock band. And again, people were commenting to us how it was more like being at a rock concert than a typical wedding dance. The family is really appreciative that three times now, their kids got to have a "concert" for their wedding!
I am really digging the switchable EQ. Going from pick to fingerstyle, or from a brighter fingerstyle sound to more thumpy one with nothing more than the flick of a switch is really nice. Between the two settings (EQ on or off) and my technique it's so easy to coax such a variety of sound from this amp.
Loving the mute switch...A LOT! Because I installed my wireless into my bass, I now connect to my amp with a simple switch that turns both, the wireless and preamp, on and off. The thread for that install can be found here...
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=561509&highlight=sundogue
With the amp's mute switch, it's great to just be able to kill the sound to my rig and the PA at the same time. Together with my wireless switch, between sets I can just hit the mute switch, flip the wireless switch and I'm off. No fussing with battery packs, transmitters, or unplugging to save preamp battery life or mistakenly killing my wireless while I'm still connected to the PA and sending LOUD white noise through the PA. Even just to have the mute switch for breaks between songs to not worry about unwanted noise from my bass is nice.
As far as the amp's tone and power goes, we were playing in a rather large ballroom in this lodge where everything was shiny wood from floor to ceiling. We were thinking it was going to be a boomy room, but the drums and bass sounded killer in there and for once it was the guitars that had problems. But we still didn't have the JBL speaker replaced in the PA sub on my side, so my side was carried by my amp. I'm really digging the power of this amp. It handled and matched the PA with ease.
I did add a bit of bass to my sound. I have been keeping my bass flat and also cutting the upper mids, but I'm finding that the louder I go, the more that "annoying" hi-mid is actually quite the bonus when the volume is up. I had pretty much everything flat last night with a touch more bass added and it sounded fabulous and really cut very well. With the Graphic EQ engaged and the hi-mids boosted my fingerstyle playing was really present and sparkling. When I wanted more of an old school sound, just turning off the Graphic EQ and playing more over the neck pickup I could really get that old "thump" happening. And yes, when I was really cranking and had the Drive full up, it really gave my sound some good snarl on some of the more hard edged rock tunes especially when digging in with a pick.
Running it in dual mono to two 4 ohm 115 neos, this amp delivers lots of power without breaking a sweat and even at it's loudest doesn't get hot at all.
I'm still waiting for my big outdoor gig in two weeks. This amp is going to just kill at that gig...and that one is all hard rock from start to finish. My other 500 watt amps could always handle it, but they always ran hot because they were pushed hard. Out of all the Carvin bass amps, the BX1200 was absolutely the best choice for me. More power than the BX500 or 600 and way more features with more versatility than the B1500 (and at 1200 watts the BX1200 no slouch to it in comparison either).
Anyway, I had to cut frequencies centered at 1kHz, and that seemed to help. That was never a problem with my previous setup.
