Checklist for amp head... Turning up empty.

[souportugues]

So, I currently run a GK800RB. Great amp, but after a few years, I've noticed some limitations that I can't quite seem to get around. Precipitous lack of a desirable tube crunch being one them. Although, I'm completely enamored of the bi-amp capability, which I didn't think I would be. So, I have begun the hunt for a new amp, but with the following qualities:

Two channel, foot-switchable
Bi-amped (or bi-ampable) with a user defined crossover
All tube, or, a tube preamp that also includes a power tube (like the Warwick Tube Pro IX)
Effects loop, able to run 100% wet (no 50/50)
EQ beyond basic 3 band
100W minimum (tube), or 450W minimum (solid state), cause we get friggin' loud...

OK, fire away with suggestions. Thanks.

 

[TC.65]

2 channel 100 watt all tube would be the Fender Bassman 100T. There is a huge thread on here about it.

 

[IPYF]

I'd suggest the GK Fusion 550. I'm not sure about the crossover/bi-amping though.

 

[souportugues]

2 channel 100 watt all tube would be the Fender Bassman 100T.

While the fancy new Bassman offers a lot of extra bells and whistles that I'm sure I would find useful, it fails to meet the basic criteria above, namely, biamped or a larger than 3 band EQ. I have heard this amp onstage, and it does indeed sound good, but a bit too round to fit what I'm trying to do.

I'd suggest the GK Fusion 550.

This is a bit closer, but still off from the requirements. It does have 2 channels, it does have tubes, and it is biampable, but it's a tube pre only, and you can't select where the crossover happens.

Thanks for the suggestions here, but I need more options...

 

[Bmorefoozler]

Pre/Power rig.
Aguilar, ADA, Peavey and Alembic all made tube preamps with xovers.
Add a carvin, peavey or Mesa rackmount 100 watt tube power amp for the highs
and a typical SS PA poweramp of choice for the lows.

That should get you there.
I don't think you will get any closer then a Carvin BX1600 otherwise. (which isn't very close at all) Bi-amping is basically a thing of the past.

 

[Dave W]

+1 on the pre/power rig option. One of the few times where it's very appropriate!

An Ampeg SVP-Pro would be a nice choice for the tone you describe. Depending on what you are looking for on the 2nd channel, adding a 2nd preamp and using an AB to switch between them or just using an effects pedal to get the desired tone. Add your own xover or grab a power amp with one built in.

 

[souportugues]

Pre/Power rig.
I don't think you will get any closer then a Carvin BX1600 otherwise.

I've looked at that amp, which is basically the tube preamp version of my GK 800RB. Good amp, and adds a bit more tweek to my EQ section.
It saddens me that Bi-amping has gone away. I promise that more of my tone and feel in my live rig comes from the fact that you feel my lines, sometimes more than you hear them. I've been completely unsuccessful in reproducing that effect with full range going to two cabinets, where one was more suited to lows than the other was. Ultimately, the lows become less punchy, and the low mids get flubby.
I'm also trying to stick with what I mostly have, rather than open Pandoras box of a total rig overhaul. I've had a rack-based head, with up to 12 spaces, and it sucked to haul around. That's one of the big reasons I bought my GK; it was compact. Ultimately, I see no reason why the things I'm looking for couldn't fit into a 3-4 space unit. Oh yeah... It can't because I'm the only person in the world that still wants to biamp some thing. Sonofabi...

 

[Bredian]

It saddens me that Bi-amping has gone away. Sonofabi...

The BX1600 2 mono block amps are set up for bi-amping

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

 

[EastCoastThump]

It saddens me that Bi-amping has gone away... I've been completely unsuccessful in reproducing that effect with full range going to two cabinets, where one was more suited to lows than the other was.

Some of the items on your list seem committed to means rather than goals. For example, is the goal of "two-channel footswitchable" getting two different eq voicings, switching b/w basses, or handling clean/dirty? Depending on your goals, there are likely other ways to get there.

• What do you want to run in the effects loop at 100% wet?
  
• If you're committed to line level FX (and so probably a rack), can a 5-band parametric substitute for the wish-list item "EQ beyond basic 3-band"?
• Is the goal of bi-amping simply balanced articulation at high volume? If so, have you tried matched (rather than mixed) cabs or high performance cabs? OTOH, if you want to do the old clean-bottom-with-fuzz-on-top thing, there are other ways to get there, too.

 

[souportugues]

Some of the items on your list seem committed to means rather than goals. For example, is the goal of "two-channel footswitchable" getting two different eq voicings, switching b/w basses, or handling clean/dirty? Depending on your goals, there are likely other ways to get there.

• What do you want to run in the effects loop at 100% wet?
  
• If you're committed to line level FX (and so probably a rack), can a 5-band parametric substitute for the wish-list item "EQ beyond basic 3-band"?
• Is the goal of bi-amping simply balanced articulation at high volume? If so, have you tried matched (rather than mixed) cabs or high performance cabs? OTOH, if you want to do the old clean-bottom-with-fuzz-on-top thing, there are other ways to get there, too.

The goal of the 2nd channel is dirty vs clean. Rarely do I switch from one to the other during a song, so in theory I could do a pedal, but I am yet to find a pedal with a tone that says "tube amp wide open" to me. Furthermore, most pedals seem to cripple my bottom end, by either making it too flubby, or simply dissapearing altogether. This is also my complaint with FX loops that aren't 100% wet, just in reverse. If I wanted a 50-50 split, I'd turn the mix that way on the effect (sometimes I want my signal to be totally gone, hence the need for 100%). That said, I'm not commited to line level per se, but would like to be able to find what I'm looking for in a single unit. Gone are the days where I roamed the hills with a caravan full of gear, and settled into the valley of the gig, and used my rig to build a town.
The ultimate goal here is balanced articulation, if by balanced you mean seriously big low end. I do actually try for the clean low and fuzzy top, which has worked well to my advantage, but required more gear than I wished to schlep around (namely crossovers, preamps and ABYs), so I went back to fuzz all over and dealt with a softer (albeit still very loud) bottom end.
To this end, I have not tried matched or high performance cabs, although I have given a good look at fEARful stuff. Mostly my Avatar 410 cab does very well, and my Eminence 18" driver has a lot of beef behind it, so I'm not really entertaining the idea of a cab swap or upgrade at the moment.

 

[EastCoastThump]

I used to run a bi-amped rig for reasons that look like yours: to let me overdrive just the mids and highs, and to keep big low end from turning sloppy (esp. @ higher volumes, Fletcher-Munson and all that).

IME, most of what you want your rig to do can be had with either with rig + pedalboard or the right pre/power rig. The hard bit is getting convincing power tube OD. Pre-amp OD or distortion is easy to get from rack or pedals; but not much gives you convincing power-amp tube grunt except grunting power-amp tubes. If you're willing to experiment to find gritty sounds that work for you w/o bi-amping, then you could try a few things:

• Put your OD/distortion in a blend pedal loop. (A standard looper w/ adjustable blend might give you the sound you want. More flexible: Barge used to make a blend loop pedal that allowed 0 % (bypass), 100% and user-preset blend amounts. I haven't been looking for those on the used market, but I expect they're rare these days. Still, if you can't find one, you could roll your own or have one of the boutique pedal builders make one.)
• Run a split through a high-pass into a guitar (tube) combo amp for OD/distorted bass. (Depending on the bass tone you're after and how it fits your band, the guitar combo can be small—think Fender Princeton or even a Champ. I wouldn't want to haul a guitar combo + the two different cabs in your current rig; but if one high performance cab could cover your full-range clean bass tone, this might be a solution. Still, cheaper—and probably lighter—overall than two channels of all-tube, high wattage bass rig, and the sound can be amazing.) You can run this way either with the combo overlapping the highs of a full-range bass rig, or you can route in a switchable LPF in the feed for the bass rig side.
  
• Grab a switching system (or alternatively, something like the old ADA MB1) to get most of the routing and patching flexibility you want.

 

[souportugues]

I used to run a bi-amped rig for reasons that look like yours: to let me overdrive just the mids and highs, and to keep big low end from turning sloppy (esp. @ higher volumes, Fletcher-Munson and all that)....

The hard bit is getting convincing power tube OD. Pre-amp OD or distortion is easy to get from rack or pedals; but not much gives you convincing power-amp tube grunt except grunting power-amp tubes.

Exactly! And in my experience here, the low end works best solid state, but the mids and highs NEED to be tube.

Run a split through a high-pass into a guitar (tube) combo amp for OD/distorted bass. (Depending on the bass tone you're after and how it fits your band, the guitar combo can be small—think Fender Princeton or even a Champ. I wouldn't want to haul a guitar combo + the two different cabs in your current rig; but if one high performance cab could cover your full-range clean bass tone, this might be a solution. Still, cheaper—and probably lighter—overall than two channels of all-tube, high wattage bass rig, and the sound can be amazing.) You can run this way either with the combo overlapping the highs of a full-range bass rig, or you can route in a switchable LPF in the feed for the bass rig side.

This is another solution I've looked into as well, but I lack a decent (and small enough) tube head/amp to make it practical. Both my Matchless combo (weight) and 5150 head (dear God, can you imagine?!?) don't seem like the ticket here. I do have some of the equipment this would require, like a crossover and nice tube pre (Herzog, f'ing sexy), but this quickly wanders into the whole "more gear than I started with" territory. Perhaps I could match my combo with a fEARful sub (smaller package). Then all I'd need is a decent boost pedal to sit between the crossover and the tube amp, or even simpler, a 2 channel amp.

See, this is how the spiral down the rabbit hole begins children...

 

[CL400Peavey]

What do you hope to gain from bi-amping?

 

[souportugues]

See posts (directly) above. In a nutshell, it allows me to push my mids and highs into tube overdrive, while keeping an articulate and punchy low end.

 

[JimmyM]

And here I thought you were going to ask for something impossible.