I have been told I may sell an unwanted gift which, with a couple of old gear sales net me enough to consider a class D amp in the £150 to £250 range.
Currently I have two Warwick Profet 3.1 heads (main and backup) with 300W into 4 ohms with a linear volume sweep and I am happy with the tone if I plug in directly, the features, the ability to run into the return connection if I need something not coloured by the preamp, or running an EQ pedal in the loop. They are not light, of course, so I am looking at the options for lightening the load.
Features I'd like to see:
- 300W or more. Yes, 200W is probably much the same in overall loudness, but it's nice to have a bit of headroom. I don't really need more than 300W RMS for what I do.
- A preamp with a warm but no overly coloured tone.
- Speakon
- Send and return.
- Ability to put in a protective sleeve would be nice. I might have to build that myself, though.
Tonal references:
- Happy with the Warwick
- Used to use Trace Elliot
- Had an Ashdown 1x15 combo for a while which I thought was muddy.
- Tried out some TC Electronics stuff and thought it sounded honky
- Tried out some GK stuff and on one hand it was good as it was less coloured, but seemed a little brash.
- Just a power amp is not an unreasonable option as I have pedals I can use to be a preamp, either simple analogue options for a simple set up, or modellers and synths and chorus etc for more complex gigs. So a nice sounding preamp isn't an absolute requirement if it has send/return, but picking an amp that sounds awful to my ears doesn't seem very useful.
Financial and other reference points:
- Up to £250 sort of budget.
- Mesa Boogie tends to be expensive in the UK in my past experience.
- It'll be a few weeks before I am going to brave a music shop given COVID figures.
- I don't have to change what I have - 30 lbs for the Warwick Profet in a rack bag is slightly annoying but not the end of the world. It might be that a class D ends up being a back up for one of the Profets, in which case something more basic and cheaper at 200W would work, but then I work in IT so I am used to having two identical versions of everything
. I have two identical basses for example as main gigging options. For analogue preamps and DIs I have two of everything...
So what fits my requirements of sounding like a Warwick but also has send/return. Or should I not be worrying about the send/return these days?
Take a look at the Eden TN-501 class D amp. It's 500-watts into 4Ω and 250-watts into 8Ω. With one 8Ω cab it will put out 250-watts which is enough for small and medium venues. If you need to play something bigger, then a second 8Ω cab will take care of it giving you twice the speakers and sending 250-watts to each of the two cabs.
I have the TN-226( 225-watts into 4Ω), which is the little brother of the TN-501. They share the same preamp so sounds are identical but the 501 has a bigger power section. I also have an 800-watt class A/B amp which weighs ~36-lbs in its rack, that sounds spectacular. It's a WT500/800 and it has a hybrid preamp using a 12ax7 tube for warmth.
I was worried that the Class D Eden amp would not have that warmth because it didn't use a tube for warmth. However, instead it uses a Golden Ear chip than amount other things emulates tube warmth. I was very pleasantly surprised the first night I used it because it was every bit as clean, clear, and warm as my big Eden amp.
It has two inputs, one for passive and one for active basses. The EQ is a bass shelving EQ for everything at 30Hz and below, a low-mid semi-parametric control for any frequency from 30Hz up to 300-Hz, a high-mid semi-parametric for any frequency from 200Hz to 2KHz, and a shelving treble control for everything over 2KHZ.
It also has the Eden "Enhance" control, which is a shape control that boosts the bass and treble and scoops out the low-mids. It gives you great sound for bedroom practice but if you turn that Enhance control up much above 9 o'clock, you'll start dialing yourself right out the mix when playing with a group. The low-mids give you presence and definition when playing in a group. It has a bass boost button you can depress to just give extra boost to the bass without cutting the mids or boosting the treble. Personally with my passive Jazz, I turn the Enhance off and run my EQ flat except for a boost to about 1:30 at ~250Hz in the low-mids. Anywhere between 250Hz and 550Hz works well.
It also has a nice auto-compressor. My big Eden amp also has an auto-compressor but the one on the Terra-Nova (TN) amps is far superior. The one on my big Eden amp is pretty harsh. It works fine for slap but that's about it. I had to use that auto-compressor on my low-powered TN-226 one night when our 5-pc group got too loud in a small brewpub and my power clipping light started flashing.
If that power clipping light flashes much, it will turn off the amp. Dropping the bass EQ didn't help and turning it down low enough to stop the flashing made it so I couldn't be heard. So I turned on the auto-compressor and raised the gain, which acts as a threshold control when the auto compressor is engaged. Then the gain clip light comes on when it is compressing.
That magically (so it seemed to me) fixed the problem entirely. The auto-compressor was compressing the peaks and I still had plenty of attack and dynamics. I was really impressed with it.
Anyhow you can get these in the UK through Gear4Music.com as well as elsewhere. Price is £329. Price in the US seems to hover around $649. Here's a link to the TN501 at
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Below is a shot of the TN501. It also has a dead quiet DI with adjustable levels and of course the effects send/return loop.
