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dUg Ultra Bass 1000 - Tech 21

#301
husky123 said:
Nice work Andrew. Sounds incredibly mean in that first clip. Good workaround too that you've found to go clean.
Click to expand...

Thanks! For reference here's a longer clip of me wanking on a Spector bass with the amp eq'ed to dUg's personal setting, which you can see in the recommended settings of the amp's manual. Sorry for the schizophrenic riffing but I wanted to show the sound on both high and low notes and played fast and slowly.

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While dUg's setting sounds great too, it has a lot less mids dialled in and less drive and overall lower eq settings. Not really a wrong choice here but if you compare this to the clip I posted previously you can hear the difference the added mids, gain and eq add, which personally I like. I know others will prefer the scooped mid sound of dUg's personal setting.

 
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#305
So after reading about some of you guys having a noise problem I went looking for one and I was just not hearing it. Granted, I'm using tweeterless Baer cabinets and may have lost a db or two in my high-end hearing
from over thirty years of playing out. I have to crank the mid boost to get a little hissy but still nowhere near as noisy as a lot of other amps I have enjoyed. I wondered if it might be my bass so I unplugged the passive GZR loaded PBass and plugged in my Zon and....

Noisy.

IME a lot of Tech 21 products I have owned have been less than thrilled with active basses but wonderful with passive. Could this be the case here? Has anyone who is experiencing a noisy clean channel
done an A/B active/passive comparison?

Peace
 
#306
Has anyone tried this with a 12ver yet? Just curious.

I noticed that the amp has been added to Bax (an online shop in the Netherlands) for future release.

Tech 21 dUg Ultra Bass 1000 dUg Pinnick Signature | Bass Guitar Amp Head | Bax-shop | Your Music Revolution

I mean, come on. £1926?!! That is totally having a laugh. If you do that conversion the other way round for everyone in America, that's $2951 which is interesting as it seems to cost $1879 across the pond. Markup of about a third. I'd certainly hope the price might come down to something a bit more sane.

Whilst from what I've heard, this is an amazing amp if (like myself) you do the whole biamp type sound. However, I feel that the pricing (if it stays that high when released in the UK) is just way too much. I appreciate that it's a niche product and all that, but how many of the members in the US would pay almost $3000 for an amp? Not many I'd venture.

Quite disappointing really.
 
#308
wolverinebass said:
I noticed that the amp has been added to Bax (an online shop in the Netherlands) for future release.

Tech 21 dUg Ultra Bass 1000 dUg Pinnick Signature | Bass Guitar Amp Head | Bax-shop | Your Music Revolution

I mean, come on. £1926?!! That is totally having a laugh. If you do that conversion the other way round for everyone in America, that's $2951 which is interesting as it seems to cost $1879 across the pond. Markup of about a third. I'd certainly hope the price might come down to something a bit more sane.

Whilst from what I've heard, this is an amazing amp if (like myself) you do the whole biamp type sound. However, I feel that the pricing (if it stays that high when released in the UK) is just way too much. I appreciate that it's a niche product and all that, but how many of the members in the US would pay almost $3000 for an amp? Not many I'd venture.

Quite disappointing really.
Click to expand...

It's priced less than the Ampeg SVT-CL Heritage and Aguilar DB-751 at the same store. Seems to be in line with the cost of boutique USA built amps there. Do you think all these amps are overpriced or the dUg in particular?
 
#309
andrew said:
It's priced less than the Ampeg SVT-CL Heritage and Aguilar DB-751 at the same store. Seems to be in line with the cost of boutique USA built amps there. Do you think all these amps are overpriced or the dUg in particular?
Click to expand...

To be fair Andrew, I'm not sure the comparison is a yes or no for me. The Ampeg is an all valve amp and I'd probably expect that to be £1300-1800. The premium of tubes really, which if that's what you want, then this is to be expected. I hasten to add that I'm not really a valve amp person though, though I have played a few Ampegs and Hiwatts over the years.

I've never played an Aguilar, but from looking at it, it could be argued it does seem to be quite high but then Aguilar's stuff is really pricey in the UK, much like Mesa Boogie to give another example. It may be worth it, it might not. So for me to say it's overpriced is a very subjective judgement based on figures rather than playing one.

In the case of the dUg, what I'm bemoaning is that the price Bax have quoted is £20 more than if you imported an American version of the amp and got battered for all the taxes and shipping costs. Maybe that's not down to Tech 21. Maybe it is. I just find it insane that people that might want to play this in UK/Europe are in effect going to fork out almost twice what our American friends have. If the formula is: take the price in dollars, convert to pounds then add £200, then that is quite steep and it's not worth it. $1800 is about £1200. I'd take it for that. Not for nigh on £2000 as that's just a bit too rich really.

This might not even be the final pricing for the UK. If it is though, I'll be very sad as I'll be giving this a miss.

I suppose the question may be better placed the other way round for you Andrew. If you had to pay $3000 for yours - would you have? As that's what I'd be paying if I bought it.

Hope that makes sense.
 
#310
wolverinebass said:
I suppose the question may be better placed the other way round for you Andrew. If you had to pay $3000 for yours - would you have? As that's what I'd be paying if I bought it.
Click to expand...

My 2¢: if I lived overseas, I seriously doubt I would buy any U.S. amplifier because the markups make them overpriced compared to domestic equivalents.

That said, the dUg is expensive even over here. Contributing to this is that it's highly sophisticated, U.S. built, and also a low-demand specialty item ("boutique"): really, there's no way that the dUg will hit number one on the bass amp chart. So, while the price has kept me from jumping on one this year, I don't think it's excessive.
 
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#311
It does make sense.

$3,000 for an amp is not a cost many of us would want to pay, I agree with you. For me in particular, I'd much rather not pay $3,000 for anything, but I have bought gear in the past for that cost because sometimes there's a piece of gear that I just have to have or nothing else can do what it does. In the case of the dUg, it was both those things for me. I do think it's worth as much as an Ampeg SVT-CL Heritage and the Aguilar DB-751. I own and love both an SVT and a DB-750 (the 751's previously pricier predecessor) so I can make comparisons in build and sound quality between the three. The dUg sitting at a price point between the Mesa M9 and the Ampeg SVT-CL-H makes sense to me.

Do I wish they were all cheaper? My wallet certainly does. ;)
But that's more my ability to afford all the gear I want than companies/retailers over-pricing their products.

In your case, I can understand why the upcharge to get those amps in your country feels like a burn. Or at least the upcharge Bax is selling it for. I wonder if the dUg is able to be converted to 230v easily? If so, I think it'd be worth buying one from the USA and risking the duty charge if it'll ultimately save you a decent amount. I'd also look around for a cost from other dealers and see if Bax's price isn't higher than elsewhere.
 
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#312
As a long time reader of talkbass forums I thought I better sign up and chip in to this thread. It has been an amazing read and Andrew your posts and soundclips have been so informative...the tones you are getting from the dUg are outstanding.

I guess I wanted to let wolverinebass know that the dUg is available in the UK right now. The distributor for Tech21NYC in the UK is Rocky Road and the dUg is being sold through Wunjo Guitars in Denmark Street, London. The MRRP is £1995.00, Wunjo are listing them as £1895.00 and after I contacted them I was offered one at £1750.00.

I don't know if that helps but just thought I would share the information.
 
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#314
Absolutely, reading what everyone has posted has really helped my understanding of what is a very unique amplifier. The soundclips by Brbass and yourself have been exciting to hear and only served to confirm in my mind what an excellent product the dUg 1000 is. Over here it is indeed more costly to buy but in comparison to other premium gear maybe not that excessive. Like wolverinebass, if it was priced as per USA then I'd have pulled the trigger. I may well still do so; just have to wait a bit longer to get the extra £££s together.

The reason for the extra cost in the UK is down to shipping costs, import duty and bank wire fees apparently, but that makes sense and is just the reality of the situation.

However, as a long time fan of the bi-amped tone of Pinnick, Squire etc...it would probably be the last amplifier I would ever need or want to buy. You could go and buy another quality amplifier and then start adding pedals or go for a bi-amp rig to try and emulate the tones available here and that's not necessarily going to be much cheaper? It is an expensive amplifier for someone like myself (semi-pro) but when you think of it them terms and the years of sheer joy you get from the tone then it potentially puts the cost in a different light.
 
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#315
This is a very cool amp. I can tell you from experience, you can't get these kind of tones without true biamping. I can get them with a rolls xover, a sansamp pedal and a boss loop/mixer pedal but, that takes alot of cables and space for one sound. If the amp was $1000 I would already have one. I may just have a pedal made to encompass that sound but, it would be cooler if tech21 would just put it out. With a clean sound underneath the OD, there is too much interferance in the upper range and it just doesn't sound amp-like. So, the DUG has it nailed.
 
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#319
Couple things. I agree, Andrew has been great for this thread and an excellent ambassador for Tech 21. I've been corresponding with him on the side and everything he has said about the amp has been spot on. I trust his ear.

Also, a Geddy tone? For sure…the dUg amp can flat nail most of Geddy's different era of tones without even breaking a sweat. Me personally, I dig sounding like Entwistle sat in with Rush. ;)
 
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#320
Agreed, the RR work around that Andrew has shared has really taken the dUg to another level for me and provided a killer clean tone that ultimately provides even more flexibility and results in three tones that are all great and usable in a band context.
 

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