Sign me up for the Rumble club! Just purchased a 500 head, should be here by the end of the week. Can't wait to gig this thing out! Most likely going to wind up with some Rumble cabs down the road to go with it.
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Woot, Woofer, Woot! Welcome to the Fender Rumble Club, you are member #215! 
Hmmm...you wouldn't be getting a pair of Rumble 115's would you? 
Rumbles Rock!
Thanks! Yeah, I'm interested most in the 115's right now, despite being historically a 10's guy. We will have to see after I get a few more gigs in to recoup the expense of buying the head, but I'm excited about the prospect of running a Rumble full stack.
Thanks! Yeah, I'm interested most in the 115's right now, despite being historically a 10's guy. We will have to see after I get a few more gigs in to recoup the expense of buying the head, but I'm excited about the prospect of running a Rumble full stack.
I wish the OBX were a little closer to Charlotte - I'd loan you the Kustom DE115 neo I picked up at the GC/MF fire sale a couple of summers ago. Right now it's just collecting dust while I decide whether to sell it or find a head to use with it (No, Linnin, I'm not going there.....LOL). Great sounding cab when hooked to the head of my B15T. Actually, everything else I own is pretty much collecting dust since the arrival of the V3 100. Keep Rumbling!!!
Blooz
You know that 115 Neo might sound really good underneath a Rumble 500 combo...jus' sayin'...
Tough question: Rumble 350 V2 or Rumble 200 V3???
Anyone knows if the 350 V2 has external cabinet out?
Thanks,
Anyone knows if the 350 V2 has external cabinet out?
Thanks,
According to the manual on the Fender website, only the 'head-only' versions have speaker out. The combo version does not. That's true of the V2 150 and 350.
I just received the 500W combo today. While I'm still getting excited over the fact that I finally got one, I have a 1x15" Rumble cab on the way and I'm feeling like there will be times when I want to just use that cabinet w/ a micro head for when I need a 115 instead of the 210 setup. Also, that hypothetical head would provide as a backup to the 2x10" combo. I want a truly micro head, not just a small one, as in could fit in a gig bag micro. And I want it to be giggable, though not stadium sized, still fills up a bar w/ a 5-string nicely kind of thing.
With all that in mind, it seems the TC Electronic BH250 ticks all the boxes. I really, really love this amp for all its features and the fact that it fits in with my needs for a backup head. As much as I love the Aguilar Tone Hammer amps, they're a little too pricey and nice to be backup duty, whereas the BH250 is the right size and price and not too fancy. With the TonePrint feature and built-in tuner, it could even replace a pedalboard, meaning I could seriously turn up to the gig with a cab, a cable, a head, and a bass guitar. But would it be a tad underpowered? I'd imagine that at 8 ohms, it's putting out maybe 175W, which isn't a big number, but is it a loud 175 watts? I love the price and almost everything about it. I'm probably over-estimating my wattage needs, since I have plenty of friends who play punk gigs all the time with an Ampeg B100R 1x15" 100W combo and they play with louder drummers than I ever will care to do.
Have any of you used the BH250 w/ a 1x15" Fender Rumble cabinet? If so, how did you like it?
With all that in mind, it seems the TC Electronic BH250 ticks all the boxes. I really, really love this amp for all its features and the fact that it fits in with my needs for a backup head. As much as I love the Aguilar Tone Hammer amps, they're a little too pricey and nice to be backup duty, whereas the BH250 is the right size and price and not too fancy. With the TonePrint feature and built-in tuner, it could even replace a pedalboard, meaning I could seriously turn up to the gig with a cab, a cable, a head, and a bass guitar. But would it be a tad underpowered? I'd imagine that at 8 ohms, it's putting out maybe 175W, which isn't a big number, but is it a loud 175 watts? I love the price and almost everything about it. I'm probably over-estimating my wattage needs, since I have plenty of friends who play punk gigs all the time with an Ampeg B100R 1x15" 100W combo and they play with louder drummers than I ever will care to do.
Have any of you used the BH250 w/ a 1x15" Fender Rumble cabinet? If so, how did you like it?
I considered this briefly but the 500W is a better amp, IMO. It looks better, is a whole lot lighter, and offers the option of hooking up an external cab. I've heard from some that they think the V2 350W is a louder and beefier sounding amp when you just compare it to the 500W combo (which is running at 350W w/o an external cab), but even if that were true, is it worth the extra weight when you give up the possibility of adding another cab for more watts? I'm sure that the 210 running at 350W cannot compete with a combination of 210 and 115 running at 500W.
Not only that, the V3 500W (36 lb) is a truly portable amp, as in my girly arms can easily carry it one-handed like a basket. I can easily bear hug it up and down any flight of stairs and dragging it out of the car is a breeze. The V2 is much heavier, 65 pounds. A V3 Rumble 115 cabinet is only 39 pounds on its own. So do the math. The V3 gives you an option of having a truly impressive lightweight setup.
Having said that, I've seen V2 350W sell for under $300. If you're willing to deal with a bigger amp, can you really compete with that?
This is the only Rumble feature that doesn't make sense to me. Don't get me wrong. I like my modded Rumble 100 V3 combo enough that it's replaced my $900 boutique cab and MB200 for coffee shop gigs. But I can't find any use for the baked-in EQ curve on the XLR line out with my other gear.
I'd be curious to know what other Rumble owners use it for.
The downside of having a "DI out" that locks in your stage volume are obvious. The sound guy doesn't care if I tweak my stage sound within reason, but the hammer will definitely come down if I screw with the level that I send to the board.
The other, equally major problem for me, is that it's post-EQ.
The sound guy doesn't like it at FOH, so I'm stuck lugging an expensive DI to the small venues where I use the Rumble, or taking my chances with the no-name DI provided by the house.
Meanwhile, I don't like it for home recording. The "speaker emulation" sounds just as lousy through my recording monitors as it does at FOH. There are lots of free amp emulator plugins that sound better, IMO. Sure, I can mic the cab, but then I can't record when the kids are in bed, and I have to worry about background noise bleeding into the track.
It doesn't make sense as a slave output to my bigger rigs, either. First off, I need 1/4" out, not XLR, to bypass the preamp on my other heads. Secondly, the baked-in EQ isn't appropriate for my other bass cabs (a 3-way Flite with a tweeter and a 2-way AudioKinesis with a big radial horn). I suppose I could try feeding the XLR Line Out to a regular power amp, but who is going to lug a combo around in place of a rack preamp?
I don't get it. I can only think of one good use for the XLR Line Out, and Fender doesn't support it. The EQ voicing is perfect for a tweeterless, conventional bass cab. If Fender made a line of powered Rumble cabs, it could serve as the slave output for a modular rig. The controls on the combo (including the built-in foot-switchable overdrive) would manage all the cabs downstream, just like G-K is doing with their MB combos and powered cabs.
I agree...post-eq DI is one thing, but being that your volume affects the signal kind of makes it useless. The only black mark on a stellar line of amps IMO.
Well, there's always room for improvement. A true DI with pre/post EQ selection + level control may show up. It all costs money. A fabulously loud and light tone monster delivered straight to your front door for a penny less than three hundred smackers? Come On Man!
Just buy a REDDI for $745 http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/a-designs-reddi-tube-direct-box
There you go! Problem solved.
Just buy a REDDI for $745 http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/a-designs-reddi-tube-direct-box
There you go! Problem solved.
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I only mentioned it in passing but now I'm curious...since it's such a big problem, is it too hard to just rewrite it so it's not affected by the volume?
You're obviously joking about carrying a REDDI to coffee shop gigs, right?
It's ironic enough that I'm carrying a $200, Radial JDI to gigs in support of a cheap 22lb combo...
Besides, I don't think that this is about cost. Somebody did it for a reason, it just isn't obvious to us.
First off, my G-K MB110 had a great DI along with other pro features. The new MB's are built in the US, yet the street price on those is only $50 higher than the Chinese-built Rumble. Secondly, there's more circuitry in Fender's post-EQ, speaker emulated output than there would be in a simple fixed-level DI output.
I love this little guy. I wouldn't bitch if there were no XLR jack at all, when I get this kind of performance at such a low price point. It's just odd that they put the extra effort into an XLR output, and didn't get it right.
I haven't investigated, because I'm a tube amp guy, and don't particularly enjoy working on small pc boards. Also I'm lazy, and hoping that someone else will do the legwork, and post DIY instructions.
I'm guessing that it might require a small daughterboard to carry some extra components. If we're lucky, it could be built onto the back of a switch.
Anything is doable if you put your mind to it, but like anything else, it becomes a matter of diminishing returns when you're modding cheap gear.
I only have about $40 in parts in the mods I did to my Rumble so far, and I've ended up with a great-sounding small combo with a tiltback feature. It looks original, and weighs about the same as stock.
It seems like a no-brainer, until you start thinking about labour costs. If I was billing shop rates to a customer for what I've done so far, I'd have to charge about $200 for the job. And that wouldn't include the time it took to test and try different approaches before I reached a finished product.
Worst of all, despite the improved function, I'd be lucky to recover $20 on the mods in the used market.
Once again, these are little things that only cost pennies to fix at the manufacturing level, but they're far from cheap to do in the aftermarket.
