~ Gallien- Krueger MB Series Amplifiers ~

Won't this poll turn into a popularity contest?
Seems unlikely that many hear have purchased more than one which means the experience is either based on ones' personal ownership, or, what has been regurgitated here in the past.
No criticism but purley interest in the accuracy

 

Uh...it's a gK. it's reliable. If it breaks, they are super about getting you handled... RAG, hizzhonor visits regularly... Or to put it another way... I've had a 400B, 400 RB, 800RB, 2 1001 rb II's and now own the MB200 and an MB2-500 A07. 30+ years of GK ownership...

Buy the one you like the sound of and don't sweat it. Really. My only complaint with GK is that I'm not sponsored

(If I was sponsored, I'd be all over the sweat deal for an MB Fusion as I love the concept. ...had a Fusion 550 in a backline last summer... Sounded very nice but I really couldn't crank lest I get the look from Mr Artist... That gig, he's the guy who gets to be too loud...)

 

I have a MB500 that is the speakon only version and it has no issues. I love it. The only thing that is annoying is that the knobs always change during transport. 2 year warranty should cover any electronic issues.

 

BTW Joe the MB800 is a 800watt micro. Pretty new to the market, newer than the MB Fusion.

 

My Mb500 took around 8 weeks to get fixed when it died

 

Joe,
Not to kick sand but you might want to search the MB500. As I recall the first versions were very unreliable but that was resolved through a number of revisions.

 

2 years ago.

It was an MB500 not an MB-2-500.

I sold it after it got fixed because I couldn't deal with a primary amp being out of commission for 2 months in the event of a problem.

 

Never heard of the MB500 as being unreliable. You may be remembering the MB2-500. There were 7 itterations of that head before it was rebadged as the MB500. Most of the itterations were voicing related with 1 or 2 being noise related, hiss and rf IIRC.

Those 7 itterations did not help GK from a reputation standpoint at all. Ot did give them a bunch of opportunities to show off their customer service though... That can't have been cheap for them. It seems to me that they took a lesson away from that experience and applied it to the MB200 and MB Fusion heads where the releases seem to have been pretty stable.

GK took care of those by updating the heads to the A07 release. Mine is an A07 and it's been a trooper.

Mb800, I can't imagine wanting to stand in front of a head that powerful when it was fired in anger... 500 about halfway up into my 12/6 is louder than I need to be ...

 

Just to chime i here, I had posted in another thread about my new MB Fusion having a problem.

I dropped it off for repair Monday morning at the authorized repair shop in Canoga Park, ARS. Despite the fact that it is likely just the tube they still think it will be 'at least a week' to fix, unless I want to pay a rush fee. Since I don't think I should be out of pocket at all on a 6 week old amp I declined. So I'm feeling a bit of apprehension regarding how long it will really take.

At this point I personally cannot vouch for the MB Fusion being reliable. No doubt my cause is unusual but it is what it is. Hopefully this will be the only issue I ever have with it.

 

The amp main board died and they replaced it.

 

I don't know what all the revisions were (A00-A07). I know one revision was driven by comments/concerns here on TB. Robert Gallien responded to comments here by re-voicing the preamp! Remember that when the MB2-500 hit the market the class D modules were very new to Bass MI use. Took guts to be the scape-goat and take the financial hits to bring these little class D wonders to the market, not only under the G-K name but many others have profited from G-K's early efforts.