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Hartke hd75 or hd150

I've recently purchased a hartke hd150 and it sounds totally awesome. it's got great sound quality, it handles effects pretty well, and dubista was right when he said that 15 inch speakers sounds cleaner than 12 inch speaker. also it's not as boomy as the fender rumble 150 I've previously owned. for the record, I do like how the fender rumble bass amps sounded. I like the fender rumble v3 amps more than the older models(v2?) because it has some new and improved features. but not as much as I like hartke amps. it sounds a little brighter than I expected but does have plenty of lows. oh and like many 1x15 combo amps, the hartke hd150 absorbs a lot of sounds. this amp is a keeper.
 
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Oh it's 57 pounds. okay thanks for the info. at least it's got wheels to carry it to a gig. that's a plus right there

How have you got on Crystalman85? I don't think the HD150 is too heavy at all. The wheels of coarse are a bonus, mine sits up front on the passenger seat of my Toyota single cab with the seat belt around it and my bass stood in the foot well. Job done!
 
How have you got on Crystalman85? I don't think the HD150 is too heavy at all. The wheels of coarse are a bonus, mine sits up front on the passenger seat of my Toyota single cab with the seat belt around it and my bass stood in the foot well. Job done!

When I do gigs, I travel in my brother's escalade. since the trunk has a small spacing, I don't have to worry about the amp moving around. If we still have our old ford van or if I travel to the gig in the chevy blazer I have, I would have to lay the amp on the side where the wheel point side ways so that it won't be moving around. so if you're toyota has a wide trunk space, the best thing to do is to lay it on the side and put it by the edge of the trunk space so it won't be moving around.
 
Speakers don't "absorb" sound, they create sound. It's not like a sponge that soaks up watts from the amp and then you squeeze it out into the room. Well, I mean you COULD sort of think of it like that, if you were talking about the electrical inefficiency of the driver turning power into heat, but mainly it will just confuse people. And in that case the absorbing would be power that's wasted on creating heat rather than sound, so absorbing more would be less good.

There is a lot of overlap between common bass speakers sizes these days. And there are a lot of factors that go into making a particular speaker louder or quieter (sensitivity being a huge one). GENERALLY speaking, a bigger speaker will be louder than the same speaker in a smaller size. But designing a speaker is an exercise in compromise, and every company balances these compromises differently, even between their own models.
 
I'm having this same debate with myself--there's no sense in creating my own HD75 vs HD150 thread to ask the same question when this one already covers a bit of ground. More of you have likely had experience with these amps now that they've been out a while. I have a great guitar rig, but one of these two combos will be my first bass amp.

I won't be playing out with it so 75w vs 150w does not matter to me, nor the portability, and I have a DI box so the XLR out of the HD150 doesn't matter to me either. I really care only about the sound quality of the 12" vs the 15", clarity being my primary concern.

Has anyone played both the HD75 and HD150? I know I will be happy with either, but as A/B'ing will not be possible for me, I would value the opinion of someone who has had the luxury.
 
Well I have an HD25 and it's a great little thing as my practice amp, if you want to bigger then it's cool as you will get the great sound it produces just louder.

I have a LH1000 and HyDrive 410s so I know the sound well.

Whatever fits your needs you will not be disappointed
 
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That's a pretty nice endorsement considering you have higher tier Hartke gear.

I just noticed something that may help me make up my mind... The HD75 has cooling vents in the chassis but it doesn't appear to have a fan. The 150 certainly has a fan. No noisy built-in 40-60mm fan is a plus for me (if it is indeed noisy)... On my guitar amp head it annoyed me enough I replaced it with a silent 200mm fan, but harder to do such modifications on a plate amp...

Can anyone with an HD150 speak to how loud the fan is?
 
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I just got a 75HD about a month ago. I sold my Fender 40. The Fender was cool but it just sounded so boomy to my ears but still a nice sound... I love the mids in the Ampeg BA112 but I wish they had dropped the OD in favor of more EQ control... anyway I got the Hartke for $50 bucks less than the Ampeg. It's wayyyy heavier than the Fender but the sound on the Hartke is so clean and well defined like Cd's to vinyls.... HD = "High definition" I guess.. Some people may not like the sound because it doesn't sound old school... Oh well works for my little setup
 
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Cool setup, very much like mine (SR5005). I ended up going with the HD75 as well. My opinion means little here as I'm just a guitarist whose first bass is my current one and whose first amp is the HD75, but I'm very much satisfied with it. It just seems like a no frills (7-band EQ aside) accurate reproduction amp to me (as opposed to my guitar amp and cab which is concerned with coloring tone much more dramatically and reproducing the original signal less accurately), which is just what I wanted from an amp. The response is very much flat to my ears. I'm also impressed by the build quality, even if you don't consider the affordable price.

I do sort of wish it had drive, but I also bought a MicroBass II, and my guitar OD pedal works surprisingly well with it. The amp hasn't left me wanting and I don't see myself replacing it.
 
This thread rates high on the search engines when one searches for info about the HD75/150, so I wanted to contribute a tip here...

I recently moved, and given my music gear is in a larger room now, I've had the volume up a bit more lately on my HD75. I noticed a terrible rattle inside the amp when I played a particular note. I opened the amp up and was able to see the rattle was caused by the equalizer board vibrating like crazy. There was no sort of dampening there (plenty of soft epoxy on the caps on the main board, though, which I do appreciate), so I insulated the entirety of the EQ circuit, aside from the faces of the sliders, with hot glue. The board cannot possibly vibrate on the four legs which mount it to the chassis now.

It's a very simple fix--you only need to remove around 8 screws to remove the chassis from the cab, disconnect the two speakers, and you're ready to get to work. I don't know how long it takes the charge to dissipate from the caps, but you should be careful not to shock yourself around them. If you haven't done this sort of work before, apply the hot glue slowly and build it up over time. If you apply all the glue at once, you may find the glue running down into the sliders before drying there.

The whole job is a roughly 20 minute fix. I also unscrewed the FX loop/phones jacks and put rubber grommets around the inside part of the barrels before screwing them back down from the front because I thought that board looked like it could be susceptible to vibration as well. If you want to do this as well, you can get a box full of assorted size grommets from Amazon. If double-sided, they can be sliced down the middle with a razor blade to reduce the profile.

The idea of hot glue may sound sloppy to you, but it's more or less inert and a very commonly used means of preventing ugly resonances in gear subjected to vibrations. The rubberiness of it also makes it durable--it would take a lot of blasting away at max volume playing the fundamental note to break it down.

On a side note, after having the amp open, I was quite impressed with the build quality, particularly given the price. The heatsink and ventilation looks adequate, so if it fails on me, it shouldn't be the usual culprit of temperature shock.
 
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I know this is an old post but I too was at the crossroads of either the HD150 or the HD75. I dont Gig, Im not in a band or anything. I just play for my personal pleasure, been doing so off and on for about 10 years. Maybe Ill be good enough one day to be part of something.

Anyways, the price point on both combos were so very close. It was so worth buying the HD150 but unfortunately my man-cave is not that big and having the HD150 would be completely overkill and I really wouldn't be able to get the most out of the HD150 due to the distance of where I play and the amp. I wish the HD75 had the XLR. The HD150 has it. It was a compromise for me.

I saved a few bucks and went with the HD75 and I never looked back. I am so happy with the sound, the volume is perfect. I really dont even need to set the volume past 4 to 4.5 The rest is on my Bass volume.

Have a good one Fellas
 
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