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Hartke TX300 First Impressions

kirkm24

kirkm24

Jan 1, 2007
2,331
51
Columbus, Ohio
#1
31EC0448-2A13-499C-ACA4-3A1260ECB452.jpeg
I picked up the new Hartke TX300 from Sweetwater and it arrived on Thursday. The amp is being run through the HyDrive HD112 cabinet set to 4 ohms using a speakon cable. My basses used are Precision with flats, Jazz with nickel rounds and Yamaha TRBX605 with nickel rounds.

I had the TX600 so I can compare the two somewhat.

- Volume: the master volume is more like a normal volume stack in that you don’t have to crank it to get real volume (unlike the TX600 where you had to really crank the knob to get stage volume). There seems to be more “apparent” volume to me vs the TX600 using the same cab.
- Tone: very clean and articulate. The notes all cut through clear and are “thick”.
- Drive: new feature here. The drive gets very subtle to all out fuzz. I’m not a fan of it full on but it sounds nice to my ears at about 1/4 of the way up. I think in a live performance situation this would come in handy to help push the bass out front in the mix the overall signal will sound mostly clean out to about the noon position with moderate attack on the strings.
- Gain: like it’s big brother (TX600) you need to basically dime the gain.
The preamp stage has loads of clean headroom. My active Yamaha with hard slapping still didn’t engage the clip light with the gain all the way up.
-Compression: This can be very subtle even turned all the way up. It’s not very squashy at all and gently evens out the volume transients without getting in the way. Not much to hate with this feature.

Build quality is good. It’s housed in an aluminum case with solid plastic knobs that turn smoothly (the TX600 has large hollow plastic knobs which I always worried would break). The amp is lightweight at 5 lbs but it only slightly smaller in size than the TX600. The pictures made it seem like this amp was much smaller than it actually is.
 
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#3
Nice review! It seems of odd to me that a 300 Watt head would only be slightly smaller than the 600 Watt version. For that cut in power I would have expected TE ELF kind of sizing to capture a larger market.

Not sure how the 600 volume control taper is set up, but I like the Mesa D-800/800+ taper which is usable from 0-10, like a professional mixing board linear taper. With these pots you do have to turn the control up higher than usual to get serious volume, but it also gives you a lot more precise control over your sound IME.

Thanks again for taking time to share your initial findings.
 
#7
kirkm24 said:
I saw threads where you complained about volume but did you have issues with it not working at all?
Click to expand...
I loved the size, look and especially the weight of Hartkes new class D amp and I waited almost a year for the 1st release. I was all excited to replace my LH500(42 lb) with a TX600 (7lb). When I received it, it was DOA out of the box... That broke my balloon and I started having doubts. Hartke sent me a 2nd amp but this time I had the music store open the box from UPS and had the associate plug it in and set it up for me. It was DOA. But then after playing with it, (turning it of and on, changing cables) it started to work. I lost my trust in it as I had to turn the Master to 10 and the Gain to 10 just to be heard. I know you have to dial in the EQ properly but at that level my speakers should have blown. I considered the amp not gig worthy and kept my LH500 as my trusty workhorse and sold the amp brand new in the box for a loss. Class D's give me a bad taste in my mouth. You had the TX600, why did you drop down to a 300 watt?
 
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#8
dbase said:
I loved the size, look and especially the weight of Hartkes new class D amp and I waited almost a year for the 1st release. I was all excited to replace my LH500(42 lb) with a TX600 (7lb). When I received it, it was DOA out of the box... That broke my balloon and I started having doubts. Hartke sent me a 2nd amp but this time I had the music store open the box from UPS and had the associate plug it in and set it up for me. It was DOA. But then after playing with it, (turning it of and on, changing cables) it started to work. I lost my trust in it as I had to turn the Master to 10 and the Gain to 10 just to be heard. I know you have to dial in the EQ properly but at that level my speakers should have blown. I considered the amp not gig worthy and kept my LH500 as my trusty workhorse and sold the amp brand new in the box for a loss. Class D's give me a bad taste in my mouth. You had the TX600, why did you drop down to a 300 watt?
Click to expand...
I sold it to to get a Trace Elliot ELF but that amp didn’t have as much “oomph” so I gave this one a try when it came out. The TX600 never gave me a problem when I had it. I definitely think this TX300 is “louder” than the TX600. I know they fixed a lot of issues with the TX600 in later releases.
 
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#12
thinking of either returning mine or sell it for a loss i guess , i love everything about it , controls tone etc etc other than i feel is a bit underpowered ... i used different cab configurations , a 210 , a 410 and at this point im just disappointed at that fact ...
 
#13
I just got the TX300 paired with a Hartke HD112 cabinet. So far I love the tone but I have one issue, I am running passive Basses and no matter how hard I try I have not been able to clip the light on the gain or compressor. I can hear the compression and I can hear a distorted hot signal when I turn the gain up yet get no light indicators.
20181225_091459.jpg
 
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#14
FB_IMG_1551198788903.jpg
I recently played a gig with the TX300 with the Hartke HD112 cabinet and the TC Electronics 2x12. In practice even running at 4 ohms the Hartke cabinet, which sounds great normally, would clip and distort when pushed, but when I run it at 8 ohms and pair it with another cabinet it does just fine. In fact running these 2 cabinets together causes enough air displacement that I never ran the master volume above 10 o'clock all night.
 
#17
kirkm24 said:
View attachment 3186829 I picked up the new Hartke TX300 from Sweetwater and it arrived on Thursday. The amp is being run through the HyDrive HD112 cabinet set to 4 ohms using a speakon cable. My basses used are Precision with flats, Jazz with nickel rounds and Yamaha TRBX605 with nickel rounds.

I had the TX600 so I can compare the two somewhat.

- Volume: the master volume is more like a normal volume stack in that you don’t have to crank it to get real volume (unlike the TX600 where you had to really crank the knob to get stage volume). There seems to be more “apparent” volume to me vs the TX600 using the same cab.
- Tone: very clean and articulate. The notes all cut through clear and are “thick”.
- Drive: new feature here. The drive gets very subtle to all out fuzz. I’m not a fan of it full on but it sounds nice to my ears at about 1/4 of the way up. I think in a live performance situation this would come in handy to help push the bass out front in the mix the overall signal will sound mostly clean out to about the noon position with moderate attack on the strings.
- Gain: like it’s big brother (TX600) you need to basically dime the gain.
The preamp stage has loads of clean headroom. My active Yamaha with hard slapping still didn’t engage the clip light with the gain all the way up.
-Compression: This can be very subtle even turned all the way up. It’s not very squashy at all and gently evens out the volume transients without getting in the way. Not much to hate with this feature.

Why does it only have one connection (spkr on) for a cab? Does this mean you can only hook up on cab to it? How could you hook up 2 cabs? Thanks!

Build quality is good. It’s housed in an aluminum case with solid plastic knobs that turn smoothly (the TX600 has large hollow plastic knobs which I always worried would break). The amp is lightweight at 5 lbs but it only slightly smaller in size than the TX600. The pictures made it seem like this amp was much smaller than it actually is.
Click to expand...
 
#18
Charles Barrow said:
I just got the TX300 paired with a Hartke HD112 cabinet. So far I love the tone but I have one issue, I am running passive Basses and no matter how hard I try I have not been able to clip the light on the gain or compressor. I can hear the compression and I can hear a distorted hot signal when I turn the gain up yet get no light indicators.View attachment 3259492
Click to expand...
I need that stand ! What does it say, something like Up Stager?
 
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