I bet a lot of us would love to see 'em. Have you ever taken a family picture or did you own them at different times? What exactly does the feedback control do?
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Let's talk about the Ashdown Little Bastard
- Thread starter Joris 55
- Start date
I bet a lot of us would love to see 'em. Have you ever taken a family picture or did you own them at different times? What exactly does the feedback control do?
Yeah, it really shines in the studio. I really like it a 12" cab and an RE-20. What did you use to record it?
Love my Little Bastard!!!!
As for stage volume, it's all about the cab. You may have to bring more cab to squeeze more volume out of it. I used mine with an Epifani UL-410 (with a Broughton Always On HPF in front of it) and it was GLORIOUS!!! Tons of volume and heft for days.
As for the EQ and switches, the only thing that worked for me was time. I literally "scrambled" the EQ when I sat down to practice a fee times to force myself to learn how the controls interact. It was a fun experiment. Now I can walk up to any LB30 and dial it in in seconds.
My TT800 is still my #1. I have sold a USA SVT-CL and 610, and will be selling a gorgeous burgundy Mesa Walkabout stack soon. But my LB30 isn't going anywhere. Too much cool to let it go.
If you see one, snag it. You'll probably love it. And if not, you'll easily get your money back out of it as prices are jumping lately.
As for stage volume, it's all about the cab. You may have to bring more cab to squeeze more volume out of it. I used mine with an Epifani UL-410 (with a Broughton Always On HPF in front of it) and it was GLORIOUS!!! Tons of volume and heft for days.
As for the EQ and switches, the only thing that worked for me was time. I literally "scrambled" the EQ when I sat down to practice a fee times to force myself to learn how the controls interact. It was a fun experiment. Now I can walk up to any LB30 and dial it in in seconds.
My TT800 is still my #1. I have sold a USA SVT-CL and 610, and will be selling a gorgeous burgundy Mesa Walkabout stack soon. But my LB30 isn't going anywhere. Too much cool to let it go.
If you see one, snag it. You'll probably love it. And if not, you'll easily get your money back out of it as prices are jumping lately.
Love my Little Bastard as well and have used it as my living room amp for many years.
As long as you are realistic about its power it's a fine amp. It's not a gigging amp unless you're playing at really low levels and with two cabs. I use an Orange 200 watt tube amp for any situation requiring more volume.
As long as you are realistic about its power it's a fine amp. It's not a gigging amp unless you're playing at really low levels and with two cabs. I use an Orange 200 watt tube amp for any situation requiring more volume.
I have not used a load box live, but Two Notes makes a decent size one that could probably be used on gigs. The ones the the studio I’ve used in the studio we’re a bit bulky. When I use the CTM at gigs, I’ll bring just one cab and use it as my stage monitor at super low volumes and the DI/FOH handles the rest. I’m using Shift Line Olympic preamp on my pedalboard that gets a somewhat similar tone, so I mainly use the CTM for recording or at home practice right now.
Yeah, I even used with some efficient speakers (2 Greenboy Bassics stacked) and you still have to push it in a full band setting without PA support. Doable? Yeah, but you’ll need some spare tubes lying around if you do it more than a couple gigs.
I love my LB too. Great amp.
I have used it in live situations with PA support in small to medium rooms as my stage monitor running DI out to FOH.
I have a Fender Super Bassman as well as a Sushi Box PAX, so I tend to like the Fender tone stack EQ and find no trouble getting what I want out of it.
My LB isn’t going anywhere as it is really a great little amp that is tons of fun!
Here it is on top of my Avatar Neo 212.
I have used it in live situations with PA support in small to medium rooms as my stage monitor running DI out to FOH.
I have a Fender Super Bassman as well as a Sushi Box PAX, so I tend to like the Fender tone stack EQ and find no trouble getting what I want out of it.
My LB isn’t going anywhere as it is really a great little amp that is tons of fun!
Here it is on top of my Avatar Neo 212.
Sweet piece. As for popularity, I’ll take a stab that it weighs more than 6lbs is one reason, might be a little pricey. And for a guy like me with extremely greasy fingers, as beautiful as that chrome face plate is, it would look like the back splash on the stove at as Mamma JO’s Fried Chicken Emporium in about 5 minutes..LOL!
That Broughton HPF should free up a lot of power. Good thinking!
Love seeing 'em out in the wild. That cab looks pretty crazy too.
‘Like I posted, it was a guess based on the 40lbs 300 watt tube head I bought about 6 months ago…. 10lbs, 20lbs, 30lbs, 40lbs, it doesn’t matter. Dang, do these suckers ever sound great?
It should be mentioned that if you want to pump out every last bit of clean headroom in these little amps, you can run a HPF and cut out those wattage stealing lows.
I’ve ran a fDeck and now a Broughton always on HPF for this very reason.
I’ve ran a fDeck and now a Broughton always on HPF for this very reason.
Love my CTM 30. But so does my son that has been using it for guitar. His Tele sounds great through it.
D
It's a great little amp. One of the coolest things about it is that the tube driven balanced DI output is tapped off the output transformer. This means you can get output tube/transformer saturation (and distortion!) from the DI output when you push the amp into the red. With "only" 30 watts available you won't even blow out your windows in the process. It's still surpisingly loud though. I like to think of the Little Bastard as one of the coolest DI boxes ever with a great little amp thrown in for free.
I've never used mine for gigs, it was never quite powerful for my LOUD prog rock band but I imagine the DI output would sound pretty cool when going direct. You will stilll need a cab connected of course or you will blow the amp.
The mute switch mutes both the speaker and DI outputs so unfortunately it can't be used for silent recording. The tone controls will also affect both the speaker and DI outputs which means you're stuck with the same tone settings for cab and DI. This isn't always ideal but you can always process cab/DI separately further downstream of course.
The tone control section is amazing. Very powerful. It's a bit unintuitive at first and there's a bit of a learning curve to get the best out of it but once you understand how it works it's fantastic!
This amp also responds really well to tube changes. It's cathode biased so even replacing the output tubes is plug and play, just make sure you get a matched quartet. I often find that using expensive NOS tubes in modern amps is a waste of money because I don't hear the improvement in tone that I hear with old school vintage amps. The Little Bastard is like a proper old school tube amp in this respect. It will sound even better with good NOS tubes.
I've never used mine for gigs, it was never quite powerful for my LOUD prog rock band but I imagine the DI output would sound pretty cool when going direct. You will stilll need a cab connected of course or you will blow the amp.
The mute switch mutes both the speaker and DI outputs so unfortunately it can't be used for silent recording. The tone controls will also affect both the speaker and DI outputs which means you're stuck with the same tone settings for cab and DI. This isn't always ideal but you can always process cab/DI separately further downstream of course.
The tone control section is amazing. Very powerful. It's a bit unintuitive at first and there's a bit of a learning curve to get the best out of it but once you understand how it works it's fantastic!
This amp also responds really well to tube changes. It's cathode biased so even replacing the output tubes is plug and play, just make sure you get a matched quartet. I often find that using expensive NOS tubes in modern amps is a waste of money because I don't hear the improvement in tone that I hear with old school vintage amps. The Little Bastard is like a proper old school tube amp in this respect. It will sound even better with good NOS tubes.
I tried the LB a couple years ago at a studio session, they had a wonderful variety of amps and cabs. the LB sounded great, but for what we were doing (girl vocal pop) it was a bit too much, as we ended up doing a split DI, using a Universal Audio Solo 610 and a basic Countryman DI. I liked the LB a lot, but really have no use for it, as my main studio amp is still the B-15
That Dynacord Bassking is awesome.
I used to play through a friend's back in the 80's. I wish I had bought it from him.
It had a DIN plug for speak output though. Did you add a 1/4" or speakon or something else to make it more universal?
I really like the DI as well. Strangely, I hadn't noticed the mute also mutes the DI signal. Thanks for the heads up!
Good to know other tubes make a difference, I might try out a different set at some point. Any recommendations?
