I’ve been playing the big brother - the Magellan 800 head and a single BA12-3 for some time now and love them but it has felt as if a smaller grab and go combo would be a good thing for my various uses. I’ve also had only one rig which meant more schlepping than I really wanted to do. I thought about one of the Fender Rumbles and tried them and liked them well enough for serious consideration. I also thought about the Carvin MB110. I had one of their acoustic guitar combos for a while and liked it a lot so thought that might be a reasonable choice as well.
Carvin went out of business which raised its own issues and the 110 combos sold out pretty quickly. I didn’t want the larger size combos - the 115 or 210 - so they were out of consideration. The Rumbles were still on the table for price, reasonably good sound, and a variety of choices in size & weight. As I said, I love my Genzler gear and the added flexibility of the removable head, basically the same preamp as the 800 with a smaller power amp section and minus the dirty channel (which I don’t use) pushed me in that direction. I figured this rig gives me multiple options - with the smaller head plus either cab or both cabs (there have been a number of reports that the BA12-3 and the BA10-2 play well together) and the bigger head with the larger cab or both cabs - so some six different configurations. I also figured that owning this little rig might give me more information for the future in case I want to upsize or downsize or both.
The amp arrived this week while I was out of town for a business meeting so I didn’t get to plug it in until today... played it a bit and man am I impressed. It does sound and feel like its bigger brother and is both bigger sounding and louder than I expected. My first impression is that this little guy would meet 90% of my uses and with a second little cab, likely all of them at this time.
The form factor is very cool. It is quite small and very light weight. If I remove the saddle and use it as a head/cab rather than a combo, the cab will slide under my bed which makes the spouse happy to not have more gear taking up space.
Tomorrow or Tuesday I’ll get to compare it to the larger rig and get a sense of how it differs other than volume and how the two cabs play together.
I also got the carry bag. It is seriously padded and well designed. The downside of all of the padding is that it is also significantly larger than I expected.
All in all, this is top shelf gear and for anyone who wants/needs a rig that sounds amazing, gets reasonably loud, has a small footprint, and is very schlepable, check it out.
Carvin went out of business which raised its own issues and the 110 combos sold out pretty quickly. I didn’t want the larger size combos - the 115 or 210 - so they were out of consideration. The Rumbles were still on the table for price, reasonably good sound, and a variety of choices in size & weight. As I said, I love my Genzler gear and the added flexibility of the removable head, basically the same preamp as the 800 with a smaller power amp section and minus the dirty channel (which I don’t use) pushed me in that direction. I figured this rig gives me multiple options - with the smaller head plus either cab or both cabs (there have been a number of reports that the BA12-3 and the BA10-2 play well together) and the bigger head with the larger cab or both cabs - so some six different configurations. I also figured that owning this little rig might give me more information for the future in case I want to upsize or downsize or both.
The amp arrived this week while I was out of town for a business meeting so I didn’t get to plug it in until today... played it a bit and man am I impressed. It does sound and feel like its bigger brother and is both bigger sounding and louder than I expected. My first impression is that this little guy would meet 90% of my uses and with a second little cab, likely all of them at this time.
The form factor is very cool. It is quite small and very light weight. If I remove the saddle and use it as a head/cab rather than a combo, the cab will slide under my bed which makes the spouse happy to not have more gear taking up space.
Tomorrow or Tuesday I’ll get to compare it to the larger rig and get a sense of how it differs other than volume and how the two cabs play together.
I also got the carry bag. It is seriously padded and well designed. The downside of all of the padding is that it is also significantly larger than I expected.
All in all, this is top shelf gear and for anyone who wants/needs a rig that sounds amazing, gets reasonably loud, has a small footprint, and is very schlepable, check it out.
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