Need help choosing my first head

[Matthew Hanafin]

Tone hammer 500 is ordered!

 

[Al Kraft]

Tone hammer 500 is ordered!

Congratulations - this is a very nice head, from a great company. In order to be the happiest with it in your early days of ownership I'd recommend you do some searching and reading here on TB to learn about the unique interactions between the controls (specifically Drive, Gain and mids).

I like the head very much, but found it less than intuitive to use even after having owned the TH pedal for years prior buying the TH500 amp. Most folks figure a good place to start is with all controls around noon (and specifically Gain and Drive between 10 and 2 o'clock) based on what works with most heads. Let me just say that the head is VERY voiced at those settings and small adjustments starting there will not be much help if you are in territory you don't like.

Once you get over the fact that you can run the head with ZERO gain and/or Drive using only the Master for volume control it will become more obvious that the Gain and Drive are as much for voicing as for adding "gain". The head is very versatile, but you just need to know where neutral voicing (for the head) is located and it's not exactly noon on all controls.

Enjoy!!

 

[MrLenny1]

GK MB 500. I bought one used for $300.
Great EQ, 300 watts/8 ohms, 500/4 ohms.
Loud and the size of a book.

 

[Al Kraft]

GK MB 500. I bought one used for $300.
Great EQ, 300 watts/8 ohms, 500/4 ohms.
Loud and the size of a book.

This is a great workhorse head that punches above its weight class IME. While it's not exactly an RB replacement tonally, in a mix it delivers much of the same magic and has that great GK tone stack. .