Hey everyone,
We truly appreciate all the interaction surrounding the Heritage B-15. We really trust and rely on the opinions of the TalkBass community. After all, you are arguably the most passionate (and certainly most vocal) Ampeg people out there. We love Ampeg, we love music and we want Ampeg to be everything it should be and we are working hard to make this happen.
While we plan to save some details for the official launch at NAMM, we wanted to say a few things. I have numbered these to ease the dissection that will likely follow:
1. You know by now it is a limited run of 50 units for the 2010 production year. This number is no accident and is more than a marketing ploy. The Heritage B-15 is a legit, hand-built amp. For years people like you have wanted the real deal. This is it. The limited run reflects the intensely high-quality design. We wanted to keep the quality as high as possible and this limited run reflects our dedication to making this what it should be, the Holy Grail of bass amplification. All 50 units will be available for sale starting January 13, 2011. There will be no pre-sale. First come, first serve for our US dealers. Will we build more? We have sold out of our limited 250 unit run of the Heritage SVT-CL and have started taking orders for 2011 production. If the Heritage B-15 sells well, there is a great possibility that we will continue production.
2. The Heritage B-15 is not a re-issue like the B-15R. It is truly inspired by the 1964 B-15NC and 1966 B-15NF. These are two distinct circuit paths, each with their own Baxandall tone stack. As you have seen, there is also a bias switch (1964 cathode and 1966 fixed bias)
3. When using the 1966 bias, the output is 30W RMS. With the 1964 bias, you get 25W RMS.
4. The creation of this amazing amp involved a lot of amazing people. From the start we worked with inventor Jess Oliver on the design. He is exceedingly happy and agreed to write a letter of approval that comes with each Heritage B-15. He is a tough customer to please and I hope you know that anything that gets his seal of approval is the real deal.
5. Highly recommended by Jess, we consulted with Mark Gandenberger of Vintage Blue on the awesome double-baffle cabinet.
6. The Heritage B-15 is being built by renowned amp builder George Metropolous and his team out in Burton, Michigan.
7. The speaker was custom-designed by Eminence. We spent tons of time auditioning all the great speakers from the various B-15 incarnations and came up with a robust design with a massive 109oz ceramic magnet and a 4-inch voice coil. We also used an aluminum dust cover.
Like I have said, we will have more info as time goes on and will chime in here when it makes sense. Its a tough world to build an amp like this, but we really wanted to show you that we could. This is a labor of love.
Our upcoming announcement (probably not for a while, so take a breather!) about the other two amps you saw in the pics is likely to please many of you.
Until then, we have tons of production pics to share. You can really see the quality from these shots. We will likely post these to Facebook over the coming weeks, but I am sure one of you is likely to share here.
We truly appreciate all the interaction surrounding the Heritage B-15. We really trust and rely on the opinions of the TalkBass community. After all, you are arguably the most passionate (and certainly most vocal) Ampeg people out there. We love Ampeg, we love music and we want Ampeg to be everything it should be and we are working hard to make this happen.
While we plan to save some details for the official launch at NAMM, we wanted to say a few things. I have numbered these to ease the dissection that will likely follow:
1. You know by now it is a limited run of 50 units for the 2010 production year. This number is no accident and is more than a marketing ploy. The Heritage B-15 is a legit, hand-built amp. For years people like you have wanted the real deal. This is it. The limited run reflects the intensely high-quality design. We wanted to keep the quality as high as possible and this limited run reflects our dedication to making this what it should be, the Holy Grail of bass amplification. All 50 units will be available for sale starting January 13, 2011. There will be no pre-sale. First come, first serve for our US dealers. Will we build more? We have sold out of our limited 250 unit run of the Heritage SVT-CL and have started taking orders for 2011 production. If the Heritage B-15 sells well, there is a great possibility that we will continue production.
2. The Heritage B-15 is not a re-issue like the B-15R. It is truly inspired by the 1964 B-15NC and 1966 B-15NF. These are two distinct circuit paths, each with their own Baxandall tone stack. As you have seen, there is also a bias switch (1964 cathode and 1966 fixed bias)
3. When using the 1966 bias, the output is 30W RMS. With the 1964 bias, you get 25W RMS.
4. The creation of this amazing amp involved a lot of amazing people. From the start we worked with inventor Jess Oliver on the design. He is exceedingly happy and agreed to write a letter of approval that comes with each Heritage B-15. He is a tough customer to please and I hope you know that anything that gets his seal of approval is the real deal.
5. Highly recommended by Jess, we consulted with Mark Gandenberger of Vintage Blue on the awesome double-baffle cabinet.
6. The Heritage B-15 is being built by renowned amp builder George Metropolous and his team out in Burton, Michigan.
7. The speaker was custom-designed by Eminence. We spent tons of time auditioning all the great speakers from the various B-15 incarnations and came up with a robust design with a massive 109oz ceramic magnet and a 4-inch voice coil. We also used an aluminum dust cover.
Like I have said, we will have more info as time goes on and will chime in here when it makes sense. Its a tough world to build an amp like this, but we really wanted to show you that we could. This is a labor of love.
Our upcoming announcement (probably not for a while, so take a breather!) about the other two amps you saw in the pics is likely to please many of you.
Until then, we have tons of production pics to share. You can really see the quality from these shots. We will likely post these to Facebook over the coming weeks, but I am sure one of you is likely to share here.
but i do think this is the way to do it...as you said, it's the holy grail of bass amps and there will now be 50 more out in circulation, and i don't see that as a bad thing.
.
