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Newbie Amp Questions! Recommendations?

#21
I agree with your friend. Along with what others have said, I would add that, for beginners, playing on a bad amp can create some bad habits. You tend to pick harder when you are poorly amplified, and this can lead to some bad technique. A good amp let’s you play with a lighter touch. You will also feel better about your playing when it sounds better. You will enjoy playing more and will probably play more often.
 
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#22
scottfeldstein said:
A combo amp with an 8" speaker is a practice amp, and not a very good one IMO.
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Not strictly true. There are very good quality amps with 8, 6 or even 4 inch drivers. However these are high end and relatively expensive amps for what they are, and even secondhand they are going to be more money than a secondhand 1*10 or 1*12 fender or equivalent. In any case I wouldn't recommend them as a first amp.

When I play in equivalent sessions to the front room session the OP described I just bring a 1*10in cab, I don't bother to get the big one out of the cupboard. Its plenty.
 
#24
Hydro_Storm said:
Hey guys, I'm new to bass, just bought my first, and I'm looking for an Amp. I was planning on getting something small at first, like an 8" combo amp, but a guitarist friend of mine said I should get at least a 12" combo amp because the smaller ones aren't good enough to play any really low notes on a bass, so now I'm unsure of what to get exactly. The guy did used to play professionally so I'm sure he knows what he's talking about, but I'm also wondering if he's thinking from a live performance point of view and not from a "I'm just now learning the bass at home" one.

I'd like to get some opinions on the matter, and maybe some suggestions on what amp to get. My budget for an Amp is around $200 - $300. The most "action" this amp will see is a living room jazz session with 2 friends that have fairly low end equipment (Ibanez 10w guitar amp & a Yamaha keyboard circa 1999, courtesy of the local Goodwill), and just me practicing at home. 99% of the time I'll probably just use headphones to practice too, so there's also that.

I'd really appreciate the help, I'd like to start learning how to play this thing and I kinda need to hear it to do that lol
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I would opt for A 12” over an eight. Something else you should look for You choice should have a Jack for a 2nd cab. You may not need a 2nd cab now but some day, you are going to need to be louder and a second cab will be the least expensive way to create more more decibels. JMO, and welcome to the world under the G Clef!
 
#25
I’m gonna go against the grain and say you might not need a 12”.

I have a Fender Rumble 25 and it’s great for the house, and I use it for bluegrass and most every drummer-less jam situation. The Rumble 40 is the 10” version, squarely within budget and has a few more choice features (more tone control, line out.)

I have a Rumble 100 for blues band rehearsals, plenty for our moderate volume rehearsals (pa for vocals, drum kit; but low enough to not need ear plugs or piss off the family!)

12” or 15” would future proof yourself for drummer jams a little better. 15” or 2x10” for gigging. All depends on your goals and your tolerance for shopping again if needed.

* I use Fender Rumble for example, but Ampeg, Hartke or Peavey would all be good options too. Shop used and stretch your dollar!
 
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#28
I've only owned one combo and I won't do it again. That's just because I feel it's too restrictive. When you decide you want either a different amp or a different cab, you have a whole new combo or buy new separates. With separate amp and cab you can upgrade it bit by bit. Get a better cab and still use the same amp or get a better amp and still use the same cab.

And of course the problem with upgrades is that you don't know when you are going to need them. You might want this just for bedroom now but once you start playing with your buddies you will find you need (want) more. Or you may decide to gig with them and then you need to get something suitable to gig with. Probably be small venues first but small venues lead to medium venues and you have to have better gear for that. And it just spirals on and on.

If you're set on a combo, the Fender Rumbles are a pretty good choice as long as you like that Fender sound. Personally I like it and my first amp back in 1966 was a Fender bassman amp. But if you are going to go the way of the combo and don't want to have to buy a new combo every year for the next 3-years or so, go with the Rumble 500 to start with. That gives you an 8Ω 210 cab with built-in 500-watt into 4Ω amp. That amp will produce up to 350-watts rms into its internal speakers. That's good enough to gig small and medium venues.

When you need to play large or outdoor venues, then you can just get another 8Ω Rumble 210 cab and stack your combo on top of it. That will drop the ohms load on the amp to 4Ω and it will put out up to 500-watts rms splitting the power evenly between the two 8Ω cabs. So that would be 250-watts per cab. It also looks good stacked like that. You will in effect have a 500-watt 410 set-up and you should be able to play just about anywhere with that. If you need something more than that, it's not going to be a Rumble combo and you'll have to get into the separates game anyhow. It's a bit of a "pay me now or pay me later" sort of a game.

For small venues I use an Eden TN226 amp (225-watts rms) into an Eden EX-112 cab and it is very nice. I get a great sound out of it. If I had it to do over though, I would have looked for a used TN501 amp. It is the same as the TN226 but has 500-watts instead of 225-watts. 500-watts is far more versatile than 225-watts. but I bought this specifically for a small brew pub we used to play almost every Friday night and have bigger and more powerful gear for other venues. This set up as is was about twice your budget, but you may be able to find the components used inside your budget or barely outside of it.

I bought the amp used and, with the cab that I bought new, it cost me $544. Sound is clean, clear, articulate, and warm. Has a very versatile EQ and an excellent auto-compressor that still sounds musical while stopping my amp from clipping. It's a very compact and great sounding set-up. I'll put the amp in its shoulder bag, put my gig-bag over my other shoulder, grab my bass in one hand, and my 30-lb cab in the other and walk it all out or in at once. Here's picture of it at that small brew pub. notice how nicely it fits in a chari.

TN226PlusEX112_600x846.jpg
 
#29
Rip Van Dan said:
For small venues I use an Eden TN226 amp (225-watts rms) into an Eden EX-112 cab and it is very nice.

View attachment 4701475
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Nice. I owned that little Eden 12 for a while. It was really nice. Mine was 4 ohms for a small rig project. Ironically, I abandoned that project and got the Kartke KB112 combo :)
 
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#30
dbsfgyd1 said:
Something else you should look for You choice should have a Jack for a 2nd cab.
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This definitely. It is the reason I don’t own a Rumble 100, I can’t plug my Eden EX-112 into one when needed! I don’t understand why Fender stopped one small step short of producing a great little amp by omitting that feature.

One other thing to definitely watch for is an effects loop. This will allow you to spend tons of money on assorted pedals to try to make the amp produce sounds it was never intended to produce! But seriously, you won’t use it today, but chances are you will be within a few months.
 
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#31
YellowLabs said:
This definitely. It is the reason I don’t own a Rumble 100, I can’t plug my Eden EX-112 into one when needed! I don’t understand why Fender stopped one small step short of producing a great little amp by omitting that feature.

One other thing to definitely watch for is an effects loop. This will allow you to spend tons of money on assorted pedals to try to make the amp produce sounds it was never intended to produce! But seriously, you won’t use it today, but chances are you will be within a few months.
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You know, I never considered an effects loop and the financial risk factor of having one…LOL|!!!
 
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#33
What your friend is referring to is that a cheap 8" combo amp often will struggle to produce the lows a sufficiently driven bass amp does produce.

This creates two problems:

1. The luxury problem: You can't bask in the glory of your bedroom sound if your bedroom sound lacks all the grandeur.

2. The practical problem: When your amp struggles with lows and sounds thin 'down there', you most likely will compensate for that with your playing technique by either striking the low notes harder, the high notes softer or both. This will lead to problems down the line when you upgrade to a bigger amp that will show no such behavior.


Most choices that came up already are solid in that regard. There are great sounding units with less than 10" speaker diameter, but those usually are expensive.
 
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#36
dbsfgyd1 said:
The only thing I’ve used an effects send and return on is slaving my two Eden 320 watt combos.
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And that is definitely NOT the dark side. Back in about 2008 I used the effects loop on my Eden Nemesis RS400 to slave my GK Backline250. Actually, I ran that slave into the GK effects-in but ran it out of the headphone jack in my RS400. Like a lot of David's Eden WT amps (not the WTX), you could slave out of the headphones jack so that once you had the sound balanced between them, besides carrying across any EQ changes, the signal coming out of the headphone jack also raised or lowered the volume of the slave as you changed it on the master. That way you didn't have to futz with the master of the slave amp every time you changed it on your master amp.
 
#37
If it were me just starting out knowing what I know now with what's available on the market, I would do the following;

Step one - buy a Fender Rumble 40 - right price new, and has all the features necessary to produce a variety of sounds for different styles of music + has an XLR out (unique for this size and price range). It's super light as well, which will come in handy for moving it to where you want to jam with a friend or small group without drums. Also, even after acquiring larger rigs for what a loud band with drums requires, I still have a small portable combo for the convenience in the above mentioned situations.
I know from being on talkbass, that many experienced long time players still have and use the small combo they had before their chosen big rig, and some even have made a small combo their most recent purchase because of new offerings like the Rumble 40. So money well spent for short and long term use IMHO.

Step two - once getting more experienced playing, and having new opportunities requiring more than the 40 watts and the ten inch speaker of the Rumble, I would buy a powered speaker (most are around 200 watts RMS) with a 12" or 15" speaker. This way you can put the Rumble (like a head) on top of the powered speaker, getting it closer to your ears, hearing what is already familiar, amplified without color by the powered speaker, and giving the extra low end and necessary volume for a band with drums. This is where the XLR out feature comes in handy. Not only can it be sent to a PA system, it works with the powered speaker in the same way, which is much better than an extension speaker out on a small combo, where the low wattage is very limiting for use with an extension cabinet. Instead, you get a whole separate amplifier/larger speaker to give what's needed to supplement the Rumble. Also convenient to leave at a rehearsal space, just bring the Rumble.

Step three - finally, with the GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) and knowledge that will have developed during this time and use of the above mentioned equipment, and having saved up the necessary funds for whatever rig the built up GAS leads to, one would now have pretty versatile and affordable gear for most any situation.
(preamps/pedals and additional basses would fill in any gaps) ;):woot:

YMMV
 
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#38
Rip Van Dan said:
And that is definitely NOT the dark side. Back in about 2008 I used the effects loop on my Eden Nemesis RS400 to slave my GK Backline250. Actually, I ran that slave into the GK effects-in but ran it out of the headphone jack in my RS400. Like a lot of David's Eden WT amps (not the WTX), you could slave out of the headphones jack so that once you had the sound balanced between them, besides carrying across any EQ changes, the signal coming out of the headphone jack also raised or lowered the volume of the slave as you changed it on the master. That way you didn't have to futz with the master of the slave amp every time you changed it on your master amp.
Click to expand...

Great designs. My Navi rack pre-amp has so many features, most of which by today’s standards is total overkill, but you never know when you might need them. So is my WT-1250 stereo power amp. I can’t imagine if I ever would ever need the ability to power say, 4 D-410 XSTs.
image.jpg
 
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#39
Hey, sorry for not replying. I've been reading your responses and a week or so ago I found an Amp.

I found a used Ashdown RM-MAG-C115-420. It's overkill for what I want, but compared to the other options I've tried, for $230 I figured I couldn't go wrong with it.

Thanks for the help! Feel free to tell me i screwed up if so
 
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#40
Hydro_Storm said:
Hey guys, I'm new to bass, just bought my first, and I'm looking for an Amp. I was planning on getting something small at first, like an 8" combo amp, but a guitarist friend of mine said I should get at least a 12" combo amp because the smaller ones aren't good enough to play any really low notes on a bass, so now I'm unsure of what to get exactly. The guy did used to play professionally so I'm sure he knows what he's talking about, but I'm also wondering if he's thinking from a live performance point of view and not from a "I'm just now learning the bass at home" one.

I'd like to get some opinions on the matter, and maybe some suggestions on what amp to get. My budget for an Amp is around $200 - $300. The most "action" this amp will see is a living room jazz session with 2 friends that have fairly low end equipment (Ibanez 10w guitar amp & a Yamaha keyboard circa 1999, courtesy of the local Goodwill), and just me practicing at home. 99% of the time I'll probably just use headphones to practice too, so there's also that.

I'd really appreciate the help, I'd like to start learning how to play this thing and I kinda need to hear it to do that lol
Click to expand...
Here's how it plays... Your going to go thru some growing pains, 8", to 10" to 12" cabs then finally a 15", then maybe a 4x10, or 8x10.. so skip all the rest and just get an Ampeg 8x10 and call it a day. Just a little advice from your old uncle Dbase ;)
 

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