My Uber rare Fender Custom Shop Rumble Bass 300 amp (only 60 of these were produced) and matching Custom Shop Rumble 410 full range cab on the left and the right one is a Rumble 410 Sub.
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Non-Ampeg Tube Amps
- Thread starter primusfan1989
- Start date
My Uber rare Fender Custom Shop Rumble Bass 300 amp (only 60 of these were produced) and matching Custom Shop Rumble 410 full range cab on the left and the right one is a Rumble 410 Sub.
This thread has been informative. After going back and forth, I finally pulled the trigger on an Ashdown CTM 300. The Orange AD200 was a close second, but I was able to get the 300 used for the same cost as a used Orange.
I traded for a Traynor YBA 200-2 last winter. Prefer a cleaner tone, so I swapped the AX's for AT's. Been loving it! Was letting my dad use it for guitar while I used my rack with GK 1001 RB-II. I sold an SVT II Pro to buy the GK, which has since taken a back seat for the Traynor. I love my GK, but bought a guitar head for Pops to use so I could play through my Traynor.
What a steal!
Ignore the naysayers. You scored a super deal on one of the best all tube amps ever made!
Yeah, Foxen always jumps in to try to make some dogmatic point that any tube amp that has ANYTHING in the signal path that isnt tube driven somehow negates the sacred "tube amp" doctrine. So most tube amps arent tube amps then.
My Ashdown bta 400 is actually a hybrid with a solid state preamp with a tube power section. The fender 300 pro is full on tube amp glory with a tube preamp mated to a tube power section. Oh yeah...it has modern features. Welcome to the Reformation! You dont have to worship in latin anymore!
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Dunwich and Verellen have both made bass amps. Dunwich's are mainly custom builds, while Verellen has the Meat Smoke which is a regular model of theirs. Orange, of course, has the AD200B.
The new Mesa heads are fairly "modern" looking, since I know you don't dig the vintage aesthetic. Same with Laney's Nexus Tube and Peavey's VB-3.
How is that not knocking tube amps?
As for midrangey tone, that often works really well in the mix.
When it comes to fidelity, the cabs that tube amps are often paired with might be affecting your perception. Old cabs were extremely attenuated on both the low end and high end. Play a Reeves 225, or even a Mesa 400, through a hi-fi cab and the sound will probably be hi-fi.
That said, those of us who like overdrive usually don't want hi-fi sound. In my experience, using overdrive, I prefer that the cab not go much above 5khz, because anything above that will just sound like a tin can full of bees with overdrive. Also, down in the extremely low range, even though I tune down to BEAD in some bands I'm in, I don't find 20hz to be a useful frequency. Speakers can't generally produce it very well, and that whole sub low range is really stepping all over the kick drum's sonic turf. Most of the time the sound engineer is going to high-pass at no lower than 40-50hz. Usually higher.
With slap, I actually prefer less sizzle. I like the old school slap sounds, not the modern super-crisp ones.
Additionally, while I like preamp drive, it sounds different from power amp distortion. Most solid state amps I've tried do not sound good with their power amps distorting, whereas every tube amp I've tried does.
A bass guitar has very little actual fundamental frequency on the low notes. Most of what you're hearing is actually overtones.If I am playing an open E string or the challenging open B on a 5er and my amp's fidelity on the low end is like 50 hz -6 db.....................well yeah, fidelity matters 'cause my open strings are being eq-ed out by my amp's lousy low end freq range!
If I'm a "slapping sizzle freak" and my amps top end is 10,000 hz................that's not 20,000 hz!
I respectfully disagree with your remark about fidelity not being important for a bass amp. But I do agree with you that the knobs and tolex make no difference in the sound.
Beyond which, speakers generally aren't very good at producing those frequencies. And the human ear doesn't hear them particularly well.
If you are going through the PA at all, or being recorded, the person doing mixing will likely be cutting those frequencies out as well, partly to prevent masking the kick drum, as mentioned previously.
I have a couple of Telecaster Basses with the humbucker close to the neck. They produce the fundamental, in abundance. That sound is useful for some genres (reggae, dub...) but at the moment I prefer an up-front Precision tone.
The Dynacord G-2000 I posted earlier is also hybrid, with a transistor front end but I don't overdrive it appreciably so the effect of the preamp on overdrive and compression is negligible. At the volumes we play, the tubes start to saturate nicely, so I get the tone I have been looking for. The Peavey 18" is surprisingly articulate even at higher frequencies (not hi-fi of course).
I've been gigging with SS Trace Amps for years. Before that I used a '64 Bassman 6G6-B head I bought in 1982, that traded hands among band members. I have it back in the stable, but I don't use it anymore. I did play through a '68 Marshall Major for a while.. what a monster tone! That whetted my appetite for KT88's, and now I'm happy to be getting down with a Trace Elliot V6I don't bring it for quick on, quick off festival gigs, but if we're playing a few sets, I bask in the KT88 glow.
I sold a Marshall Major head for 150.00 in 1976, every time I look at them in ebay I cry. It's not the money I lost it's just that I really wish I still had one but there is no way I'm going to pay what they go for nowadays.
Regarding the Basset Hound my version of perfect would be never having to play louder than that amp could comfortably handle. Never having to run straight from a day job to an evening gig using gear I don't highly prize that had to be left in a parked car all day. Never EVER saying yes to a gig that I don't care enough about to make the effort to bring my very best sounding equipment to.
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Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
Its just knowing the difference between using the word 'all' or not.
hmm .. your definition would seemingly disqualify a huge percentage of the tube amps that have been mentioned, and which are considered by most/nearly all players as "tube amps"
how is having a tube pre-amp and a tube power section considered not a tube amp - just because it uses a SS rectifier in the circuit ?
seems like a fairly meaninglessly narrow definition
Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
I don't count passive power supply components such as the rectifier as a gain stage, so it doesn't figure. That's someone else's definition, and yes it makes no sense. Its having solid state transistor gain stages that makes stuff partly transistor.
That is what I believe the context of this topic is based upon.
Look at your typical Marshall JCM900 guitar amp (just an example), it has a tube preamp, a tube power amp, but has SS opamp EQ stages, but is still considered a 'tube amp'.
Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
As opposed to 'all tube', where it would need to be all tubes, rather than tube and SS. Its why the term 'all tube' exists in addition to 'tube', which generally refers to power stage only.
Dont encourage him.
Basically any improvement on the wheel since PTP Matamps is a heresy and you are denied communion in the Church of Iron and Glass if Foxen were Pope. He loves to slag any amp except for his Chosen Few as unworthy. It gets old.
Basically any improvement on the wheel since PTP Matamps is a heresy and you are denied communion in the Church of Iron and Glass if Foxen were Pope. He loves to slag any amp except for his Chosen Few as unworthy. It gets old.
Mr. Foxen
Commercial User
None of the amps I use are PTP, it isn't a very good way to make amps. Matamp were early adopters of PCB.
