School me on SWR

[wysiwyg248]

I don't suppose either of you have clips of your rigs in action?

Hello again, here are a couple of clips I found in YouTube. I recommend listening with headphones.
SM900 and SM400 direct, the player in the second video lists the amp setting and seems veruy meticulous about crafting his sound. Disclaimer: I am copying the videos just for demonstration purposes.

 

[Jonny Reese]

Hello again, here are a couple of clips I found in YouTube. I recommend listening with headphones.
SM900 and SM400 direct, the player in the second video lists the amp setting and seems veruy meticulous about crafting his sound. Disclaimer: I am copying the videos just for demonstration purposes.

This is really a textbook representation of the SWR sound. (The style of music fits too.) I've seen these videos before - fantastic playing!!!

 

[agedhorse]

So please tell which brand offers a current (or recent) bass amp with four brand paragraphic eq and otherwise pristine tone, preferrably with a tube input. And having sliders is the smart thing, for excellent visibility and ergonomics on dark and or crowded stages.

Orange 4 stroke (4 bands sweep)
Peavey Pro 500 (4 bands sweep)
Mesa M-Pulse 360 & 600 (5 bands sweep)
Mesa Walkabout & WD-800 (3 mid bands sweep)
Eden WT series (3 mid bands sweep)
Phil Jones M-500 (3 mid band sweep)
Wounded Paw 701 (4 mid band sweep)

Most manufacturers have shied away from sliders because or reliability issues, it's difficult to find high reliability shorter throw sliders as the component manufacturers consolidate their lines.

 

[ahc]

A couple questions for you @agedhorse : Was the Bass 750 with a defeatable fan (not the "750X" model) built under SWR or Fender ownership? That amp was rated for 850 watts @ 2.67 ohms. Was it 2 ohm stable? I have no intention of ever trying this but I'm curious. Thanks!

 

[agedhorse]

A couple questions for you @agedhorse : Was the Bass 750 with a defeatable fan (not the "750X" model) built under SWR or Fender ownership? That amp was rated for 850 watts @ 2.67 ohms. Was it 2 ohm stable? I have no intention of ever trying this but I'm curious. Thanks!

I don't know these details for sure, I believe it pre-existed Fender BUT Fender MAY have continued production with existing parts until the redesign was completed.

I do not believe the older amp was 2 ohm stable until Fender's redesign.

 

[DaveParker39]

Hello again, here are a couple of clips I found in YouTube. I recommend listening with headphones.
SM900 and SM400 direct, the player in the second video lists the amp setting and seems veruy meticulous about crafting his sound. Disclaimer: I am copying the videos just for demonstration purposes.

Thanks!

 

[LHbassist]

I owned quite a few pieces of SWR gear. I had a green face Grand Prix pre-amp- in my view, the best thing I had by them. Nice piece of gear. I owned a Triad cabinet. I dug it for my Western Swing upright bass gigs, and didn't dig it at all for my electric gigs, unless I had my home built 1-15 folded horn under it- then, it was great as the top cab. It literally began to unglue itself after a couple of years of regular use. When I sold it, it had more sheet rock screws holding it together, than a Manhattan studio apartment.
I bought a nearly new Workingman's 12 combo- and it was pretty expensive. It was O.K. for my upright jazz gigs, but, like the Triad, it was underbuilt, and I had to replace a pot... I couldn't believe how little there was to the chassis. Sold that to get an Acoustic Image. I bought a beautiful Bass 350 head. I could never get that head to work for me, regardless of the cab I used. It just didn't have the headroom I needed. Sold that, as well.
I've played a lot of SWR backline gear in the day- and the combinations of heads and cabs were widely variable. An SM900 head always sounded great.. used one in Atlantic City for a few months, I loved it. The SM400's are very good amps- but the 900 is a great amp. I preferred the original 4-10 Goliath rear ported cabs over the later front ported ones, strange because it's the opposite with almost every other maker's cabinets. I absolutely hate any, and all of the Goliath Jr. cabs I've used. They were all bass kazoos for me... turned me totally off to all 2-10 cabinets, until I heard my Carvin BRX 10.2's. your experience with those cabs may vary. There sure were a lot of them around. I used a Workingman's 15 with upright and liked it... decent for electric, too. I loved the sound of one of the original single 15 combos from the early 90's- I think it was a 'bassic black' or something like that. I wanted to buy it, but it literally broke while it was on the showroom of the music store I was working at. That was a big red flag. If I found an SM 900 for a good price, I would buy one. But now, my amp/speaker gigs are likely over.. so, it's just a 'what if.'

 

[AlexanderB]

Orange 4 stroke (4 bands sweep)
Peavey Pro 500 (4 bands sweep)
Mesa M-Pulse 360 & 600 (5 bands sweep)
Mesa Walkabout & WD-800 (3 mid bands sweep)
Eden WT series (3 mid bands sweep)
Phil Jones M-500 (3 mid band sweep)
Wounded Paw 701 (4 mid band sweep)

Most manufacturers have shied away from sliders because or reliability issues, it's difficult to find high reliability shorter throw sliders as the component manufacturers consolidate their lines.

So I checked them all...
Orange, current but not paragraphic.
Peavey, well over 10 years old (falling a bit out of attractiveness due to age), not paragraphic.
The Mesa M-Pulse are bordering vintage (around 20 years old), rotary with not even an arrow on the knobs.
Eden, about as old as many SWR amps, better visibility but still rotaries.
Phil Jones M500 will be far to complex. As many bassists have enough problem with managing a parametric EQ (which the paragraphic addresses to some extent), very few customers would go for a 12 band graphic PLUS a 3 band parametric on top of that. Proven by the fact that the M500 remains a niche product.
Wounded paw 701 has 4 fixed, tightly stacked filters in the low mids, 170 - 620 Hz, and rotary, so not similar at all.

As I said, I do not know any current or recent amp that offers the clean tone, flexibility and high visibility in the SWR Paragraphical models.

 

[Bard2dbone]

If you're so inclined, here is the schematic for most of the SWR amp preamps. There wasn't much difference between any of them...

Free download swr Bass 350 Preamp schematic


Also, you might find some info in here. It appears this question has come up here before...

A pedal for that big fat, glassy SWR sound?

It's in that first page of the schematic, lower left hand side under FX in/out jacks...very Fenderish.

I'm thrilled to get to exercise a hyperfocus. That circuit IS similar to how Fender did it. But it's actually more derivative of the Acoustic 360. And here's why:

The Acoustic 361 was mostly the brainchild of Russ Allee (Well, him and Harvey Gerst), who later left Acoustic to start his own company Amplified Musical Products. They made a fairly amazing amp called the AMP 420. I never did own one. But I got to play through a couple. They were excellent amps, but could double as a fairly efficient space heater.

Now here is why this is applicable. Allee had two engineers working for him who BOTH went off and started their own amp companies. And BOTH companies initial flagship models looked eerily similar in layout to Allee's AMP 420.

Those two engineers were David Nordchow (Eden Amplification) and Steven Rabe (SWR)

That 'Fender-ish' EQ was straight out of AMP, strongly flavored by Acoustic, and probably kind of inspired by Fender along the way.

 

[agedhorse]

There are also Thunderfunk and AMP models, sharing some common design personnel.

The difference between sliders and rotary controls are aesthetic, electrically they are identical.

If none of the options I provided are acceptable, than you are stuck as a player without a solution. It reflects where the market has evolved to.

 

[Bob_Ross]

Then you realise that you just dont need that much tone shaping and just need a good sounding amp.

+1
I used to spend...well, several minutes, depending on the venue...dialing in my sound with my SWR SM-400. Not extensive tweaking, just trying to finesse the balance between Too Much Sub-Bass and Not Enough Chest Thump, or between not-too-scooped but not-too-nasal in the midrange. There was rarely any set&forget with the SWR.

When I changed to the Acoustic Image head, I plugged it in with all the tone pots at noon, played a few notes on my bass, tried a different bass just to make sure I wasn't deceiving myself, shrugged, and said "there's my sound"
And in the ~15-20 years since I have almost never had to move the tone controls from that default position.

 

[wysiwyg248]

Thanks!

I posted those because they are very accurate sound wise, I checked the videos my friends recorded and have a lot of reverb, outside noise, etc. Not good if you are looking for the amp specifics.

 

[Bassist30]

Fender acquired SWR in 2003 and ended production in 2013.

Shame , they had a good product.

 

[timmus]

Shame , they had a good product.

Fender probably didn't like the competition from within their company...There was some suspicion that Fender bought them to close them down after SWR's inventory petered out. They made a great product. Too bad they're gone.

 

[Robal]

FWIW, I do not believe Nordschow worked for Allee at AMP. In the early 1980s, Allee's company AMP was making amps in Chatsworth, California. Nordschow was making PA cabinets in Iowa in the 1980s when he was introduced to Steve Rabe at a Chicago NAMM show, as a guy who could potentially build bass cabinets for SWR. For a few years, SWR had Nordschow make Goliath bass cabinets for SWR. After that relationship ended, Nordschow decided to put out his own bass amps to go with his cabinets under the Eden brand. Nordschow had Allee do the amp designs for Eden, which is probably why the early Eden amps have similarity to Allee's earlier AMP model.

 

[ihixulu]

Fender probably didn't like the competition from within their company...There was some suspicion that Fender bought them to close them down after SWR's inventory petered out. They made a great product. Too bad they're gone.

By the time Fender bought SWR the brand was in trouble due to a few factors. Its signature tone was falling out of favor; the resurgence of the 'vintage' tone in popular music, coupled with the trend away from complicated heads and the generally higher prices of SWR gear helped drive it into a precarious position. Fender, as far as I can tell, made efforts to update existing designs to meet contemporary safety and reliability expectations and even introduced the Neo loaded cabs and light weight heads. Alas, too little too late. Just go back and take a look at how bad a rep SWR had on TB to see, anecdotally, how SWR was eclipsed by other brands.

 

[agedhorse]

Fender probably didn't like the competition from within their company...There was some suspicion that Fender bought them to close them down after SWR's inventory petered out. They made a great product. Too bad they're gone.

This is absolutely untrue. Fender invested significant money and resources updating the product line (specifically to meet current at the time safety standards).

The "SWR sound" was very recognizable, and because of this, became a liability to their own legacy.

 

[agedhorse]

By the time Fender bought SWR the brand was in trouble due to a few factors. Its signature tone was falling out of favor; the resurgence of the 'vintage' tone in popular music, coupled with the trend away from complicated heads and the generally higher prices of SWR gear helped drive it into a precarious position. Fender, as far as I can tell, made efforts to update existing designs to meet contemporary safety and reliability expectations and even introduced the Neo loaded cabs and light weight heads. Alas, too little too late. Just go back and take a look at how bad a rep SWR had on TB to see, anecdotally, how SWR was eclipsed by other brands.

Yes, this is accurate.

 

[timmus]

This is absolutely untrue. Fender invested significant money and resources updating the product line (specifically to meet current at the time safety standards).

The "SWR sound" was very recognizable, and because of this, became a liability to their own legacy.

What I stated (and I guess not very well) was what I was hearing when I was in the industry...I know that there was a lot of effort to bring the SWR line up to current standards (UL/CE, etc ratings). I didn't personally hold to this reasoning that I was hearing...I worked on a lot of the SWR stuff and even owned a few of their amps. The only one I have now is one of their earliest Basic 350s (Maroon face) and love it. I liked the sound so much that when I was in a pretty loud R&R band and the 350 couldn't keep up, I ran the Pre send to a PA amp and was still able have the sound I so liked.

I spent a fair amount of time on the phone over the years I worked in full time repair with Don Wiggins at Fender (not sure if he's still there). He used to OK (or not) a lot of my warranty repairs. I still carry my Gold Level cert from FMIC. I met him once when he was travelling around visiting FMIC warranty centers. He seemed like a very nice guy from my short visit with him.

 

[agedhorse]

What I stated (and I guess not very well) was what I was hearing when I was in the industry...I know that there was a lot of effort to bring the SWR line up to current standards (UL/CE, etc ratings). I didn't personally hold to this reasoning that I was hearing...I worked on a lot of the SWR stuff and even owned a few of their amps. The only one I have now is one of their earliest Basic 350s (Maroon face) and love it. I liked the sound so much that when I was in a pretty loud R&R band and the 350 couldn't keep up, I ran the Pre send to a PA amp and was still able have the sound I so liked.

I spent a fair amount of time on the phone over the years I worked in full time repair with Don Wiggins at Fender (not sure if he's still there). He used to OK (or not) a lot of my warranty repairs. I still carry my Gold Level cert from FMIC. I met him once when he was travelling around visiting FMIC warranty centers. He seemed like a very nice guy from my short visit with him.

There were a lot of rumors spread (some by competitors and Fender haters) about SWR and even about Genz Benz and other companies ultimately shut down by Fender. Most of these rumors were untrue, of based in an inaccurate perception of the actual facts.

I was pretty deep in it at the time, along with my GB counterparts, and while it was not a pleasant experience, I will say that there was nothing evil nor planned about the outcome. It was entirely based on bigger picture business decisions, nothing personal or nefarious.

Don was still there a couple of years ago, I believe his title is now Technical Services Manager. I always had good experiences with him, and he was one of the factors in me setting up the extended factory service program for Genz Benz (to support their dealers, service centers and end users after the shut-down).