The Fender Super Bassman I ordered back in March has finally landed! I took it to practice last night and...it was everything I thought it would be and more. A very cool amp! Each of the two channels are great. The ability to blend the vintage with the overdrive is an awesome feature. I have found I needed to push the preamp section a little bit to get the head to open up, but once I did, even at low volumes, you could feel the power! This amp is very present. All the tube goodness one would want. I have a job tonight and will use the SB300 with the Neo 610. I can hardly wait to put it to the test!
Hey Gouged-one. Welcome to the club! I've had a Bassman 100T/410 Neo for a couple of months now and in 45+ years of playing, this is the best rig I've ever had. One thing that you said that seems to be a common misconception; the "Blend" control does not blend between the vintage channel and overdrive channel - the two channels are completely discreet and have nothing to do with one another. The blend control blends between the clean, undistorted input of the overdrive channel with the output of the overdrive circuit, so you're blending clean bass with distorted bass. So if you set your blend control on the overdrive channel to 1, you do not have the sound of the vintage channel. It is a totally different, faster sound due to the active tone stack, and maybe more reasons that aren't shown by the block diagram. But just know that nothing you do with the vintage channel will have any effect on the overdrive channel, no matter where the blend control is set.
Also, someone made a comment about plugging I think it was a passive bass into input #2 so they could drive the channel harder? The drive of the channel isn't determined by the position of the channel volume knob, it's the strength of signal hitting the first stage after the volume control, and if you plug into #2 the signal from the bass is attenuated before it hits anything, so you are working against yourself, plus it will be noisier. If you want to drive the channel harder, you should be in #1, unless it's an active bass and in that case you need the attenuation of input #2, or otherwise it'll distort the initial preamp stage BEFORE the volume control. Of course you may want that if you have no need for a clean sound, but with a passive bass input #1 is where to go.
Looking at the comments above, people are WAY underestimating the available power of tube amps, and are also way underestimating the ability of these Neo cabs. The Super Bassman is too much head for club gigs in my estimation. I have now played 4 good sized gigs with the 100T/410 Neo with no mains help, the largest in a place about 5000 sq. ft. (around 65'x80'), and very importantly all the gigs had a lot of people at them, so I wasn't just playing to an empty room, which almost any 100 watt amp should do that. I play in a classic rock trio, and I am a very aggressive, upfront bass player, and this little 100 watt rig gave me more punch and balls than my previous rig of a GK 800RB with dual Hartke 410XL's. Of course you're not hurting with a Super Bassman, but what I'm saying is a lot of bassists who play the standard club/bar scene are stuck in relating 100 watts to solid state power, where a 100 watt tube amp is a different beast with a LOT more available punch and headroom, so they are going with the Super Bassman, which is much more suited for large, even stadium-sized gigs, ala the SVT. And by doing that they are missing some very cool features of the 100T that the Super Bassman does not have that are probably more useful to the average gigging and recording musician, plus spending more money and lugging around a heavier, bulkier head than necessary. Again, no one is hurting by owning a Super Bassman, I'm just saying anyone considering these new Bassman amps should take a serious look at the 100T unless you do play huge venues. And I feel like at any venues larger than what I've played so far with 100T I'll have mains help, and from what I can tell the 100T will have plenty of stage volume in that case.
If anyone is interested I did a detailed review after the first gig with the 100T/410 Neo rig on page 15 of
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/fender-bassman-100t-thread-871107/index15.html
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