$125 is reasonable if it's in very good condition but for $300, HECK NO. There are too many good newer used combo amps in that price range that you can still get repaired. I had two of the original WM12s at different times and spent $100 each. They were in excellent condition and I sold them in the same condition for what I paid. That was several years ago and everything costs more now, but still, $300 is way too much money for one of these, IMO.
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SWR Workingmans Twelve ?
- Thread starter Tom Henrich
- Start date
I must have done a couple of hundred gigs in the 1990’s with a SWR Workingman 15 combo
Used an 8 ohm Peavey 1x15 cab with it (Black Widow??)
Traded it in on an Ashdown Klystrom in 1998
Having the Horn off switch was normally an excellent idea
I sort of agree with @mmbongo that there must be a multitude of more sensible options available now...but I’m susceptible to nostalgia as well.
Enjoy it if you get it!
Used an 8 ohm Peavey 1x15 cab with it (Black Widow??)
Traded it in on an Ashdown Klystrom in 1998
Having the Horn off switch was normally an excellent idea
I sort of agree with @mmbongo that there must be a multitude of more sensible options available now...but I’m susceptible to nostalgia as well.
Enjoy it if you get it!
Yeah, depending on when it was manufactured, it could weigh 50 lbs.
http://support.swramps.com/manuals/pdfs/wm10_12_15_om.PDF
http://support.swramps.com/manuals/pdfs/wm10_12_15_om.PDF
Thanks. I keep looking around at amps and still keep coming back to the SWR. There is just something about it. My thing is that I don't want to buy another amp after I pull the trigger on getting one now. This one has to be able to be heard in rehearsal or gigs that don't have the option of going into the board.
I have a good friend who recently picked up a WM12 and he’s absolutely over the moon with it. He gigs it, but his band is exceptionally quiet, and I say this as someone who plays in a band that I think is exceptionally quiet: his band is like mouse fart quiet. So while it is a great and great sounding amp, I have no idea how well it would hold up in a louder band environment.
The fact that you can add an external cabinet makes me think that you can probably overcome whatever life throws at you with enough extra speakers.
I had a first generation WM12 that I got used in the 90s. I liked it as it was much smaller than my much bigger main amps, and it DI'ed nicely.
Pros:
It sounds great, it's that classic SWR clean.
It's built well.
Doubles as a great sounding acoustic amp. I also used it this way, the California Blonde came out later and adopted the WM12 as it's base.
Cons:
It has that signature SWR baked-in, fairly deep scoop around 250hz. This works well with this particular amp and cab, though.
Compared to what's out there today, it's rather heavy and underpowered for the size. At home or quiet practice, it stood on it's own. Anything live, I had to use my Bass Monitor 12 with it to get more cone area, projection and squeeze every watt out of it.
However, as the 21st Century rolled on, I replaced it with a MarkBass CMD121P. It's also a 12"/Tweeter, but half the size, half the weight and 3 times the power. It does everything the WM12 did and then some. I don't regret the decision.
Pros:
It sounds great, it's that classic SWR clean.
It's built well.
Doubles as a great sounding acoustic amp. I also used it this way, the California Blonde came out later and adopted the WM12 as it's base.
Cons:
It has that signature SWR baked-in, fairly deep scoop around 250hz. This works well with this particular amp and cab, though.
Compared to what's out there today, it's rather heavy and underpowered for the size. At home or quiet practice, it stood on it's own. Anything live, I had to use my Bass Monitor 12 with it to get more cone area, projection and squeeze every watt out of it.
However, as the 21st Century rolled on, I replaced it with a MarkBass CMD121P. It's also a 12"/Tweeter, but half the size, half the weight and 3 times the power. It does everything the WM12 did and then some. I don't regret the decision.
This feels 100% like the right answer to me.
Thanks !! In a band setting I don't think that I'd be playing anything but classic rock, hard rock and metal. The XLR output should be very helpful for gigs. The last time I played live was in the early 90s. My amp was mic-ed into the board. I'm too old for volume wars in a band practice. LOL.
Do you know or can ask your friend if the speaker in the amp is disabled when an external cab is added ? I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that it is.
It doesn’t. The internal speaker is 8 ohms and you can only connect a minimum 8 ohm load indicating that the internal speaker is not disabled.
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
No - the speaker in the combo itself is not disabled. When you add an 8 ohm extension cab, it also functions. I used either a 1x10 or 2x10 Workingman's extension cab with my WM12 for years.
Pro tip - you can eek a little more volume out of the amp before the limiter starts to kick in if you use a compressor right before you hit the amp itself. Doesn't need to be much, just a little bit to rein things in before the amp hard limits. I did that for years with my WM 12 setup. It's only 100-120 watts total with an extension cab, so it's not going to ever get super loud, but it'll keep up with a tasteful drummer who understands dynamics. I used mine on outdoor jazz gigs a bunch and it always did very well.
Another question...
Does anyone know if the DI on the amp is pre or post ? I read that some amps have a switch where you can choose. This one doesn't. I'm a bit confused with the whole DI thing. How does the effects loop work if you are going from your pedalboard into a DI box ? Or if the DI on the amp is preamp ?
Does anyone know if the DI on the amp is pre or post ? I read that some amps have a switch where you can choose. This one doesn't. I'm a bit confused with the whole DI thing. How does the effects loop work if you are going from your pedalboard into a DI box ? Or if the DI on the amp is preamp ?
It's true that they run hot when pushed and fall short with a loud drummer if you intend to hear any dynamics beyond the crack of the tweeter.
Played mine at church and practices to good effect for a decade.
So many more solid choices have appeared in the 30 or so years since its release.
I bought mine new back when they came out, and played hundreds of gigs with it... maybe even thousands. Although I usually used it as the bottom end of my keyboard rig, especially when playing LH bass, I also used it with an Alembic 5 string fretless in small group and big band settings. It never hiccuped... Not once. Always sounded great and punchy, always more than strong enough, and never let me down. I finally retired it a few months ago, replacing it with a Genzler Bass Acoustic Array, and/or an early Acoustic Image Coda I picked up from a very kind fellow forum member months ago. I love the absolute physical weightlessness of the Genzler and it's incredible flexibility, and the visceral "real" feel of the AI Coda, but there's some qualities of the SWR I admit I kind of miss, primarily the immediacy of impact/punch. I do NOT miss carrying it. Now, it currently resides in my father's studio for his bassist to use in his rehearsal big band near NYC, still going strong (the amp, AND my Dad!).
The one design fault in the amp that drove me nuts are the stupid plastic/nylon threaded input jacks... They strip out if you try to tighten them down to keep them from rotating, and they HAVE to be kept from rotating because there's a cap soldered to one lug internally and that joint gets stressed.
The one design fault in the amp that drove me nuts are the stupid plastic/nylon threaded input jacks... They strip out if you try to tighten them down to keep them from rotating, and they HAVE to be kept from rotating because there's a cap soldered to one lug internally and that joint gets stressed.
one other thing that really helps a small combo like this is a high pass filter. depending on which pedalboard i am using mine is either 28 or 30-32 hz and it really makes a difference in volume if you are playing in a higher volume setting. mine will absolutely keep up with a drummer in a small club in a 6 piece band playing 70’s 80’s 90’s rock and pop. the compressor and HPF really help in all settings i think, but esp with a smaller amp setup. i usually use a GK MB500 and a 1x15 neo cab in those settings but have occasionally grabbed the workingman 12 combo if space is even tighter since my WorkingPro series has a tilt back and that sometimes is really helpful if i’m not using IEM’s.
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Not sure on the twelve but on the fifteen you can plug a patch cable into the effects send and return. Then you can simply adjust the effects blend to get more volume.
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