Tone Hammer issue

[nickwhittaker]

I recently bought an Aguilar Tone Hammer 500 and it was great when I bought it. Recently though it has started hissing through my bass cabinet. It also hisses through the direct out XLR output into a mixer. The Tone Hammer is 250watts at 8ohms and the speaker I use is a Hartke which is 200watts at 8ohms. Did the fact that the speaker is a lesser power than the amp blow the amp? I am going to send it to Aguilar to repair since they come with a 3 year warranty but I need to know if I should also get a cabinet that is a higher wattage.

Any help would be unbelievably appreciated!

 

[hdracer]

Before you send it back make sure it is the amp. Check your cables & your bass & try another cab.

The power rating of the cab has nothing to do with your problem

 

[Munjibunga]

Mine hisses too. Anybody else?

 

[Munjibunga]

Never mind. They all hiss - the TH500, Shuttle 9.0, GK MB800. This is into a Bergantino AE410. Theories?

 

[Jeff Scott]

Never mind. They all hiss - the TH500, Shuttle 9.0, GK MB800. This is into a Bergantino AE410. Theories?

Turn off the horn; does it still hiss?

 

[Munjibunga]

Turn off the horn; does it still hiss?

A little bit. Today at Bass San Diego I played a GK MB500 Fusion through a Berg HD212. It hissed. I think it's the nature of the beast.

 

[Pickebass]

I haven't had any hiss with mine. It's been running it flat at modest volume.

 

[Jeff Scott]

I do get some hiss, but I have to crank it to have any really appreciable level of it, by then I would be totally deaf so it wouldn't matter any more. This is pretty normal amount of noise, so pay it no mind.

 

[rummy]

Mine's very quiet.

 

[hover]

Tell it to hissy-quit.

Ooops, wrong thread, wrong forum.

 

[BassmanPaul]

Noise is a product of any high gain stage. Some topologies make more noise than others. Designers tend to try and limit this noise but to do so adds expense. Bean counters don't like extra expenses so often they overrule the engineers saying a little noise is good enough.

Edit: As Munji opined sometimes it IS the nature of the beast.

 

[OldogNewTrick]

The Glock Blue Soul has been criticised by a number of TB'ers as too expensive.
At least it is absolutely free of hiss and noise.....

 

[Jeff Scott]

The power amp section of the Tone Hammer 500 is very quiet, it is just the high gain nature of the preamp that produces hiss, and only at very high levels does it really intrude at all. None of my cabinets have tweeters/horns so those of you with such devices in your bass cabinets may hear more hiss than I do, which is basically, none, at any sane volume level.