Out of all the new bass amps I've heard about over the last 30 years, nothing but Markbass and this Warwick Hellborg have got me excited. In the new issue of BP, they reviewed it. And it sounds like it may possibly be the best bass amp I'll never buy.
From the sound of the review, it's like Hellborg took the preamp out of a Neve console and optimized it into a bass preamp, then paired it up with an 80's era Crown stereo power amp with an output transformer to give it a more tubey sound. Which is fine by me. You get a truly ungodly bass sound with a Neve board and Crown power amps feeding a huge tri-amped studio monitor system in a control room. Then throw in a $2000 tube compressor, and what more could you ever possibly want in a bass sound? And not that I know about such things, but apparently this output transformer thing has as much to do with making it sound like tubes breaking up at higher gain as the tubes.
I wish they had tested the big 12" cab, though. They tested single 15"s, with and without a tweeter. That kind of sucked. I'm sure Jonas designed those big cabs to sound like a control room ported over to an arena, and the small ones probably don't do it justice.
So my thoughts about the amp and preamp without having had the benefit of playing through one is that it will be the greatest bass amp system I have ever heard that I'll never ever think about owning. Now I could really get behind the preamp because Neve has awesome preamps in their consoles for bass. But $3000? To go do an arena show where my sound's going to get processed through a slew of boards ranging from Meyer to Mackie for the stage? What's the point? And really, I think my Markbass amp does every bit as good a job at reproducing that audiophile quality of a Neve preamp at a much lower weight and price. The one thing it won't do is break up like a tube amp, and apparently the Warwick does. But I've got plenty of other stuff that does, and it does it as well and cheaper than a Neve console, and most of the stuff I do is clean tones anyway. And if it's that important to you, buy a solid state Markbass with a tube preamp.
However, just once, I would like to take this entire Warwick rig just as Hellborg sets it up into a big rehearsal studio with a band and wind it out for a few hours. There's no doubt in my mind that it will be awesome. I totally agree with a lot of concepts he has about bass amplification, especially the use of 12"s instead of 10"s. I'm not as big into the 15"s for live stuff as he is, but I'm now convinced about 12"s being better than 10"s as an all-around bass speaker. But I think there are more cost-effective and easier ways to do it than the Warwick rig. For the vast majority of us, this system would be wasted. Why bring a studio to a gig when so many other factors like room acoustics and non-studio PA will reduce your sound down to a lowest common denominator? And look, 90% of good tone is playing well. The gear you use means nothing, ultimately. Look how many truly great tones on recordings have come out of some very inexpensive amps. Fender Bassmans, B-15's, Sunns, Marshalls, Laneys, Crates, whatever. Why were those tones great? Because the player did an outstanding job of playing.
So while it must be nice to commandeer a manufacturer and make totally uncompromised amps for yourself and get paid for it, I think it's going to go completely over everyone's heads. Having said that, I think a lot of rich bass players will be lining up to buy it, and we all know that catering to rich people equals getting them to part with the big bucks for their toys. Me, I'm sticking with Markbass and Ampeg. Between the two there's no sound I can't get.
From the sound of the review, it's like Hellborg took the preamp out of a Neve console and optimized it into a bass preamp, then paired it up with an 80's era Crown stereo power amp with an output transformer to give it a more tubey sound. Which is fine by me. You get a truly ungodly bass sound with a Neve board and Crown power amps feeding a huge tri-amped studio monitor system in a control room. Then throw in a $2000 tube compressor, and what more could you ever possibly want in a bass sound? And not that I know about such things, but apparently this output transformer thing has as much to do with making it sound like tubes breaking up at higher gain as the tubes.
I wish they had tested the big 12" cab, though. They tested single 15"s, with and without a tweeter. That kind of sucked. I'm sure Jonas designed those big cabs to sound like a control room ported over to an arena, and the small ones probably don't do it justice.
So my thoughts about the amp and preamp without having had the benefit of playing through one is that it will be the greatest bass amp system I have ever heard that I'll never ever think about owning. Now I could really get behind the preamp because Neve has awesome preamps in their consoles for bass. But $3000? To go do an arena show where my sound's going to get processed through a slew of boards ranging from Meyer to Mackie for the stage? What's the point? And really, I think my Markbass amp does every bit as good a job at reproducing that audiophile quality of a Neve preamp at a much lower weight and price. The one thing it won't do is break up like a tube amp, and apparently the Warwick does. But I've got plenty of other stuff that does, and it does it as well and cheaper than a Neve console, and most of the stuff I do is clean tones anyway. And if it's that important to you, buy a solid state Markbass with a tube preamp.
However, just once, I would like to take this entire Warwick rig just as Hellborg sets it up into a big rehearsal studio with a band and wind it out for a few hours. There's no doubt in my mind that it will be awesome. I totally agree with a lot of concepts he has about bass amplification, especially the use of 12"s instead of 10"s. I'm not as big into the 15"s for live stuff as he is, but I'm now convinced about 12"s being better than 10"s as an all-around bass speaker. But I think there are more cost-effective and easier ways to do it than the Warwick rig. For the vast majority of us, this system would be wasted. Why bring a studio to a gig when so many other factors like room acoustics and non-studio PA will reduce your sound down to a lowest common denominator? And look, 90% of good tone is playing well. The gear you use means nothing, ultimately. Look how many truly great tones on recordings have come out of some very inexpensive amps. Fender Bassmans, B-15's, Sunns, Marshalls, Laneys, Crates, whatever. Why were those tones great? Because the player did an outstanding job of playing.
So while it must be nice to commandeer a manufacturer and make totally uncompromised amps for yourself and get paid for it, I think it's going to go completely over everyone's heads. Having said that, I think a lot of rich bass players will be lining up to buy it, and we all know that catering to rich people equals getting them to part with the big bucks for their toys. Me, I'm sticking with Markbass and Ampeg. Between the two there's no sound I can't get.
