The less well known/publicized art of Bass amps...

[wazkelly]

Massive cabinet for a tranny amp.

[Simon Barden]

It is, though 200W Class AB power amps aren't that small, with quite a large heatsink area required, and presumably the marketing guys at Ampeg wanted it to look like a valve model as well.

[fender3x]

Simon you are truly the encyclopedia of rock and roll gear. Much respect, dude!

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[Simon Barden]

TBH I often just search the web. I have a pretty good memory of things musical, so sometimes my memory gives me nudges as to what to look for. Though I have been reading guitar magazines ever since I was in my teens, which helps.

[Andyxlh]

TBH I often just search the web. I have a pretty good memory of things musical, so sometimes my memory gives me nudges as to what to look for. Though I have been reading guitar magazines ever since I was in my teens, which helps.

Hey I'm just impressed you know more about the amp I have had since about 1990 than I do 😂

[Andyxlh]

Well I have done some reading about this one now, it seems that it can't be a 79 model, although that's what the tech told me who did a repair on it years ago.
It does generally get excellent reviews for what it is, I liked it a lot.
I guess it makes sense as to why it did hundreds of gigs with no maintenance in the 1990s!
One site said they were made from 1987, I bought my first one used in about 1990, certainly no later than 1991, and I remember it being very old then... when u are in your early 20s that would still mean more than4 years or so, and it certainly looked it! That's the only mystery to me.
I'll get some pics as promised next time I'm over there.

[Marcel]

As I said, I had the bits, so I built a bass amp. Transformer, 200W amp module, tone board, pre-amp board.. tick... but just because I can put it together doesn't mean it will sound good, or even sound decent... More like it sounds crap really... too many highs that cant be tapered back, a lack lustre bottom end, and a way too transparent mid range... Yep, it's Hi-fi bass amp with all the clinical clarity an amp can muster.... Something Jim Rowe would be proud of, but every musician will walk away from.... At least I tried, and I think I'll stay with building tube guitar amps for now...

So that leaves me without a real bass amp. While using the AC18W build does work and can sound quite killer the fact it is designed for your regular six string guitar is blatantly obvious and soon manifests itself as a quite large limitation.

A short bout of time with the online retailers soon had a TC BH250 arriving on my door step.... Admittedly it was the cheapest new bass amp head of all the retailers I checked on the interwebs, and I am just a little partial to TC gear, But I just leave it at that the fundamental EQ in the bass amp is way important to the overall bass sound, and Ohhh... What a difference it is to play through a real amp designed for bass !!

And for those who may be interested, and food for the conversation...As a '80's minded sound guy I figure that 250W into a 4x10 can still pack quite a decent punch. Way more than I'll ever use to entertain the minuscule practice/rehearsal crowds I play too, but definitely plenty enough power to meet the needs of a real audience of a few hundred or so in a average school hall, or a hundred passionate patrons packed into a rocking-on small bar/party.
Your thoughts???

[Andyxlh]

In my humble opinion, absolutely! I have the 4x10 and the 1x15, and the 4 10 is plenty really. My amp was 200 watts and I played for years with one guitar player who kept graduating to larger amps, finishing with a 50w Marshall with 2 quad boxes, and I only needed the second cab, which takes the amp to 350w, for large rooms. Looked really cool on stage with full stack when you're 20, hurts your back to carry them both when you're fifty...
With small rooms, when I had the full rig, we would run almost all the bass straight offstage as the small PA back in the day worked better without having the bass through the front of house. One advantage of having a bigger rig, but now days decent PA systems would handle the bass easily I'd imagine.