Slappin' together da IB-5 mon!

[Simon Barden]

I'm going to Andertons on Tuesday (26th June) to help a friend test out some of the lower-priced small light bass amp heads for his 15" cab (he's just sold his old and heavy Fender Rumble 300 head), so I'll report back on our findings and collected thoughts.

But I did notice from some of the specs that most treble controls on the amps have a really high frequency setting, often around 10kHz, so are useless unless you've got a tweeter in the set-up. Eben the 3.1kHz treble control on my Mk 1 TC BH250 head made no difference to the tone through his 1x15" cab (though it did on a test run of my 1x10" cab). I note that TC have now lowered the treble control frequency on the Mk 2 head to 2.5kHz.

[wazkelly]

The Hartke HD75 combo I bought looks like it houses a 15" as the cabinet is that big, and also very heavy too. In hindsight the smaller 50w with 10" speaker model may have been good enough and not as heavy.
Some of those speaker cabs sound great value for the money, just a pain to lug around as you mentioned.

[michnet76]

I'm going to Andertons on Tuesday (26th June) to help a friend test out some of the lower-priced small light bass amp heads for his 15" cab (he's just sold his old and heavy Fender Rumble 300 head), so I'll report back on our findings and collected thoughts..

Andertons... nice! Been a long time viewer of their youtube stuff - if I ever made my way over to the UK it would be one of my stops to go check the place out.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the lower end amps that are on the market. I have to admit I haven't really spent much time delving into the technical aspect of speaker frequencies and EQ control when it comes to guitar - I have a basic understanding of it all but usually just tweak my way around amps/pedals till I get the sound I'm looking for without giving it much more thought. Since taking a bigger interest in bass recently it's been good to get a better understanding of it all.

The Hartke HD75 combo I bought looks like it houses a 15" as the cabinet is that big, and also very heavy too. In hindsight the smaller 50w with 10" speaker model may have been good enough and not as heavy.
Some of those speaker cabs sound great value for the money, just a pain to lug around as you mentioned.

Yeah I would be keen to have a play around with some of those Hartke HD combos if I get the chance, especially with the 5 string. In a band I was with 4 or 5 years ago the bass player had a Hartke 15" combo that tilted back - I don't recall the model as I didn't take much notice at the time, I do remember it sounded decent and was a heavy sucker!


Here's some pics from the other night with the IB-5 in action!

I momentarily forgot I was playing bass and got a little too excited:




That's better... I look like a real bass player now:






The photographer must think we were too ugly to have colour photos :/

[michnet76]

Woohoo! Look what just rocked up



I wasn't expecting it till later in the week!

Now just have to wait another 4 hours before I can take it home and unpack and see if it's any good.

When I picked it up I was expecting a little bit of heft to it but it's surprisingly light - in fact it's got me worried there isn't anything inside the boxes.

[Simon Barden]

Well, just come back from Andertons. Tried out the TC BH250 Mk2, Markbass Little Mark 250 Blackline and the Gallien Krueger MB 200 Bass Head, all on an Ashdown 1x15" cab (with tweeter turned off).

With no tweeter, the treble control in the TC had almost no effect (more use with 10"s and with the tweeter in), so you were reliant on just the bass and middle controls. However it was the lightest and most compact. 'Controls all flat' sound was fine.

The Gallien Krueger MB 200 head had a very similar 'all flat' sound, but benefited from hi-mid and lo-mid controls as again the treble control did almost nothing with just the 1x15" cab. A bit of hi-mid roll-off and it sounded just like the TC. The pre-set contour option wasn't anything special, but does add another option.

The Markbass Little Mark 250 Blackline stood out from the other two in sounding slightly less clinical and having a bit more character to the tone. It's probably all down to a bit of subtle distortion but it did make the bass used (a Mexican Fender Player Jazz Bass) sound a bit more interesting. And the treble control did have some affect on the sound through the 1x15" cab. It too had lo-and ho-mid controls, so gave you more useable tone shaping controls with that cab choice and a classic bass sound. Plus, in addition it has a 'vintage speaker' filter control, which seemed more of a treble and mid roll-off filter if you wanted it to sound thuddy with very little definition and a variable pre-shape filter, which seemed to boost the mids as it was turned up.

So the MarkBass won, and that's what my friend Jim bought.

Lee and Chappers and Rabea were in the shop doing some filming, so there's some chance that I may end up in the background of one of their videos, but they are normally pretty good at cropping the shoppers out now.

I avoided the temptation to actually play the 2018 LP Goldtop Classic with P90s, as I picked it up and it was pretty heavy, heaver than my LP, and the particles in the gold top were too fine grained compared to a nearby CS '56 Goldtop reissue, and I didn't like the kidney Grovers as much as the standard tulip tuners on the CS goldtop. If the CS goldtop cost the same as the Classic goldtop, then I'd have bought that; but it was double the price. So, temptation avoided and credit card saved.

[Andyxlh]

Great photos! it look amazing!

[Andyxlh]

BTW I do like my little Ampeg ultralight head:
https://ampeg.com/products/portaflex/pf-500/
I bought it on a trip to the USA and got it for a steal due to the exchange rate at the time. It fits in a soft laptop case with all the cables too.

[michnet76]

Well, just come back from Andertons...So the MarkBass won, and that's what my friend Jim bought.

Thanks for the write-up Simon... The MarkBass gear looks great and I've read good things about them.

Lee and Chappers and Rabea were in the shop doing some filming, so there's some chance that I may end up in the background of one of their videos, but they are normally pretty good at cropping the shoppers out now.

That would have been cool to see. Yes I've noticed there's usually not many customers in the background when they do their wandering around the shop. Figured they just did the filming out of hours or tell customers to clear out... Either that or they don't get much foot traffic in store!

I avoided the temptation to actually play the 2018 LP Goldtop Classic with P90s....credit card saved.

Haha... Well done fending off the GAS!! Makes me glad I don't live anywhere near a music shop, although online ordering can still be dangerous especially late at night when the senses are muted but atleast the temptation of seeing/playing something in person and taking it home straight away isn't as great.

Great photos! it look amazing!
BTW I do like my little Ampeg ultralight head...

Thanks Andryxlh. Looks like a nice little amp as well. What cab setup are you using with it?





Well I've had a decent play around with the new TE Elf set up over the past couple nights... To my noob, untrained ears I think it sounds pretty good. Punchy is the best word I could use to describe it. It is quite middy but I was expecting that, doesn't have a huge bottom end but that might be the limitation of a 1x10 cab.If I up the bass and drop the mids on the amp and back off the tone knob on the bass it gets pretty deep and dark still. It has plenty of volume to spare, gets uncomfortably loud in my smallish room taking it up to 3/4 on the master volume and doesn't seeem to break up or get farty when pushed hard. Aparently it can be heard quite clearly throughout our large double bricked house! I think with another 1x10 cab it would be quite giggable for smallish outings.

The 1x10 cab is quite deceiving - you think it's going to be heavy but pick it up and it's surprisingly light. The head is the other way around, you think it would be reasonably light given it's size but it has quite a heft to it.

The head construction looks and feels excellent, gives the impression it's built to last. The cab on the other hand feels a bit on the cheap side, maybe that opinion is influenced by how light it is though. I'm still trying to figure out what the cab is made out of - it feels like plastic, tap it and it sounds like plastic. All the sales blurb says is 'durable painted cabinet' so not sure if it's wood that's been painted but it just feels like a moulded plastic shell. The handle at the back is also plastic... I'm sure it's up to the task, just doesn't feel like quality plastic when comparing to some of the other plastic speakers I have such as the JBL I use as a monitor. The advertising pitch also claims it has a 'premium Eminence driver', not sure which model it is though. One day when I'm bored I'll pull it apart and suss it all out.

[Simon Barden]

Probably an Eminence Basslite or a TE requested variation of it http://www.eminence.com/speakers/spe...Basslite_S2010
It's the only neodymium 10" bass speaker Eminence make. It's a 150W 8-ohm speaker, which is fine for your Elf amp which puts out 130W into 8 ohms. Unless it's an uprated version for TE, then it won't be 300W RMS as TE quote on their web page for the cab, but 300W peak as Eminence clearly say, but which is more than adequate for the ELF head.

Though they may have swapped from an Eminence to a Celestion driver, the one I've got in my home-made 1x10" cab (which should get it's final assembly today apart from the fact that I glued the two bass ports in yesterday, then realised that I should have drilled the holes for the feet and bolted the feet on first). It's this one https://celestion.com/product/163/bn10300x4/ which is 300W RMS (and comes in 4 ohm and 8 ohm versions).

[michnet76]

Yeah I think you're right about it being a Basslite, or a TE variant of it perhaps.

The TE marketing hype advertise it as 300W but if experience has taught me anything always take whatever sales people say with a grain of salt, 150W RMS is more realistic. But yeah the Elf head only outputs 130W at 8ohm so shouldn't be any issues there... Just won't go plugging in a higher wattage head!

2 1x10" cabs would be nice - make use of the full 200W (@ 8ohms) and make a cute little micro full stack! Would an awesome little portable gigging rig if the situation dictates down the track but for now this setup is perfect for practicing at home and I think would be fine to use on stage as a personal monitor. I might try it next band practice and see how it goes... Even though it can get very loud in my room at home, the sounds waves bounce around in the smaller room and make it seem loud but on an open stage competing with the guitarist's amps and drums it won't be so focused. My original intention was just to take the Elf head with me and use the churches 1x15" cab anyway so doesn't really matter if the 1x10 isn't loud enough at band volumes.

I had another TE 1x10 cab sitting in my eBay watch list and got an email the other day saying it had been relisted - originally was $475 (inc. delivery), relisted for $399.95 (which is a bugger, only just paid $475 for this cab from a music shop in Victoria). The email also said if I use a code by midnight tonight I can get another 10% off - so that's $355.95. Tempting... But I really don't need it and seems pointless getting another cab for a 'one day it might come in handy' thing. I think if I'm going to spend any more money I'm better off putting it into some new pups and hardware for the IB-5.