Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2017 16:05:22 GMT -5
During the last set at my band gig last Friday (where I play bass), I was getting some distortion and crackling from my rig (I have an Ampeg Portflex 2x10 cabinet with the Portflex PF500 head). Since I’d just had the bass worked on, I was worried that maybe something had gone wrong with the repair. So the next day, I did a lot of experimentation down in the basement music room to try to isolate the problem. I first plugged my bass into the Ampeg rig, and yep, the low notes were distorting whenever I hit them hard, and I could hear some snapping and popping in the background with the amp just sitting there. So I started trying to isolate the problem.
I have an active bass and I’d had distortion problems in the past when the batteries were dying, so I swapped out the old 9-volt batteries for new ones: no change. I tried a different instrument cable. No change. I plugged the bass into an (extremely old) Acoustic amp and Sunn 2x15 bass cabinet that I have down there. Ah! No distortion. So it wasn’t the bass itself (whew!).
So the question now was: is it the amp head, or had I blown one or both of the speakers? I’d had an issue with the head a few years before (one night as I was setting up for a gig, the head totally crapped out: no power, nothing coming through the speakers, necessitating a repair… out of warranty, of course). My bet was now on the head, but I thought I’d better check out the speakers as well. So…
I hooked up the Ampeg head to the Sunn cabinet. Played a bit. Distortion. Just to be absolutely certain, I then hooked up the Acoustic head to the Ampeg speaker cabinet. Played. No distortion.
The verdict was obvious: the head was starting to act up again. I wasn’t going to repair it a second time (especially since the Ampeg-authorized person who did the repair said that he’d seen more than one of the PF500s blow its power supply). So I asked some of the bass players I knew locally for recommendations, and I also sent an email to my Sweetwater sales rep asking for his input on good, reliable bass heads that weren’t horribly expensive.
To make an already long story short: I now have an Aguilar Tone Hammer 500 (bought from Sweetwater of course, which I think is by far the best online music store). Extremely lightweight (4 lbs, or 1.8 kg for you metric folk), very small (10.75” width x 8.5” depth x 2.75” height, or 273 mm x 216 mm x 70 mm), and puts out 500 watts into 4 ohms.
How’s it sound? Fantastic, at least down in the basement. Great punchy tone—better sound than the old Ampeg head even when it was working well. Nice tight bass on the low notes. The next band gig is in two weeks; I can’t wait to play it out in that setting.
And yes, here’s a pic (or it didn’t happen). That’s the Aguilar sitting on the Ampeg cabinet. In the meantime, the old Ampeg head is sitting on a 1x15 cabinet that I’ve used sometimes as an additional cabinet for larger-venue gigs. As long as the amp is still sorta-kinda working, I thought I’d press it into service as a practice amp and back-up until it actually dies.
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I have an active bass and I’d had distortion problems in the past when the batteries were dying, so I swapped out the old 9-volt batteries for new ones: no change. I tried a different instrument cable. No change. I plugged the bass into an (extremely old) Acoustic amp and Sunn 2x15 bass cabinet that I have down there. Ah! No distortion. So it wasn’t the bass itself (whew!).
So the question now was: is it the amp head, or had I blown one or both of the speakers? I’d had an issue with the head a few years before (one night as I was setting up for a gig, the head totally crapped out: no power, nothing coming through the speakers, necessitating a repair… out of warranty, of course). My bet was now on the head, but I thought I’d better check out the speakers as well. So…
I hooked up the Ampeg head to the Sunn cabinet. Played a bit. Distortion. Just to be absolutely certain, I then hooked up the Acoustic head to the Ampeg speaker cabinet. Played. No distortion.
The verdict was obvious: the head was starting to act up again. I wasn’t going to repair it a second time (especially since the Ampeg-authorized person who did the repair said that he’d seen more than one of the PF500s blow its power supply). So I asked some of the bass players I knew locally for recommendations, and I also sent an email to my Sweetwater sales rep asking for his input on good, reliable bass heads that weren’t horribly expensive.
To make an already long story short: I now have an Aguilar Tone Hammer 500 (bought from Sweetwater of course, which I think is by far the best online music store). Extremely lightweight (4 lbs, or 1.8 kg for you metric folk), very small (10.75” width x 8.5” depth x 2.75” height, or 273 mm x 216 mm x 70 mm), and puts out 500 watts into 4 ohms.
How’s it sound? Fantastic, at least down in the basement. Great punchy tone—better sound than the old Ampeg head even when it was working well. Nice tight bass on the low notes. The next band gig is in two weeks; I can’t wait to play it out in that setting.
And yes, here’s a pic (or it didn’t happen). That’s the Aguilar sitting on the Ampeg cabinet. In the meantime, the old Ampeg head is sitting on a 1x15 cabinet that I’ve used sometimes as an additional cabinet for larger-venue gigs. As long as the amp is still sorta-kinda working, I thought I’d press it into service as a practice amp and back-up until it actually dies.
upload image high quality