A Decent Small Practice Amp
When I bought my Fender P-Bass, I needed an amp. I had just moved into a semi-attached house, and was worried about the volume levels, so I planned on getting something smallish. So I tested a couple different amps and bought an SWR LA10. It was just too small. And lacked punch in the high-end to play any slap'n'pop stuff, so I gave it to my dad along with a cherry-stained Epiphone EBO bass, like the Gibson EBO he had played back in his Crowbar days. After all he only muddled around with walking blues rock bass lines - it would do him just fine. So I went back and bought the next size up, the SWR LA12. This is a very simple amp. Volume, Bass, Mid and Treble knobs. A 12" speaker and a horn driven by 60 watts of SWR power. It could do the job. Especially if I put a compressor pedal in front of it, but it always seemed too quiet. And if you turned it up past 4, the woofer would have a slight ripple to it. Even worse, once I bought the Ibanez SDGR 5-string.Upgrade Number One
An upgrade was on my list, and during a big attic sale at a local music store, I checked out an SWR 350X head and an SWR Goliath III 2x10/Horn cabinet. The place was jam packed with people, so I didn't really get a chance to hear it that well. It was used, probably from the rental department - but the price was too good to be true. $450 for the amp and the cabinet.It was too good to be true. Once I got it home I noticed that it had a slight distortion or buzz on every note no matter what the volume. The knobs had a bit of crackle to them. It had a gimmicky sub-harmonic feature, sort of like an octaver, but what it really needed was a compressor. It was a bit of a let-down, but at least it proved to me that 300 watts and a tube preamp was what I was really looking for. The store I bought it from would give me store credit on it's return, so off I went.
The Ultimate Bass Amp
No more used bass amps. With the store credit from the 350X, and a decent trade-in value from my SWR LA12, I went testing various amps. Mesa/Boogie is just too pricey. MarkBass was nice. I considered the retro fliptop-styled Ampeg Portaflex PF-500 head with a 2x10+Horn cabinet. The new SWR Headlite sounded great and had a compressor, problem was, when you priced out a decent cabinet for it, you were into real money. Then I turned around and saw the 20th Anniversary SWR Redhead. I loved this amp as a teenager. It was, and still is, the best hybrid of studio amp and gig-able club amp you can get. I plugged in and played a short funky bass line, paused, looked at the smile on my daughter's face, then looked at my buddy Graeme, the sales guy. His raised eyebrows said it all. Done deal. It was more expensive than I planned on going, but I immediately said to myself, "If you bought one of these 20 years ago, would you have ever parted with it? Then why spend the next 20 years buying and selling bass amps, when all you really need or want is a redhead?"The SWR Redhead
What is an SWR Redhead? It's a hybrid bass combo amp. The preamp is driven by two 12AX7 tubes, a really great EQ, and aural exciter and a very functional compressor. The power section is a 400 watt solid-state amp driving a pair of very special 10" drivers and a horn. This is where it gets interesting - The preamp also has a built-in DI for recording or sending to the mains in a live situation. The DI combined with miking the amp sounds amazing when recording. Fender had bought SWR a while back (do they own everything?), but from what I can tell, the construction quality, features and sound have not suffered at all on the Redhead. I am sure my bad 350X experience was no fault of Fender or SWR.In my little studio, setting the volume at 4 moves you, and the amp doesn't even sound like it is working hard at all. The EQ is amazing, you can dial in anything you can imagine. The sound of this amp is so tight and dynamic, it's unbelievable.
The Last Bass Amp?
If I started playing bass in a rock band and touring, I'd love to get an old Mesa/Boogie Bass 400+ with a 2x15"cabinet. Then again, I probably wouldn't. I'd just add a 15" cabinet to my SWR Redhead.And the chances of me playing bass in a touring rock band? Not bloody likely.
Yep. I guess this is it. Another item checked off on the bucket list.
[ X ] Get the ultimate bass amp - probably an SWR Redhead.
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