the standard by which all others are judged
Written: Apr 15 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: best sounding bass amp ever made, builds muscles, this amp has balls!
Cons: weight, just make sure you don't make enemies in the band, proper body mechanics
The Bottom Line: Simply the best sounding bass amp ever made, which is the reason they haven't changed much in 33 years.
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| bobyoung49's Full Review: Ampeg Svt C1 Bass Head |
I have only owned original SVT's and have only played classics in the store, but they sound like the old ones to me, of which I still own two of them and still use. I use A variety of Rickenbacker's with them, 4001's, 4003's, and 4001V63's, I have used Fender Precision and Jazz basses, and Gibson EB-2's, Flat wound and round wound strings, pretty much the gamut of popular basses. The better the bass, the better the sound, you are limited by the bass you use, not by the amp itself. I have settled on Ric's with flat wounds and round wounds, with the SVT's you get all kinds of bottom with punch and articulation. I first heard of them in 1972 from a friend who described them as being able to knock down a wall, which was my main criteria in picking a bass amp in 1972, I am now 49 and my criteria has changed drastically since then, but have never had to nor have wanted to change to another amp. This amp does it all, easily, the sound is loud, tight, and punchy, especially with two cabinets(8x10's).These amps are very reliable and yes I have dropped one on to concrete from the top of an 8x10 which is about 4' and it worked fine, did dent one of the corner things though. They have only failed when I have neglected to change the power tubes and they have a fail-safe feature in them, there is a 10 watt resister in series with the high voltage plate supply so if a power tube does short out it doesn't take the power transformer with it , just burns out the resister, which costs about 2 or 3 bucks to replace. I think the sound is very versatile as I do play many styles of music, I get a lot of compliments on the sound of the combination of Ric and SVT, and by the way I always use the 8x10's with it as these also contribute to the sound of this amp. They are not inherently noisy but can get noisy with old preamp tubes or old power supply filter caps, the caps will last twenty years or so with heavy playing so you don't have to worry about that for a long time. The tubes aren't as good nowaday's as they used to be though, so you have to be careful, you want to buy matched sets which are expensive, and you want to keep it biased correctly, which is easy on these amps, and you should get it checked out periodically. This amp is very powerful, it's rated at 300 watts RMS, and sounds like a thousand, the sound is much thicker than a solid state amp you feel like you could almost walk on it, it's so thick. My favorite settings on it is: ultra high on, treble all the way up, mid switch set to 220 hz, mid control set to about 3 o'clock more or less depending on the room, bass switch set to normal or ultra low depending on the room and bass set to close to full depending on the room. I cut the treble with the tones on the bass. I can always get a good sound in just about any room, it just sounds good and has the tone versatility to adjust for lousy acoustics, also sounds good outside.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
bobyoung49
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 2 members
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