It’s really fun to carry the Bass Cub in it’s gigbag. 6 kg seem to me as almost no weight at all, compared to my other amps. I think you can’t built a bass amp much smaller and lighter than this.
Like all PJB amps, the Bass Cub has an high impedance input (4 MOhm in this case), which makes it suitable for piezo pickups, and uses speakers with 5″ diameter only.
Last weekend, I tried out the Bass Cub on an outdoor gig, on the streets of a friend’s hometown which had 750th anniversary (the village, not the friend, of course ;-). The overall volume of the Bass Cub was absolutely sufficient for this band (double bass + three guitars/voice/bluesharp). But due to the lack of room acoustics (no room at all … just a tent to protect us against the rain), the bass reproduction was rather weak. For a gig like this, a larger cabinet is the better choice.
Back home, I tried the Bass Cub in my rehearsal room. As expected, the bass frequencies sounded much more powerful there. I’ve put the Bass Cub on the floor, and moved it around in the room. With the amp facing a room’s corner, with aprox. 1 m distance to the wall, it sounded best.
Conclusion: the Bass Cub offers a amazingly good “size-to-sound”-ratio, which makes it a very transportable amp rehearsals or gigs in small clubs. The Stereo input was designed to plug-in a drum machine or iPod – very useful for practising. With preamp-out and DI out, the Bass Cub can also be used on larger stages – as preamp and/or stage monitor with FOH, or with an active speaker cabinet.
Links: Technical data, www.kontrabass-atelier.de
Madooma is a German webshop for vintage microphones – with a very well made website!
Mathias has sent me a review of the new Arco “Hugo” double bass amp, which is made by bassist Jesper Lundgaard. It’s to long to fit the proper comment field, so I descided to post it here. Here we go:
The arco-amplification Hugo
Arco Amplification is a brand name owned by Jesper Lundgaard, who has been developing amplifiers since his early youth. Looking back on an amazing career as a touring musician, he decided to take it a bit easier, stay home more, and focus on building bass and guitar amplifiers. He used to work together with a company named CADaudio, but they split and now he’s a one man company. It’s likely his company name will change in the future, but for now, it’s arco amplification.
The “hugo” is an amp built according to suggestions of Hugo Rasmussen, another legendary danish bassist. This is the amp I had the pleasure to try for a couple of days.
The long-bearded legend seems to be a sucker for simplicity- the amplifier sports a very stripped down set of controls. From left to right, they are: Master Volume, a mute switch, treble and bass controls, a phase reverse switch, and a tone switch (where you can change between bright, normal, and dark). Continue reading ‘Arco: new bass amps from Danmark’
Phil Jones’ briefcase was already an unconventional bass amp before: with its two 5″ speakers and a variety of powering options, it is already quite different to other amps on the market. You can run the Briefcase from 110/220V, from your car’s battery or a internal battery. The built-in battery gives you about an hour of playing time. To charge the battery, simply plug the Briefcase into an AC power supply.
Phil Jones’ newest version of the Briefcase goes one step further: it’s solar powered. It uses solar panels, instead of your electrical outlet, to charge the internal battery. Charge time is 10 hours of sunlight to get the battery ready for 1 hour of playing time. Of course, it still runs with 110V/220V, too.
The picture shows Phil Jones’ prototype, but he plans to built about 10 solar powered Briefcases to start: “There has to be at least 10 people in the world who want to be totally off the grid and play bass!”
The Briefcase is available at www.kontrabass-atelier.de
The new EDB1, recently launched by the british company Headway, is a very versatile compact external pre-amplifier box with a couple of features you usually miss with bass amps.
The EDB1 has two channels; inputs are Mono Jack, Stereo Jack and XLR – great for blending different piezo pickups and/or microphones. The Input Impedance Switches on each channel allow you to optimize the voicing for any of the major piezo pickup types. Phantom power is also available to Jack In and XLR Inputs, making the unit friendly for use with quality Condenser Mics and with active pickups needing powering.
For shaping the sound, the EDB1 has a five band interactive EQ, switchable input impedance (a very unique feature) and three way range switch (high pass filter) which cut unwanted low end tones, below the useable frequency range of the instrument. This cuts body handling noise, unwanted resonaces, feedback and bowing noise. Feedback and other resonance problems may be further tackled by a very effective, broad ranging tunable notch filter and a Phase Reverse control.
Outputs are via a balanced XLR D.I. out and a line out Jack. If an earth loop is heard causing hum, you may kill it by pressing the Earth Lift Switch. The two outputs also allow you to split the signal, such as between double bass amp for stage monitoring and an out front mixing desk. Powering is via two 9v Batteries, or via plug in DC Power supply.
(Available at www.jonaslohse.de)
Jazz double bassist Kells Nollenberger has conducted an interesting interview on double bass gear with Steve Rodby. Rodby has played bass on every Pat Metheny Group record since 1980, co-produced the group’s last five albums and won 10 Grammy Awards with the group. He has toured with jazz greats Joe Henderson and Tony Bennett, and also works regularly as a producer.
In this interview, Rodby shares his experience in amplifying the double bass, and talks about pickups’s impedance, phase cancelling, feedback, and bass sound in general. Rodby really has in-depth knowledge about amplifying techniques, so I absolutely recommend to listen to this podcast, which can be accessed through Jason Heath’s Contrabass Conversations or iTunes.
The november issue of the Premier Guitar magazine features an article by Dan Berkowitz about searching for a rig that could double nicely for both electric and double bass: “Quest for an Acoustic Bass Amp”.
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