unfortunately why so many people use cheater plugs. which causes firemen to have heart attacks.
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I’m amazed there aren’t tons of electrical fires here.
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These are full power amp heads, not just preamps. I’ll go ahead and answer here and feel free to move this to a more appropriate thread. There’s some overlap since the TH tone section is available in preamp form without the power stage.
TH350
DGMT500
They both have the identical IcePower module, but the Tone Hammer is rated at 350 and the DG is rated at 500. Go figure. So, the digital stage is top notch studio quality in both.
This DG has effects send/return while the TH requires you to step up a power level higher in the range to get a send/return.
Both have DI.
Annoyingly, the front panel Mute pushbutton on the DG is upstream of the FX Return, so it doesn’t work if you have pedals in the loop. I like using that button when I’m re-patching stuff around.
Overdrive
The DG has the Vintage Microtubes and the B3K pedals built-in, so those speak for themselves and provide a huge range of adjustment. The overdrive section also has that vintage/modern kind of filter knob which is brighter or mellower, very similar to the tone knob on a P-bass. The amp has fewer knobs than the discrete pedals do, but I don’t think they oversimplified anything that I’m having a problem with.
It’s possible to get gritty and breakup sounds out of the TH, but it’s not an isolated section with off/on switch like the DG. The TH knobs are interactive with each other and change the quality of the distortion. The DG applies distortion to whatever tone is on the input of the amp and all its tone control (other than the vintage/modern knob) are downstream of the distortion.
Tone Section
This is where I can’t say anything meaningful to anyone else. Either the knobs fit to your rig and your playing style and tone choice or they are missing something. They do different things.
Low - DG says 80Hz, TH says 40Hz but it’s super useful. Maybe the DG rolls off at 80 and the TH is centered on 40. I haven’t really checked that close, but they both do what I want this way.
Mid - DG has two mid knobs, each with a frequency choice (250/500 and 1.5k/3k). TH has one midband that is fully sweepable to any mid frequency.
Hi - DG says 5k. TH says 4k.
The TH also has a “Drive” knob that doesn’t apply overdrive; it’s frowny face EQ and eventually boosts the mids. That eventually has the effect of pushing more mids into distortion if “Gain” is up. The knobs on the TH take getting used to. The manual doesn’t explain them, so it takes reading forum threads to figure them out unless you are more patient than me. Clean tone on the TH is with Gain and Drive all the way down. There’s a huge range of Gain where it seems it does almost nothing. Maybe I need to try running hotter or adding a clean boost to get that knob into a better operating range.
Overall, I really like them both. The TH sounds better with the Ibanez 5-string on the GK15 than the DG to me. I can get either one to sound super with the Fender P on the 410.
I’m not trying to cut through a mix or fit to the music on stage. I’m making sounds at home that I want to get lost in and completely enjoy. So, if there’s something in the tone I want to fix, I’m always frustrated by the fixed EQ points. For this reason alone, the sweepable mid is lovely for me. If I were buying again I’d buy the next level up of the TH to have the FX loop. I’d forget the DG because the overdrive section inside is too much of a VCR/TV combo for me. The DG is good for a compact integrated rig that’s more cost effective than buying the amp and pedals separately. It’s too bad they rip you another $100 for the footswitch though.
Dave’s Dream
Of course they never make what I actually want.
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I’d like a clean block power stage with no knobs, just an input and a speaker connector.
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I’d like a seperate preamp, not in pedal form, in piggyback form over the powerblock that is the tone/drive/gain section from the Tonehammer 350 with the addition of a 2nd fully sweepable mid control. I’d also like the Bandwidth knob to be added to the two mid controls.
Figuring out what all these tailored knobs on music equipment do and then trying to get them to do what I want drives me absolutely bonkers (contour, presence, mojo, bark, growl, drive, gain, boost, bump, thump, rump. etc.). I’m sure for most people on stage these are nice, easy tools that get the job done, are easy to understand and fast to grab. For me in my shed trying to get rid of that one resonant frequency that’s bugging me without destroying the rest of my tone, they are all blunt hammers. Just give me a compressor with Attack/Release/Threshold/Ratio/Soft and I’ll make that one compressor do whatever I want. Just give me a 4-band fully parametric EQ with a shelf filter on the top and HP filter on the bottom and I’ll never need to buy another piece of tone gear again.
They all sound great. They all suck at flexibility. If I ever gig I’ll give you a completely different answer because I’ll probably find out that one of them is the superstar knob. Unfortunately, it only works if gain is set at 3 and drive is set at 7 and you push the mid freq select button 3 times first.
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+1 to this. I can think of no one who has covered this topic better.
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@DaveT Thanks for the in depth response. I’m going to have to read it a few times to completely absorb it all.
I was expecting something along the lines of…
“You know how they say using a Tone Hammer gives you a big bottom end?”
“They’re right!”
“You can’t get a bottom end bigger than with a Tone Hammer.”
I’ve seen a number of comments like that. Does this match your experience?
I want this also. I have searched high and low for it but there are very few options out there. A boutique option. One from France. And one that a guy builds by order in his garage here in the US. This last one comes in at 500 watts for $250 but it looks like it made out of spare parts from a popcorn machine.
The problem I see with it is you would need to sell it at 50 cents a watt for it to be competitive (and have it not look like popcorn machine leftovers). Otherwise someone can get a used amplifier, only use the power section, and have a built in back up pre-amp.
Then there’s the idea, would any of the amp companies even want this to be successful because of how it would change how amps are sold since it removes the markup they can get for selling one pre+power amp versus two separate units. And that’s just the beginning.
What became the Quilter Labs Bass Block 800 started out as a discussion about what people wanted to answer this need. At some point (without any explanation I could find) Pat Quilter decided to go ahead and build a full amplifier.
This topic gets me fired up because I see such an opportunity to build something I would want but I don’t have the skill set or faculties to make it profitable.
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LOL, clearly I need to work on my review skills. That would make sense to me. Yeah, the Tone Hammer is my favorite so far and I do prefer the big bottom. You do realize that an engineer saying something like that without actually measuring is like overcoming the impulse not to take a breath underwater.
No one will make one for exactly this. The way to be profitable is to be unique and mythical.
The beauty about making something for yourself is you can have things no one will make because they couldn’t be profitable.
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I really like it too. So much that I think I really would like to have one.
But is it worth it having a SansAmp Programmable Bass Driver DI?
I particularly like the separate controls and that it has a headphone in.
(I’m a big The Cure fan)
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I like the SansAmps much more than the SCR-DI. Especially the VT Bass DI. I would not swap it out.
Plus, the Scrambler on the SCR-DI is flat out bad in my opinion. It was my least favorite distortion, and sounds nothing like how a real Ampeg breaks up.
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@howard Thank you so much for that input! My only experience with Ampegs is the music I like but I’ve never played on a real Ampeg amp! The SansAmp only has Bass and Treble, no Mids. It has taken me forever to actually understand how to shape tone without it and I have not been able to find literature or videos with tricks or hacks. Only what’s in the manual. Thanks again! No GAS…
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VT Bass DI has bass-mids-treble.
One of my favorite pedals. You get SVT and B15N all in one place.
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Yeah it was my second favorite preamp out of five or six, until I killed it 
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More recent video from the same channel, comparing loads of them
Really liking the Laney Digbeth and EHX Battalion for low cost options, and Orange Bass Butler for a little bit more
Darkglass are really nice too, but idk about £400+ 
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I owned a Battalion. If you are looking for a very transparent preamp it is nice. I really never want that so I sold it fairly fast.
I have never seen the point of a preamp that adds little tone color on its own; if you want that, just buy an EQ pedal.
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Yeah, same with amps. You might as well plug into the FX return of the amp if you don’t want any tone color.
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Exactly!
I keep hearing mostly great things about it but having the programmable DI I really don’t want to enter the GAS realm and start collecting preamps. I was really intrigued by the Ampeg SCR-DI but according to @howard the tone doesn’t even resemble a the real sound of an Ampeg. I’ll have to give the VT a try though if I get a chance to.
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The normal tone is sort of like an Ampeg-lite. Definitely has the sound of the overall brand to it. I meant the scrambler (its distortion) sounds very little like a real SVT or flip-top distorting.
It’s a nice preamp, but I wanted something with more tone and better overdriven sound to it.
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As I said before, I have the Tech 21 SansAmp… I have what I need and GAS is always lurking around but I’m resisting. I should spend more time learning to use the SansAmp and practicing.
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Yep the SansAmp is in the top 10 of preamps for me for sure. I used to own an exact clone (the BDI-21) and it was probably the best buy on my board.
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