Best home amp/cab setup money can buy?

Gear
#1

I currently have a Fender Rumble 40 which has served me well as I learn all things (or some things) bass, however, as I dive into the whole ‘tone’ thing, and I evaluate everything from strings to effects pedals to a new bass (coming soon), I started researching amps.

So here is the thing, I play bass for a hobby, will never be a touring musician (and doubt I would ever really need an amp powerful enought to play out. That said, I would want the best gear I could get my hands on from an amp related perspective. Of course, playing at home, I don’t need power, but want great tone, and clearly be able to hear it.

When i research, most ‘best of lists’ don’t really address what I am looking for.
So, how much power is too much for home?
How do I get a great tube amp sound at home?
What cab do I pair it with?

I’m not concerned about costs too much, if its the right thing.
But I also can’t see buying an 80lb Ampeg SVT CL amp to play in my music room, you know?
Is there a ‘best in class’ version of this for home practice?

All above said, if I did say… well, you never know, you should get something powerful enough to play out somewhere one day…is that too much power to practice at home?
If i turned it all down so much would I be compromising the ‘tone’ i paid for?

All new to me, any and all advice would be awesome.

Thanks,
John

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#2

From what you are saying, and correct me if I am wrong, but sounds like your plans are mostly to stay at home and not really practice with a band or perform in a live setting. If that is accurate…

I would recommend getting a DAW and something that can act as a DAI (like a Presonus Audiobox 96) and just getting plugins. It is way less expensive (not that cost is an issue) and less space consuming than an amp, and you can basically get all the tones of whatever amps you want, instead of being stuck with one. It won’t bother the neighbors and you can play as long and loud as you want.

If you still want something that projects some sound I’d recommend the Spark amp. You can dial in 1000s of tones from your phone as well as backing tracks etc, it connects to an app on your phone.

If you want to push some air and have some live sound…be a different story. There you’d worry about brand and cab types etc, as well as pedals and all that. Just say the word and I could recommend some.

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#3

I would prefer to do it without headphones, so in your example (a very unique solution btw, I like it) how do I pump that out to a good speaker?

I have Abelton Live and a Scarlet 2i2, so that part is not a problem (other than actually learning how to use all the features of Abelton!!! :smiley:

#4

A pair of decent studio monitors actually sounds really good, without getting loud to the point (but very loud if you want) of shaking walls or getting cops called lol. The way this is superior though is you like the Ampeg SVT? There is a plug-in that sounds just like it. Like a fender bassman, or an Ashdown or a Darkglass etc…there is a plug-in for it. It even has the same knobs and interface as the amp itself does (on the computer screen)

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#5

Also, an SVT and a 410 cab would probably cost you about $4500 give or take…which for half that you could get every plug-in ever made for bass lol

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#6

Oh, the Scarlet 2i2 should have a couple inputs in the back of it for studio monitors.

#7

This is probably the best sounding studio subwoofer I’ve heard. It goes down to 18 Hz, much lower than any bass cabinet. It also doesn’t have a tone characteristic like a bass cab, so the cab sims will overlay onto it nicely. You can pick the KH120 to match with this for a stereo pair and it will sound fabulous. If you don’t need a stage rig, you can really get really finely made gear like this for home levels.

My question for @kerushlow and @howard would be … How low do you need to get the round trip latency to use the DAW for all your pedals if you want to hear effects while you are playing rather than strictly applying effects in post production?

#8

I currently don’t because there is noticeable latency with mine; I should try upgrading to a USB3 DAI at some point.

Right now I use direct monitoring from my DAI through monitors and cans, and listen to the effects only on the recorded track. This works perfectly but you no longer have your effects in real time.

#9

@John_E what howard describes above would be the potential pothole for doing what @kerushlow suggests. Since money is no object, it’s possible to get the latency way down on your DAI by taking USB out of the equation.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Quantum2626--presonus-quantum-2626-26x26-thunderbolt-3-audio-interface

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#10

From my experience…generally studio monitors just sound like if you were listening to a song that was on the radio or something with a good speaker system. So it sounds like that. There are ways to fix latency too.

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#11

Ooh. Need to check if my PC supports thunderbolt 2 or 3. It does not have a dedicated port but IIRC the mobo supports it.

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#12

The Apollo ones are really nice too.

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#13

My drummer has the Presonus 24 R and we don’t have latency issues even while jamming and plugins.

#14

How many ms round trip latency are you down to? It changes quite a bit depending on settings and drivers and DAW features.

#15

Wish I could help more on it…he is the one with the home studio and dabbling more as a sound engineer. Just by myself I have plug and play and haven’t had latency issues on my USB one.

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#16

I have found with USB2 I need to have a relatively large buffer which adds to the latency.

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#17

There is lots I don’t know. I remember we had latency issues in some of the band early recordings but fixed it somehow. Lol. I have a USB 2.0…have a gaming PC though…not sure if it helps

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#18

not sure if I would dedicate a lot of money to thunderbolt, even Apple seems to be moving on from it lately.

#19

Apple is going full USB-C at this point but IIRC there is a tbolt-over-USB-C spec.

#20