It’s a neat idea and I bet more manufacturers do it over time. I think MarkBass has one now.
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The only thing I’m struggling with the Fusion is that the drive sound like farts (you have to do some proper EQ to make it sound good). The Legacy drive is better imo but the Fusion on normal sounds really warm and punchy. Fusion has a bit of a learning curve since every knob has 2 functions. Both amps are very cool and different from each other.
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Good to know! I’ll keep my Blackbird. Maybe I’ll open it up and go after the tone stack.
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The EBS ValveDrive has the Fender tonestack too. I generally like a scooped sound so I didn’t have to get too extreme with it, though.
Online, the Le Bass sounds a lot more neutral to me but generally maybe a bit too transparent, even with the tube, until they start to really crank it.
In the end, I’m a lot happier with amp sims 
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Screw the tubes, they are just hassle…
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G-K’s solid state amps are great too, yeah.
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I totally get it. But more thinking puts off trying which staves off buying. But keeps me in the “amp game”. As soon as I after driving around trying….sigh
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So I tried a little experiment last night and ran the B7K direct to the return feed of the studio 40.
Holy cow it was awful. This was an interesting test. Their sims must work hard to do as good as possible but YIKES! I didn’t expect great things but thought I’d get something decent with the good preamp. I’m sure both power amp and speaker are to blame.
This tells me for sure I want the cleanest power amp possible. I can’t wait to go test drive things.
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One more question…when I get some big wattage thingy, I am still ok using this for practice at home, just turning it way down? No issues there I assume?
Yeah don’t worry about that, I also play at low volumes with big watt heads. Only watch out with the Orange amp series those go super loud if you just dial 0.1 up - they do sound great tho.
And you can always get an attenuator, but seriously don’t worry about it.
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First, turn it all the way up to see if I can hear it down here in Norfolk.
After that, you can turn it way down for practice . . .
Cheers
Joe
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My 350 Watt head is set at 1 of 10. It has a very happy life on easy street.
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Related question….is the a super clean amp in the practice amp wattage range to replace my Studio 40? It is driving me sonically nuts and I am not ready to commit to the big head/cab combo thing yet and want to explore options 100w and under.
That said, might be cheaper to buy the Harley Benton and a smaller cab and watch the volume, but wanting to consider options.
What is driving you sonically nuts about it? Just the fender mid scoop? Might be able to fix that with EQ.
Almost all Fender amps have a prominent mid scoop. Here’s a frequency response graph I found for a Rumble 100, I assume the 40 is similar. I could audibly hear it on my 25 (and it wasn’t a prob for me, I like it)
Try boosting mids/lowering bass and treble, and see if it fixes it.
(this is a good example of something you would use the knobs on the amp to fix, and not something earlier in the chain - a tonal quality of the amp in the setting you are in that you dislike)
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The issue is is that there is no, let’s call it ‘clean’ setting.
Every single option has some sort of modeled amp sound.
So you can EQ out the dips, but the tone coloring is what’s driving me nuts.
I want to hear my bass and pedals and the only way to do that is to bypass the amp and play through the monitors or PC speakers or headphones (yes, they all color it too but closer to what I am recording).
If I put my pedal chain into the return of the amp, turns out the power section is just garbage because they are assuming you are modeling some other amp so the power section can just be crap on its own, they ‘account for it’ in the sim models.
What I am after is finding something ambient that I set my tone etc to and then it actually records darn close to that too (I know it won’t be perfect, but the amp sims color it so much its a mess).
The Studio was a good exercise as it got me to realize what I want in an amp, but what it can’t do is give that to me.
Ironic, huh?
Even the ‘cleanest of the clean’ really color the tone.
The one that I use most is the GK 800 sim as it is the least offensive of the bunch.
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There’s many reasons I would not want modeling to be built in to an amp, I guess I can add this one to the list.
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When I first started this ‘what’s my sound’ thing, I thought…“I love Motown, B15 of course, oh wait, what about SVT for classic rock, but are those too specific?..what about all the other ones, how does one choose?” I knew for sure the Rumble 40 wasn’t it.
So the modeling amp was a 'here is a bunch of amps you can try, and even though not the real thing, you can get flavors of each type". This was a good strategy, knocked out a lot of questions in my mind. And it ultimately did it’s job in answering the question.
Orange/Marshall - nope. Most all Fenders - nope. A few others - nope. Right off the bat.
SVT - cool, but not all the time, same with B15 (thank you VT Bass DI, that part is solved).
But when I started recording with the amp sim in the path I disliked what I was hearing in the recording a LOT. Way too much coloring and muddying up the works.
So I started recording everytihng without the amp in the chain.
However, when I am trying to set the tone for the song, I cannot do it with the amp as a listening device, as its too different. And what I am finding with the basses I have is I like each one for its inherent tonal characteristics and want to enhance that vs. muddying it up in the amp sims ala Fender.
So that leaves basic practice only for the amp… generally fine with the GK800 sim for most, and found one for the MM/slap that is fine, but nothing stellar.
Turns out my ear is apparently very sensitive to ‘off sounds’. My sense of taste and smell is the same so I guess it makes sense. Not in a perfect pitch sense, but in a ‘that sounds off’ sense.
As a side, it drives me nuts when Apple has a remastered tune and my brain/ear remembers hearing it one way and the remaster has something more forward or pushed back in the mix. That said, I struggle with perfect mixing, no expert in how to do it, but no when it just sounds off from what my brain/ear expects.
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I’ve got to ask — and I really hope I don’t sound like an a**hole here — but where are you guys playing? I am, or was, primarily a guitar player. My main amp is a 35w boutique ‘59 Deluxe. I’ve never turned up farther than 3. My bass amp is the lowly Fender Rumble 40, which is theoretically a practice amp. But I’ve done an outdoor gig for 30-40 people and didn’t have to push it past 5-6 on the master. What am I missing?
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I have the Fender Rumble Studio 40 right now.
I had the Rumble 40 first, wanted to explore other tones, thought the Studio 40 would be a great inexpensive way to do this and decide on a ‘forever amp’.
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