I wanted to get opinions on the Fender Rumble 800W bass combo amp. I am meeting a guy on Thursday to look at a 2023 one that’s a $700 open-box deal. Originally, I was looking at the Ampeg SVT Micro VR stack but for the about the same price I thought more couldn’t hurt. Also, in the pursuit of more, what would the ideal extension cabinet be for a Rumble 800 combo amp?
I’m ideally looking to have a workhorse amp that I can do anything with. i.e. Practicing with headphones or semi-quietly at the house to recording into the computer to jamming with a band or straight-up blastin’ on fools. Pretty much the whole gamut. Any input would be appreciated.
The 800 sounds great (only weighs 29lbs) and if you wanted it to be stupid loud you could pair it with a matching Fender 2x10 Rumble Bass cabinet. It’s the same dimensions, so it’ll stack nicely and they’re designed to go together ampage wise. But the 800 is LOUD already.
Just one thing to note. Rumble 800 has a fan. When you’re playing at a decent volume you can’t hear it. But for low level home practice it is slightly noticeable. The Rumble 100 doesn’t and is super quiet.
Ha ha ha. I don’t live in an apartment. Where I live a balcony bassist pumping the jam that hard would be the fool gettin’ blasted on. However, I do live with a woman that is probably not going to be enjoying yoga quite as much in the near future. Ha ha. Thanks for the advice regarding the fan; I didn’t think about that. I would probably want to get the Rumble 100 at some point (I can continue to use my Ibanez Soundwave 65W for now). Thanks for the cabinet info too. I’m new to amps but my understanding is that a 210 cab is the limit for the 800W combo to handle. Would a 115 cab or 410 cab work with it or am I jaywalking with diarrhea in rush hour over here? I’ve got time to figure out an extension cabinet. Honestly, I’m going to have to step up the noise level in increments at home so I probably won’t be able to sneak it in until around Christmas or so. And, I live in a neighborhood (I don’t play during quiet hours) but I do have the opportunity to play outdoors in more rural, open settings with friends too, so I am, at some point trying to pump the jam that hard hazards permitting.
You’re reaching the end of my knowledge here. There’s a switch on the back which is 8 ohms when you’re just using the built in 2x10 but when you add a an additional cab you flick the switch to 4 Ohm.
So I think as long as you match the load correctly you are OK. But that’s beyond my current expertise. I know you can add a Fender Rumble 2x10 to get a 4x10. Which would be stupid loud. But fun.
Maybe an expert in the field, someone like @DaveT could explain.
I will say though that adding a 4x10 to the existing 2x10? I mean how loud do you want to play
When I got my 3rd array cabinet I was finding an excuse to use it and I did. It’s amazingly loud. It was a venue for about 1200 my master and gain never went pass noon, that’s 3x10 array
Holy smokes. It sounds like I have to be careful where I point it or birds are going to start falling out of the sky. Per-fect. As far as noise level desired, I was hoping to be able to play at the noon position for say like a rumble 100 or 200 while at home (I get weekdays off here and there where I have the house to myself and people are out and about). That’s why I was originally looking at the ampeg svt micro vr stack. It sounds like I would have to back-fill that. By that I mean get a rumble 100 down the road for chill playing at home. The reason I wanted the extra juice was because I have some friends out in the country that have a few dozen acres. They get together and camp and play, etc. They play with some people that have some nice setups and it’s Northeastern Arizona so it’s open and windy. I was looking to be able to play with drums and saxophones and guitars and random instruments, etc. Think loud idiots out in the open. Realistically, I would only get the extension cabinet if it’s warranted on account of that need. That and my newly discovered Tim Allen-esque thirst for more power. Ooh-oh-oooh! I happened to be in the same price range as the Rumble 800 already so I thought why not give yourself the ceiling.
Question - I’m not buying an external cabinet but both the Fender Rumble 2x10 and 4x10 cabs are rated at 8 Ohm. So the switch just stays in the 8 Ohm position?
At what point would one have to switch to the 4 Ohm position i.e how many cabs would I have to add before changing the switch? Talk to me as If I were a curious border collie @DaveT you know that kind of level
First, the easy one: if you connect two 8 ohm cabs in parallel - i.e. send the amp output to both of them independently - the total resistance will be 4 ohms. In that case you would need to flip the switch.
Conversely, if you chain two 4-ohm cabs in series, the total resistance is 8 ohms. But even this is complicated by the fact that the jacks on cabs can be wired to connect cabs in parallel.
Thanks for all of the input, guys. I appreciate it. Thanks Barney, DaveT, and Al1885. I think I’m going to get it. It sounds like the 800 combo, a 100 combo at some point down the road, and maybe a 210 cab for the boonies would cover any conceivable bass amp need for me ever. Thanks, guys. I’m gonna finally drown out my brother’s guitar for once so nice little bonus.
Now that you’ve settled on this, let me complicate things
One thing I would say is that amps can sound quite different. In some ways, they can change the tone more than you would find changing to a different bass. Before settling on a “forever amp”, I would recommend listening to many.
Fender amps have a very specific, scooped mids tone. A lot of people like it but it’s not the only choice. Gallien-Kruger and Ampeg amps have their own distinct tonal qualities as well (and are distinct from each other too.)
Anyway I would just suggest you owe it to yourself to try these options (and others) before plopping down the big money. Up to you though
I have an Aguilar 410 cabinet that’s rated at 4 Ohms all on its own so I can pull max power out of my amp head with just one cabinet (it drops by half power at 8 Ohms). The tradeoff is that it doesn’t pair very well. The Rumble Stage 800 is happy driving it though with the switch set to 4. The problem is that I think the power gets divided unevenly in that case, 300 Watts to the Rumble internal and 500 Watts to the extension. I’d stick with 8 Ohm extension cabinets.
Barney! Barney! No!! you shouldn’t get that close to a . . . .
Assuming that you’ve heeded Howard’s warning about going all in on an amp tone you like . . . I think it makes a lot of sense to put a 210 extension on the Stage 800. That gets you an 800 Watt 410 cabinet with all drivers getting equal power at the end of the day. Some people here have a single 12 and then another 12 to stack. Some people like mixing driver sizes in a stack because they feel they are getting the best characteristics of both. I’d rather have a matched set working together. If you get a 410 extension cabinet, each driver in the extension will be getting 100 Watts, but the internal drivers will be getting 200 Watts each. Fender doesn’t make a 4 ohm 410 extension cabinet to even that out.
Bass tends to go in every direction, equal power to the back of the stage as to the front of the stage. When you stack drivers of the same type and they begin to couple this gives the whole system the ability to produce a lower frequency range working together and pulls the throw pattern in a little projecting the sound more forward.
The concept works in multiple dimensions. If you have a vertical stack of drivers, the throw pattern will be wide horizontally and narrow vertically. They have to be spaced tight enough relative to the wavelength being produced to couple. The array also has to be large enough relative to the wavelength it is trying to control, so a 410 certainly doesn’t cover the range of bass. It would be possible to space out a series of 3-4 bass cabinets across the stage and produce a horizontal cylinder wave of bass headed out toward the audience that would have very narrow spread left and right.
Searching for audio “line array” will turn up quite a bit. I was under the impression the physics of this were first described for audio in the 1950s, but the article below refers to something from the 1930s. Line arrays in audio showed up in small voice range column speakers, usually deployed to combat the difficult reverberation times defeating speech in churches. The first significant full range line array system for concert use was by L’Acoustics in 1992 and gained notoriety on the Peter Gabriel tour. That completely changed the trajectory of concert sound system design.
