Re: battery amps
- From: derek@xxxxxxxxx (Derek Tearne)
- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:31:47 +1200
pTooner <someguy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was watching a tv thing today about Suwannee river festival and a electric
bass guitar player had a small amp on his belt. I couldn't see it enough to
tell what it was and it didn't sound great but it wasn't terrible either.
It was also the only way you could play EBG in that situation. Anyone have
any experience with very small battery bass amps?
An amp on his belt would probably be a pignose - was it brown?
There are a few battery amps small enough to fit on a belt eg. the
original pignose and Dean Markley GT 1000 - and they work great for
lead/rhythm guitar with a warm distorted/overdriven sound. Playing bass
through them would sound like playing through a barrel of bees. Did
this guy sound really distorted? A classic pignose does not work well
for bass.
Roland also make some very small battery powered 'micro cubes' -
including a bass model - but that would be a little large for putting on
your belt (a 12" cube). These are fairly new, and I've never seen or
heard one.
It's easy to amplify electric guitar with a small battery powered unit,
but bass is much harder and, perhaps not surprisingly, your options are
limited.
Pignose make a battery powered 'hog 30' - but that sounds crap.
Crate make a couple of models of bass 'taxi' - I don't know what they
sound like.
Phil Jones Bass makes the briefcase - this is so far the best sounding
and most workable battery powered solution fo bass. It sounds pretty
much like a bass amp should sound, it's very portable and the battery
will last over an hour (actual life depends on the battery and how loud
you're playing). I've got one of these and use it a lot - although not
always in battery powered mode. It's a 90 watt amp in battery mode -
but sounds a little quiet for 90 watts - I think this is to do with
getting such tiny speakers to sound so good. Played through a
conventional extension cab it sounds like a 90-100 watt amp. Playing
with a hard playing rock drummer would probably not be a great idea, but
it's fine for most other musical contexts. The amp has an internal 12v
battery (you buy this seperately, but they're easy to find), and will
run off an external 12v battery eg. a car battery or mains power.
The Roland micro cube claims 13 hours of battery life on 6 AA batteries
but with a rated power output of 5 watts I can't really imagine it being
much use in an ensemble setting.
That's about it - it's a very small niche market.
Having a battery powered amp is liberating, especially for small
ensemble situations, relatively acoustic jams or anything outdoors or
away from mains power sources. You can walk in with your bass in one
hand, amp in the other and set up and start playing without having to
fuss looking for power outlets or connecting extension cords.
Of course, something like the Phil Jones Briefcase costs the kind of
money a lot of people would be spending on their main rig for something
that is not much louder than a practice amp - so you've really got to
want to be portable to buy one.
--- Derek
--
Derek Tearne - derek@xxxxxxxxx
Many Hands - Trans Cultural Music from Aotearoa/New Zealand
http://www.manyhands.co.nz/
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