Any love for Darkglass bass heads?

[jazzyvee]

im thinning my herd and thinking of trading two of my spare bass heads that ive been trying to sell a while for a new darkglass m900 that i tried out this afternoon.
It sounds great and clean and punchy with my elan 4.
Not interested in the distortion channel it has as i like clean. Anyone here had experience with this model or other bass heads.

[cozmik_cowboy]

I don't have any experience with them, but this online buddy of mine from the UK tried one this afternoon & said he liked the clean channel a lot; based on his recommendation, I'd say go for it.......


Peter

[StephenR]

Have you been able to try the Mesa D800+? No experience with the Darkglass but my experience with the Mesa head has been positive and it seems very popular. I don't think the D800 has any kind of distortion built in but it can be adjusted to sound flat and modern or you can dial in a bit (or a lot) of "vintage tube type" personality.

[jazzyvee]

Hi StephenR, I tried the D800 and didn't think it was delivering the rich warm bottom end I get from my Mesa boogie walkabout. After trying the Darkglass again I have to say it does sound good but this time there was no wow factor and on that visit I found the sound was a little cold and less full in the bottom end, something I could not get the salesman to understand or accept. But then he plays rock bass and I play more reggae and Jazz funk so our perception on what is the right amount and nature of bottom end is widely different so to that end I couldn't find anything that was strong enough soundwise to part with that much cash. So best stay put.

In the end I decided that since I had a second F1-x sitting around that I previously used when I was experimenting with bi-amping, It would be better to use that.
I ended up getting a SYNQ 1K0 class D Power amp which is 1U and shallow rack so I was able to use my SKB shallow xrack case and build a 3U setup with my DS-5, F1-x and the Synq power amp. I've used it on two gigs so far with my barefaced cabs and it sounds great.

[StephenR]

Glad that you found a solution that works for you and nice to have a single rack-space power amp. Personally, as attractive as the concept of an extremely small, light weight, all-in-one bass head seems, I still prefer matching a stand-alone pre-amp of my choice to a lightweight power amp.

[lbpesq]

I concur.  Currently I'm playing through an F-2B and a 1U Carvin DCM200L stereo power amp in a 2 space SKB case.  Love it!

BIll, tgo

[jazzyvee]

I've used this rig now a few times and it works great I get a lovely thick clean sound through my barefaced cabs. If i'm being picky i'd say it would be nice to be able to bridge the amp at 4ohms to get max output into my 4ohm, 1600w barefaced cab. Not that I'd ever really need that much output as 540w into 4 ohms is more than loud enough.