When I returned the Studio 40 to Sam Ash last night, I was hoping they would have something else in stock that would be a suitable substitute, but the pickings were pretty slim. In fact, the whole bass section looked a little thread-bare. Most of the amps there were used, except for the full line of (ugh) Hartke HD combos, and I wouldn't take home one of those if they were giving them away. So this morning, I decided to take a trip to the closest GC to see what they had in stock.
I had pretty much narrowed my choices down to the (non-Studio) Fender Rumble 40:
And the Orange Crush Bass 50:
Fender had left a bad taste in my mouth with the Studio 40, so part of me wanted to give another brand a try, but in my heart, I was still leaning toward the Fender. I had done a lot of research, and much of what I'd heard/read told me that the Orange really wasn't for me... But it could be, if I ignored all the gainy stuff. I don't play metal, and while I sometimes use overdrive on bass, I don't care for high-gain distortion.
The Orange definitely seems geared towards metal, but it has a 12" speaker, an effects loop (which the Fender does not), it's bi-amped, and everyone says they're built like a tank. In most of the review videos I've watched, they get all excited about the overdrive circuit, but that's the only thing about the amp that anybody says anything good about (in fact, I've seen some reviews where they've been kinda underwhelmed by the amp in general). This amp seems to have four voices, and three of them are overdrive, distortion and fuzz.
Regardless, I wanted to try one for myself, even though I knew I'd probably go with the Fender... There might be something that I really like about it, and it was the only other amp besides the Rumble that made the cut in this size/power range.
When I walked into Guitar Center, the situation was slightly better than what I found at Sam Ash, but they didn't have as many amps on display in the bass room as they usually do, and they didn't have an Orange Crush. They did, however, have a bunch of Fender Rumbles, from the 25 up to the 200, so I located a 40, grabbed a Jazz Bass off the wall and plugged it in.
And it was frickin' glorious!
It sounded better than the Studio 40... It's hard to make this amp sound bad. I expected the Rumble 40 to sound about the same as the Studio, except without all the digital effects and modelling, but this amp sounds bigger, burlier and louder than the Studio 40. I can hardly believe it's just a 10" speaker! Granted, I only gave the Studio a cursory spin before I ran into problems, and didn't have a chance to really "dig in" to the amp, but I did spend a fair amount of time working the eq in the "Clean Bassman" setting, and I wasn't getting any tones like this out of it! The Studio sounds good, but the Regular Rumble 40 literally made my jaw drop, and I felt all fluttery inside.
I can't remember the last time I actually got excited playing a bass amp in a store!By the time a salesman came by (to their credit, they left me alone for a reasonable amount of time), I was ready to take it home, and they actually had some out back in unopened boxes too, so I didn't have to get into a negotiation about having to take the floor model. I did try my best to get a discount, but in true GC fashion, they wouldn't have it. Unless you have a coupon that applies to the specific item that you're buying, they don't want to hear about it. Thus broke my long streak of never paying full retail for music gear (or much of anything else, for that matter), but I didn't care... I had it in hand, and that beats waiting till Monday to call my Sweetwater rep, and then waiting a week to get it, just to save $25 off a $200 amp.
When I got it home, I played around with that thing for about 2 hours, turning knobs and pushing buttons, and really pushing the amp to its limits... And it gets very loud. Not loud enough to play in a band with a drummer, but it'll get way louder than you want it in your living room before you hit '10'. It's got good headroom with no clipping, and the speaker handled the volume very well, even when I had everything (Gain, OD, Master) cranked. It never broke up, or got farty sounding.
Oddly, the one feature that I thought I wasn't going to care for (the over-drive circuit), was the thing I had the most fun with! A lot of bass amps have built-in overdrive, and most of them sound like ass, and I never engage them. I like my bass to sound full, and growly, and menacing to begin with, and if I want a bit of distortion, cranking the gain up a bit usually satisfies me. But most built-in bass amp overdrives usually sound like a bucket of rusty barbed wire and razor blades to me. This overdrive is something else, though... It's really musical distortion... I love it!
Another feature that I thought was going to be a gimmick that I would never use are the three "pre-sets" (Bright, Contour, and Vintage). Most people write them off as a gimmick, but I don't think anybody has really used them to their fullest extent... You can use them in combination with each other, with the overdrive, or even EQ'ing them further results in all kinds of great sounds. It's a starting pint, not a destination. I really like the fact that it has a 4-band EQ too. The Orange had 3-band with a parametric mid control, but I always preferred graphic EQ over parametric. It's more precise.
This amp doesn't have all the ins and outs that the Studio 40 has, but it has an XLR out that I can use for recording, or I could always mic it. All in all, I'm super happy with it. I knew this amp was good, but it's even better than I expected. I'm kinda glad that the Studio 40 I got turned out to be a dog, because I would have never found out how good this one is!
