SVT or not to SVT

Ben Lemelin of Your Favorite Enemies talks about the Sansamp VT Bass pedal.

Yeah I'm Gonna Marry It!

V8 under the hood

Ashdown have released a new range of amps which now have old school tubes in both power amp and pre-amp stages. The new Classic All Value Series amps and cabs are hand made in the USA or UK and revisit the classic 70's bass amp configurations.  The Ashdown BTA400 pumps the much loved EVOIII value preamp through 8 x KT88 valves with 400 watts of power. So, you get the lovely warm and very shape-able EVO front end and front control panel with big-time tube power!!  A serious contender and now perhaps surpass-er of the Ampeg SVT?  

Genz Benz Bangz!

Over summer I've been searching for a small combo bass amp to play acoustic gigs and to use for practice.  I wanted something small and light but yet still reasonably powerful.  A "kickback" design is also what I'm after too. This is where the speaker is angled in its cab to be firing up at you - much like the file back speakers we all love and hate at our feet at the front of stage.  As I got more into this search I discovered maybe I could "kill two birds with one stone".

More Recording

With a lot of recording work to go for our new Stellas Kitchen EP it was back to Harpoon Studios to record bass for our track "Satellite".  Having learned a fair bit from the our last session for "Steal Your Mind" we were able to reduce tone set up brain damage.  Although true to form by the end of the session I wasn't so sure what my name was.  I think maybe it was Jon's "accidental" feedback spikes into my cans which was most responsible.  So the bass set up for this song..

Bass Brain Damage

Its now my turn in the studio to put down the bass parts for "Steal Your Mind". We're recording our 2nd EP at Stellas Kitchen and Steal Your Mind is probably going to be the lead track.  Recording for me is a love hate type of thing. Every musician has their insecurities and doubts about their ability and for me its recording which is where these feelings surface the most. For bass every pop or string clack in your playing stays forever on the track.  

Bass Amplifiers

I spent my first years playing bass borrowing bass amps.  I also used to practice through a little ex-keyboard 10 watter that I was "borrowing".   My highschool had an old Fender Bassman bass amp which we used to be able to borrow sometimes.  It was a combo and looked something like this.