Last night I went scouring (via the phone) the entire city of Houston for a BOSS GT-10B bass-specific multi-effect floorboard which was announced at the January NAMM. Of course, nobody in town had one. If GC doesn’t have one, you know none of the mom and pop stores have them -> but that didn’t stop me from calling them and finding out how little the people keep up with gear trends. I envy them in a way.
Anyway, so I went playing some Soundgear 5 strings (with the same Bartolini pickups I have) through some small combo amps. After several hours, I left the store with an Ampeg BA-115. Well, once I got it out of the environment of the store, I realized two things: 1) It hisses like a perpetual snake and 2) it’s pretty huge, and pretty powerless.
So, I thought “crapola”… but this afternoon I called up GC Clear Lake and explained that I wanted to bring it in and exchange for the B option in my A/B comparisons: a Gallien-Krueger backline 210 combo. The “backline” series is the low-end Gallien-Krueger line but I’m telling you, it sounds awesome and for the money is a lot of bang for the buck.
I was concerned that I had already broken down the shipping boxes, but Chris @ GC Clear Lake said don’t sweat it and bring it on in. So within an hour and a half of that call, I was driving back home with the new combo. I *almost* bought the same amp and cab in a separate non-combo format, but given my “needs” as far as bass sound reinforcement go, the utility of being able to tilt the combo to use as a monitor outweighed the possibility of modularity.
So I don’t even want to mention the Ampeg again except to say this one is SO much more flexible, sounds much better, has a lot of open routing and *drumroll* has enough juice to run an extension cab! The cheap backline cabs are calling my name. The combo runs at 200watts as-is, but pushes 300 watts when connected to an expansion! sick! Single 15? Probably. 410? Probably not, but interesting possibility.
So the net result is, once I’ve sold a couple of keyboards, I’ll be a) ahead and b) not nearly as deep into bass $ commitment as I’d thought (looking at the boutique Eden combos.. heh… if anything now I’m looking at some effects and another bass 
and that’s nowhere near necessary. Nor even wanted. Except an American 5 string J would be kind of sweet.
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Side note: The 8 string washburn sounds ill through this thing - I love it, thanks Anthony!
Side note 2: My old 4 string sounds like a dead piece of crap, I kid you not, through this thing.
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