Downsizing.

After my recent accident, I finally came to grips with the fact that I need to downsize my bass rig situation. I'm essentially unable to carry/lift anything.


I watched in horror as my girlfriend carried my 4x10" live cabinet down my rickety stairs on the way to a gig. I haven't weighed it, but it's probably right around a hundred pounds because I chose the classic Eminence 10-inch speakers instead of the nifty new neodymium ones (expensive) when did a complete speaker replacement last year. She somehow got the damn thing down the wobbly stairs, but I was sure that she was going to fall or blow out a knee or otherwise injure herself. She got a gold star that evening for not only being an awesome girlfriend, but also playing the role of bad ass bass roadie.

The show was canceled due my drummer cracking a rib. However, I decided to intensify/re-examine my quest for a decent bass combo amplifier.

For years and years, I have been a bass stack/half-stack guy. Combo amps, in general, are something that I've always found underwhelming at best.

I was looking for something with the following "features":

• light weight (for reasons stated above)
• at least 100 watts (really a minimum for the clubs where I tend to play)
• at least one 10" speaker (even though I love the sound of a 15" speaker, they throw the sound too far and I can't hear 'em on stage
• a decent DI (because 99% of the time, that's what signal winds up going to FOH for me)
• as always, less is more when it comes to expense.

I considered a bunch of little amps and then I saw the Line 6 Lowdown Studio 110is one, which (except for wattage), seemed to fit the bill.  I read a lot of propaganda (mythology) from Line 6, and read lots of reviews.  This video is pretty spot-on, even if it is from the manufacturer:



I was pretty apprehensive about not having a tube in it, and the whole modeling deal, but I thought that I'd give it a shot.  The worst case scenario is that I'd have a practice combo for home use.

It's sort of cute:

And, it has some presets that are pretty helpful, actually:

Test 1: Home use

The 75 watts are plenty loud enough for home workouts.  Sure, it's not the same as having a glass-breaking raging stack, but it's realistically loud enough for me to do some playing at home.  I'm not so sure about the presets, but once I got into the hidden "Brit" preset, all was good.  The compressor (modeled of a LA-2A, my favorite studio secret weapon) really helps out when I get excited and fingerstyle gone wild.  This little one should do the trick for practice at home.

Test 2: Band practice

This was with my 6-piece band (two guitars, violin, drums, vocals, me), so your mileage may vary.  This little sucker can hold its own in a small room without having to dime the master volume (which really should be labelled "Volume" since there's no separate preamp volume)--at 75%, I could still keep up until the guitars and cymbals get loud.  On the more quiet numbers, the amp performed like a champ.

Test 3: Live

I used this little guy for three shows this summer.  75 watts isn't enough juice to use as a monitor live; the bass had to be pumped in the monitors.  Usually, my stage rig doesn't even go through the monitors.  Otherwise, it seems to be really great in the FOH only using the balanced DI output, which, BTW, isn't affected by the master level.  On recordings of one show, the bass guitar sounds great.

Test 3: Studio Recording

I suppose that this is the intended use of this piece of equipment, and it really performs in the studio environment.  I used a Radial JDI as a safety (just in case I wanted to re-amp), in addition to the balanced DI out from the Line 6.  I used a stereo headphone adapter to mute the speaker output, which allowed for tracking bass and drums in the same room.  The two outputs summed make a truly huge bass sound that sits well in the mix with minimal EQ.  This setup might be my new secret weapon.  My only real gripe is that the "Gain" control doesn't add a tube "feel," but rather more of a "fizzy" overdrive that isn't very convincing.  More tweaking might be required in this area.  Here is a short mp3 sample of how the dual DI setup sounds.

Quickie Conclusion

For the time being, this little one is going to do the trick just fine for most of the things I do.  As long as a venue as a reasonable monitor system, I'll definitely be lugging this one instead of something bigger/heavier.  I'd be more happier if it had a little more output RMS, but like Mick Jagger says, "You can't always get what you want."  

This is pretty damn close, though.