Currently I own one Ashdown bass amp but I have had several others over the years. Each one has I think been excellent for the job I got it to do. I have never had any problems which I have heard once plagued some of the earlier Ashdown amps.
Update: 1-22-11. Okay, now I have had a problem. It sill would not stop me from buying another Ashdown bass amp or from using my current Ashdown amp. See below for the new details. I still think they sound phat and round!
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These amps originated in England and some of the models, like the Mark King MK500 I have and the Klystron series, are still made there. Most are made in China now but some of the cabinets are made in the USA. I am not afraid of the Chinese made amps because I think Ashdown quality control is good. Besides, almost every cheap bass guitar amp is made in China these days. That is why these items remain affordable.
The Ashdown bass amp is characterized by its VU meter, which helps you set your instrument’s gain or as they call it, “Input level.” (Not all their amps have this feature but most do.) Overall, the amps put out accurate power as stated by their individual watt rating. This is uncommon among bass amps. Most amps deliver less than their stated values. Ashdown makes an array of solid-state and tube bass amps. Several of the solid-state amps come with tube driven preamps for a warmer sound. These amps are fast becoming the standard for touring bands in the UK and Europe. I see the ABM 900 EVO III and the ABM 500 EVO III blue bass heads being used by bass players in U2, KT Tunstall, Lenny Kravitz, Katy Perry, and the Foo Fighters in concert videos. These are thick and warm sounding bass amps much like the Ampeg SVT classic. However, they weigh a lot less which is helpful.
Here is a quick outline of the three Ashdown bass amps I owned.
Ashdown bass amp – MK500
I use an Ashdown bass amp – Mark King MK500 right now for several gigs. This is a professional bass amp designed with the help of Level 42 bassist Mark King. This amp gives me some good tone shaping choices with simple controls. Most of the features are standard on the more high-end bass amps. It has a balanced direct line out, effects send and return, mute switch for tuning, input gain, and output level (master volume) control. Controls that are not as common are the 12 band graphic equalizer and Harmonic Emphasis control. The 12-band eq is sensitive and takes a little practice to work. I find it better to cut frequencies than add too much to them. This is especially true at the low-end and high-end of the eq. If you are not careful with these two parts of the eq range, you can blow your speakers up or at the very least create God-awful tone.
Another unique feature is the harmonic emphasis control. This control helps you bring a little more zip to your treble by giving your strings that “new string” sound. I find it to be an interesting feature I have never experienced before on any other bass amplifier. This takes some experimentation too. I run my control around 12:00 or less.
This is a 575-watt bass amp at 4 ohms. It weighs about 14 lbs and is solid-state. However, the tone is reminiscent of a tube amp. I would actually describe the tone as “woody” sounding. I played the amp out of an Ampeg 610 bass cabinet at a gig recently and thought the sound was excellent. I am finding this is a better sounding bass rig out of nonboutique bass cabs. The reason I say this because I do not care for the sound of this amp as much through a neo loaded Schroeder 410 bass cab as much as the Ampeg. The Schroeder in my opinion is too focused on midrange for the Ashdown. The amp does not thicken up well out of it. It needs more of the color certain cabs give. At least for rock music I feel this is the case.
I recommend this bass amp if you are a professional bass player seeking a thick old school sound but want more tone shaping ability than you get with an Ampeg.
Another Ashdown bass amp combo I had was the Ashdown MAG C210T-300 Bass Combo
. I thought this little amp was great for my church gig and I should have kept it. This 35 lbs 2 x 10” speaker cab put out 307 watts at a minimum of 4 ohms. I never turned it up that loud but I thought it had a good warm sound even though it did not have a tube preamp. This is a basic bass amp with the usual Ashdown VU meter, input, output, bass, mid, and treble controls. In addition, there were two boost and cut controls at 340Hz and 1.6 KHz frequencies which helped tone shaping in different rooms. However, the amp also came with compression control used for thickening and equaling out some frequencies. This is not a common control for cheaper amps so it was a nice surprise. However, the even bigger surprise was the Sub-Harmonics control. This control when turned on would produce a note below the one you were playing much as an octave pedal does. You could adjust this lower octave in relation to the straight bass sound for a thickening effect. I thought it worked well.
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If you are looking for a bass amp to do little gigs, churches, weddings and the like, I recommend looking at this amp. It was well worth the cheap price I thought.
Ashdown bass amp – Five Fifteen bass combo
The last Ashdown bass amp I owned is the Ashdown Five Fifteen, which was named after John Entwistle. The amp got its name because of John’s bass solo in the Who’s song, 5:15. This is a little 100-watt practice bass amp with 1 x 15” speaker that I used for quiet rehearsals. It is not a lightweight amp in tone or real weight. It weighed almost 27 lbs, which I thought heavy. However, the tone was superb. For such a small box, this was perfect for small rehearsals. I again wish I had not sold this amp either. I could have been using it now for small restaurant gigs I have been playing lately. The cool thing about this amp that is so critical to learning songs and practicing is it has a headphone jack and a line in input for hooking up a CD or mp3 player. With this feature, you are able to practice and learn songs quietly using headphones. This feature alone helps me practice late at night and never upset my family and neighbors by keeping them up at night. You can also add an 8-ohm extension speaker to this amp for a little added sound but I never had to myself.
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If you are looking for a good solid bass amplifier, I feel that Ashdown is a good brand to check. The pricing on them is reasonable and I felt I got a lot for my dollar. They can be hard to find sometimes. I am not sure the reason for this. Some dealers do not stock them as they once did. These dealers would rather carry Gallien Krueger bass amps instead, which I have never felt sounded good. (However, now, they just released some new models that might be worth checking.) I do recommend you search out an Ashdown bass amp before you buy something else.
Update: 1-22-11.
I had a problem with my Ashdown Mark King MK500. On a gig, it started to cut in and out. Then it started to buzz loudly. This Ashdown bass amp does not have tubes so it was not a bad tube problem. I took it to a local bass amp repair shop here in Southern California. GPS Electronics at 13045 Tom White Way, suite 1 in Norwalk, Ca. I like these guys. The problem was first thought to be the transformer had gone bad. Therefore, they replaced it and I took the amp to another gig. About the end of the 4th set it started to do the same thing again. I took it back to GPS Electronics and the problem was diagnosed to be bad “caps” or capacitors. I have never experienced that before. After doing some research on the Internet, we found there was a bad batch of capacitors that went out to many different electronics. These capacitors are probably from that time.
Anyway, I knew nothing about caps but the guys at GPS told me they should not make noise when you shake them. These did so they must have dried up inside.
The bass amp sounds good as new now. Again, this would not sway me from buying another great sounding Mk500 or Ashdown bass amp.
