Gear Discussion Forums > Bass Amps & Effects

Would you do this?

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Dave W:
I'm not convinced it's planned obsolescence so much as just not being cost-effective to repair. Long term reliability is still up in the air.

Psycho Bass Guy:

--- Quote from: Dave W on January 10, 2017, 04:21:23 PM ---I'm not convinced it's planned obsolescence so much as just not being cost-effective to repair. Long term reliability is still up in the air.

--- End quote ---

Especially on switching amps, many designs use off-the shelf modules for both power supply and output stages rather than engineer one from scratch. It makes short term economic sense until the actual manufacturer of those boards discontinues them and an entire product line becomes obsolete, usually with brand new models sitting on store shelves (cough- Markbass).  All of this could be avoided, even using surface mount electronics, by having an in-house design engineer, which was standard until the "big boys" moved all their amp production overseas. When the modules develop problems in amps, many times they are ones that the manufacturers never envisioned and because the modules are generic, may be caused by a myriad of otherwise unrelated "features."

Simply from a basic design perspective, the amps are not going to last as long because the smaller components will heat up more rapidly and dissipate that heat much more slowly because of their smaller relative surface area, which shortens their service lives dramatically. PA power amps are the most analogous to bass amps which was why I cited Crown and QSC, both of which have revised their flagship power amp models on average about every two years in the past ten years where previously their "big guns" were 20+ year-old designs or variations thereof.

Tim Brosnan:
Just wanted to give an update: I have not had an opportunity to use it as a DI for recording, as that situation has since dried up. But I have been using it as a pre amp, bypassing the EQ on my Fender Rumble amp. I stuck to the SVT setting, since I've always wondered what playing thru an SVT would be like. I know it'll never be exact, but I love the way this thing sounds! Big, fat, punchy-seems like a punch in the gut playing thru this-in a good way of course! I know the Sansamp can produce a lot of different tones, but the SVT works just great for me! I like it best with passive basses.

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