Ampeg Bass Amp

Yesterday I went to House of Guitars, being a Saturday I had some free time, and lo and behold -- they had an Ampeg amp there. For a while now they've only been carrying Fender bass amps, whose sound I'm not fond of. I mentioned this to the owner(?) of the store once and he seemed put off by my comment. Fender makes neat guitar amps, but I don't care for their bass cabs.

I've never played on an Ampeg amp but I've heard them and read about them and knew they were top notch. I picked up the only bass I like in the store, a Fender Big Block P Bass, which features a solitary humbucker (most choice for producing funk bass lines like I do), and plugged into the Ampeg BA115. The Fender bass has got a dual tone control knob that I still haven't figured out all of the way, but I soon found a sound I liked and rolled with it. The action on the bass is startlingly fast.

After a couple minutes I was warmed up and funk slapping away. WOOOOOOoohooo it was fun. I never tested the power of the amp, due to the number of people in the store. Pushing it up to 3 or 4 was even too much to allow the occupants in the store to hear anything other than me. I dropped it back down to 2 and played for a minute, eventually getting dragged out by Kathy, who was at a loss in finding a pick to strum a beautiful Alvarez acoustic guitar she had picked up.

All I can say is I'd go back to the store every day to play on that rig, but I fear I would quickly wear out the strings on the bass, and most likely break one. Bass strings are expensive too, and I wouldn't like to pay for replacement strings on a "new" bass. Not only that, I'm sure they would think twice before they let me play on anything if I ever broke a bass string.

I am going to watch every single episode of Cowboy Bebop thanks to this website. Kathy and I watched the first episode tonight, and loved every minute of it. I can't wait to see the rest of it!