what do ya think of the ampeg B4R

[Tajue17]

curious what people here think of the ampeg B4R solid state amp?

hope its good cause I just traded my Mesa Boogie venture for it, with the Mesa I don't know I liked it but something was missing so I went back to the store where I bought it and asked if I could trade it in and the owner said I could for full value
this store only carry's Ampeg, Mesa, and Hartke and I already had a bad experience with hartke and decided against the mesa's so it was ampeg I guess to sit on my classic cabs...
now I had three picked out the SVT classic with tubes which I think would of sounded the best but you have to replace the tubes every year for around 250.00 and it weighs 80lbs, then was the SVT4pro but the reviews where 50/50 with people on the negative end being really pissed off with it and then there was the B4R which on harmony.com had awesome reviews and is supposed to be very reliable and sounds decent which is good for the music I play.
so there it was the B4R with all brandnew Monster cables, and a brandnew Korg rack Mount tuner(the nicest one), and a 4-space SKB case to hold everything and 2 packs of DR strings to try.

I guess if you tell me it sux theres nothing I can do but nobody liked the Mesa/boogie anyway so I guess I won't feel so bad, I just figured I tell people about it here and see what you say.

thanks for looking and any opinions,, Ted/Boston

 

[Psycho Ward]

I'm sure someone here has one and will chime in, I have a couple of tube based Ampeg's and I love those. Seems like good stuff to me and sounds like you got a good trade. What only matters is what YOU think, if you like it, it's good.

Hell there's this one guy that likes Sunn amps!

 

[Dr. Nick]

Hey, if YOU are happy with it, that's all that counts!!!

The B4R was a finalist in my amp hunt. I went the other way, but did sound real nice. Should be reliable, and it has a five-year warranty, so just relax and have fun!

 

[xring]

I like mine. I run it through Avatar 212 and 210 cabs bridged mono. Very loud and clean. It was difficult to dial in the tone I was looking for no matter what bass I plugged into it. I love the scooped setting, but in a band situation, it immediately turned to mud. The best thing I ever did with my rig, was get a sonic maximizer, and now I run the EQ practically flat. I can't make it sound better no matter what I do with the EQ. The B4R has a ton of useful inputs, which will come in handy. The 2 internal amps have so many hook up options (biamp etc.) it makes it interesting to try different options when running more that 1 cab. You should like it, but don't be discouraged if you can't find "the sound" right away.

 

[Dr. Nick]

...Hell there's this one guy that likes Sunn amps!

Yeah! Freaky to think there are people like that out there! Scary, really!!!

 

[bovinehost]

Hell there's this one guy that likes Sunn amps!

Really? What an oddball this guy must be.

 

[Psycho Ward]

Jack I bet that rig smokes, I've got to get down to Texas and hear you guys. I've several old buddys I need to catch up with there as well, maybe after the first of the year I can retrace the Bob Wills 41 tour.

 

[bovinehost]

Chuck, it does everything I've ever asked it to do, and there ain't much more you can ask of a rig. And you're always welcome here and yes, we do have a guest room.

But what of this Ampeg B4R? What was the question again?

I had an Ampeg B2R a long time ago and it sounded great but was a bit underpowered. If the B4R has more headroom, then I imagine it's a good choice. Ampeg? How can you go wrong, really?

 

[Psycho Ward]

Thanks buddy, and if you are ever in my neck of the woods I have a guest room too and it's yours for as long as you like. Really Jack, if you ever connect on a flight or anything around here let me know, I'll even string up one of the leftys backwards for ya!

 

[Randracula]

I had an Ampeg B2R a long time ago and it sounded great but was a bit underpowered. If the B4R has more headroom, then I imagine it's a good choice. Ampeg? How can you go wrong, really?

That's exactly what I was going to say.My B2R had great tone but it was a bit underpowered so the B4R should be a pretty good choice...........

 

[Katana6506]

Really? What an oddball this guy must be.

"Beware of Possum?"

 

[bovinehost]

Yes, "Beware of Possum".

It's a long story. But it's good advice, don't you think?

 

[Katana6506]

'Tis indeed good advice.

What's the story behind it?

 

[maddog]

Yes, "Beware of Possum".

Alive or canned?

 

[fresnorich]

Yes, "Beware of Possum".

It's a long story. But it's good advice, don't you think?

Yes.

 

[bovinehost]

Well....way back in the old days, let's call it 1977, 1978, I had this band called Motor Skills in Houston. We all had regular paying gigs, playing top 40 and classic rock and country and so on, but we were...unfulfilled.

So, ignoring a number of contractual obligations, a few of us began to gather on off-nights to play what I called psycho-neurotic punk jazz. My partners in this were very, very good players. What they were doing with me, frankly, I do not know, but we had one hell of a good time.

Eventually, we recorded some things. Being almost entirely instrumental in nature, we could name things whatever we wanted, and we did.

1. "Measurements In The Twilight Zone"
2. "That Flowable Sulphur"
3. "The Harmless Opossum Reprise"

And so on. We were sort of like Primus, I guess, only way before Primus, and so we were wildly unpopular on the Houston club scene. We wrote stuff in 11/32 just to be annoying and to see if we could really do it. We could. No one cared.

Anyway, "Harmless Opossum" was always our opening song. Where the name came from, I do not now recall. It was, after all, the seventies.

Once, long ago, I knew a Playboy Playmate, and I had her sign some photos for our drummer, Fred Drake, who later would become a producer and relatively famous and so on. But at the time, he was our drummer.

She signed the photos, "May your opossum always be harmless."

Fred had a day gig making little plastic signs for oil wells. (It was his dad's company.) In his spare time, he would make other little plastic signs that had nothing to do with oil production.

And so, in the late 70s, I found myself with a boatload of these things that said silly things, including "Beware of Possum". I recall fondly one that was stuck on my bass case for years. It said "Contains Quivering Snit".

And not long ago, I rediscovered the Possum signs.

And Fred, my best friend for many years, died a few years ago, and so I now proudly display my "Beware of Possum" signs whenever I can.

That, my friends, is the story.

Talk about a complete thread hijack!

Google Fred Drake and see if you know who he produced in his too few years on this earth. He was good, too.

Jack

 

[Katana6506]

I nearly spat milk on the keyboard at the 11/32 bit. Great anecdote.

Sorry for the hijack-back to the Ampeg.

 

[SteveB]

Jack,

Your old band's free-form song titles reminded me of my 4 years of music theory & composition classes in high school.

One of the kids in my class (Mike S.) was a rebel of sorts, and we had to compose pieces all the time, score them, and hand out copies to classmates and then perform the pieces. He liked to name his pieces with rather odd titles. I remember a few to this day:

* Mike's pus-sy zit in G major (that's not the kittie cat, but a reference to pus)

* Chrono-synclastic Infindibulum (the live version of which he called "Chrono-synclastic disembowelment)

Ahh, school days..

 

[Tajue17]

.

Man you guys just Hi-Jacked my thread

no but really thanks for the posts,,, hey you guys that did run the B4R (or other ampeg heads that have this option) in BI-Amped mode which mode did you like the best? I tried the Bi-amp mode where the Bottom cab is "Low" and the 4X10s are run in "Full range" but didn't have time to mess with the settings cause it was way to boomy so I just went direct from the speaker outs to the cabs.

I'm curious about the Bi-Amp mode going "Full Range" to both the 1X15 and the 4X10's does anyone know if this will sound good?

also I was told to get rid of the smiley face settings on the graphic EQ because you get lost in the mix and cancel out the 33hz graphic knob (? the one all the way to the left) altogether when using Ampeg cabs because they cannot go that low? a guy at Talk bass said to go with an inverted pattern with ampeg where the eq looks like a frown and bring the bass up with the bass knob on the amp and tweak from there with EQ on the bass guitar.

and one last thing the manual says it recommends the amp to be run in Bi-amp mode to take full advantage of the full power this amp offers, I guess if you just plug into the speaker outputs it only runs on one amp and doesn't get the higher volumes??

can anyone elaborate on this Info?

 

[Dr. Nick]

Man you guys just Hi-Jacked my thread

no but really thanks for the posts,,, hey you guys that did run the B4R (or other ampeg heads that have this option) in BI-Amped mode which mode did you like the best? I tried the Bi-amp mode where the Bottom cab is "Low" and the 4X10s are run in "Full range" but didn't have time to mess with the settings cause it was way to boomy so I just went direct from the speaker outs to the cabs.

I'm curious about the Bi-Amp mode going "Full Range" to both the 1X15 and the 4X10's does anyone know if this will sound good?

also I was told to get rid of the smiley face settings on the graphic EQ because you get lost in the mix and cancel out the 33hz graphic knob (? the one all the way to the left) altogether when using Ampeg cabs because they cannot go that low? a guy at Talk bass said to go with an inverted pattern with ampeg where the eq looks like a frown and bring the bass up with the bass knob on the amp and tweak from there with EQ on the bass guitar.

and one last thing the manual says it recommends the amp to be run in Bi-amp mode to take full advantage of the full power this amp offers, I guess if you just plug into the speaker outputs it only runs on one amp and doesn't get the higher volumes??

can anyone elaborate on this Info?

I don't know about a complete "frown", but lack of mids will cause you to get lost in the mix. A boost in the low mids usually solves that problem for me...

Regarding your speaker configuration, I would suggest that "mono-bridge" is the way to go. This will give you the amps maximum power (1350 watts) into a full-range cab 4ohm cab (or two 8 ohm cabs daisy-chained together).

Good luck!