Skip to main content

Review of the Gallien Krueger MB212

As a new Dad, I recently relieved myself (and my back) of much of my former bass gear, which included Hartke 2x10 and 4x10 cabinets, a 2x10 Mesa Boogie combo, outboard preamp and Hartke head mounted in a rack case, a massive powered Yorkville sub, and more.  All of this I traded for a single 2x12 combo: the Gallien Krueger MB212.  500 watts, 37 lbs., fits easily behind the driver seat of my car.  The size and weight is nothing short of a dream - but my big question was, of course, going to be - what about the tone?  Last night I had my first gig with it. Here's a look at my experience.

Background


First, some background explanation of my band and the environment of our test is probably in order. My band is a heavily progressive influenced rock trio (guitar, bass, drums), with lots of guitar solos, bass solos, significant dynamics - ranging from very quiet, to heavy distortion with extremely intense double-kick (sounding) drum beats.  During these louder parts, there are often very intricate bass lines that need to be articulated well, so a loud-yet-accurate amp is part of my requirement.

The venue is a basement bar affair with half stone/ledge wall on 3 sides, and half wood.  Because of the significant presence of stone walls, it takes a lot of acoustic energy to sound "loud" in that room.  The PA consisted of two QSC 15" 3-way speakers, and a 600 watt Yorkville sub.

Load In

Loading in was awesome.  I walked in with my bass in a soft case gig bag, over my shoulder, pedal bag in one hand, and my amp in the other.  Now if only I didn't also have to bring in an entire PA system for the rest of the band... But anyway.

So I'll get straight to the point.  The MB212 impressed me.  Once I had everything dialed in, it had no problem cutting through even during very loud passages, and I never got lost once (I'm primarily an ear player, so if I can't hear myself I find it very difficult to blindly finger a riff).  By the end of the first set, the band had gotten a lot louder (as they do), and I turned up my amp to compensate.  I was very pleased as it easily rose to the challenge.

Finer Details

A few finer details about this amp.  First off, it naturally seems quite "boomy".   This is generally an undesirable aspect to the sound of an amp - muddiness in the 120-200Hz  region.  I found that it was very easily dialed out by significantly lowering the "low mid" knob.  It is just short of being all the way down.  I also learned that this issue seems to diminish as the volume gets higher.  I've heard that the MB210, the 2x10 version of this amp, doesn't have as much of an issue with this.  It has a slightly reduced top end volume.

Contour Knob


 I also have learned through experience that, with this band, I must leave the contour knob "off".  This function basically scoops out much of the mid range, and is probably better suited  for playing in bands with more instrumentation.  At least in my case, it caused me not to be able to hear a portion of the notes in my solos (only the bottom and really top end notes came out strong).

After having played a Mesa Venture combo for the last 7 years, I have to (unfairly) say that the tone of the MB212 is not "sweet".  It is NOT bad.  It is strong, complete, and articulate at high volume.  The tone shaping controls are sufficient to make whatever adjustments are necessary.  I would probably not prefer  this amp in situations that are guaranteed to be fairly low volume - I'd probably use my 10" Fender B-Dec 30.  However, the MB212 is light and convenient enough that it might still end up going along.

The build quality of the MB212 is excellent.  It feels very sturdy, and the newer, all-black look is subdued yet polished.  I do get the sense that the finish is easily damaged.  I got an excellent padded cover from Sweetwater.com for a cool $50.

So in retrospect, I'm happy I got it.  At times I am haunted by the thought that I should have considered the TC Helicon BG250 .  I played it in the music store and it had a much cleaner (albeit somewhat sterile) sound.  I didn't get a chance to turn it up, so I don't know if it would meet the volume requirements, but the reviews are good.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reaper, Linux, and the Behringer X-Air - Complete Studio Solution, Part 1

Introduction and Rationale This is part one of a major effort to document my experiences with recreating my home studio, entirely using Linux.  Without getting into too many of the specifics, a few months ago I decided that I was unhappy with Windows' shenanigans - to the point that I was ready to make a serious attempt to leave it behind.  For most in this situation, the obvious choice is to switch to Mac OS.  With its proven track record, support, and options for multimedia production, it is naturally the first alternative to consider if your goal is to simply use something other than Windows. For me the choice was not so simple. I despise Mac OS and, in general, the goals and philosophies put forth by Apple in an effort to ostensibly provide users with an "easy" working environment.  It does not help that I have also failed to find any aspect of the Mac OS UI intuitive, but I realize that this is a subjective matter. With my IT background and user-control* f...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Alternative Take on AI Doom and Gloom

 I've purposely held my tongue until now on commenting about "AI" (or, more specifically as has come to be known, GAN or Generative Adversarial Networks).  It seems like it is very in-style to complain about how it has made a real mess of things, it is displacing jobs, the product it creates lacks soul, it's going to get smart and kill us all, etc. etc.  But I'm not here to do any of that. Rather I am going to remind everyone of how amazing a phenomenon it is to watch a disruptive technology becoming democratized From the time of its (seeming) introduction to the public at large, around November of 2022, to late 2023, the growth and adoption rate has been nothing short of explosive. It features the fastest adoption rate of any new technology ever, by a broad margin.  To give a reference, the adoption rate for AI image and text generation, real-world uses, in just 12 months is comparable to all of that of the another disruptive technology, the World Wide Web, takin...
Post a Comment
Read more

RANT TIME: Why do replies to a message I sent go to my spam folder?

Despite what one would think/hope, sending a message to a given address does not inherently give Google a high confidence that a reply from this address is expected (and, for example, that it should bypass spam checks). I have confirmed with Google's tech support that there is no way to automatically have this happen. The user can do the following: 1. Add the address to your contacts list in Gmail. 2. Check spam folder for replies, and mark it as "not spam" if something ends up there, which should influence the fate of future replies received. I can also approve an address at the domain level, i.e. if it is a big vendor or similar. I've had to do this with several of our Chinese vendors. I regularly ask engineering and purchasing to give me a list of the supplies we deal with, so I can approve them as a preventative measure. For what it's worth, all of the false positive instances of reply -> spam we have experienced have involved the sender's email server ...
Post a Comment
Read more