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New amp in the barn...


DanYmaL X

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I just picked up a new (used) amp... Kind of an oddball rig, too.

It's a Roland Bolt-60 combo. Made in the early 80's... anyone remember these things? The unusual thing about it is it has a solid state 2 channel preamp with a tube power section- 2 6L6's and a 12AT7 for 60W into an 8ohm 12" speaker.

This one has just been overhauled by the local amp Guru, and he put brand new Groove Tubes and a Peavey Black Widow in it. Perfect for a small room or mic'd bass amp!

I haven't set it up yet, but I can't wait to see what it can do as a bass amp. Form all the reviews I've read, the clean channel and the power amp section are outstanding, although not many had good things to say about the overdrive. There are a few modifications out there to enhance the low end and give it some more punch, which I will likely be checking into soon, But I'm going to see how it sounds as-is first.

I'll be bringing it to rehearsal Tuesday night... review to follow.

 

 

DX

Aerodyne Jazz Deluxe

Pod X3 Live

Roland Bolt-60 (modified)

Genz Benz GBE250-C 2x10

Acoustic 2x12 cab

 

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Those are great amps... they do sound good.

The general consensus I've seen on this Roland is to use a separate preamp and run it into the power FX return... we'll see how it goes.

 

DX

Aerodyne Jazz Deluxe

Pod X3 Live

Roland Bolt-60 (modified)

Genz Benz GBE250-C 2x10

Acoustic 2x12 cab

 

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Well, rehearsal went well, and the Bolt performed flawlessly. It sounded great and turned a couple of heads, even...

I mainly used the clean channel, Eq: Bass- 3 o'clock, Mid- 12 o'clock, High- 10 o'clock, and on the bass kept the P pickup dimed and the J at 50% with the tone about 50% as well.

I even tried turning the reverb up to around 3-4 got some cool sounds out of it.

My slap skills are mediocre to say the least, but it sounded good thorough the Bolt... well, let's just say that if someone who could slap well were to play my bass through the Bolt, it would have sounded good.

It was extremely quiet, for a tube amp... I was expecting a lot of hum... the line out into the DI box did have a nasty buzz that went away completely with the ground lift on the box. It was actually much quieter than the house amp, which is an Ampeg B-115. I did get a little noise out of it playing around with the overdrive channel though, but I won't be using that much, if at all.

It is a bit heavy on the high end, since it is a guitar amp after all, but there is a fairly painless capacitor replacement mod that will open up the low end... I'll probably just add the cap with a switch since I still fiddle with the skinny strings once in a while.

There is also an easy mod to give it a little more punch by cutting into the feedack leads to the power tubes and adding a switch.

At any rate, I'm quite happy with it so far... the first impression is definitely a good one... It's been around 20 years since I last owned a tube amp, and I had forgotten how sweet they are.

More to come...

 

DX

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aerodyne Jazz Deluxe

Pod X3 Live

Roland Bolt-60 (modified)

Genz Benz GBE250-C 2x10

Acoustic 2x12 cab

 

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