baby blue head

[40hertz]

hello!anyone using a baby blue head as a preamp/recording gear/part of live rig?

[40hertz]

???noone?

[Max Valentino]

up til quite recently I had a Baby Blue head which I used for both studio and live work. I used it without fail for about 5 years. Coupled with a Bag End 2x10 it had a wonderful sound, if abit underpowered, live.

For recording it is excellent. The DI is well made and quiet (and switchable...with a pad!) and the eq is superb. Nice studio is trick is the aux rec jack can be used as a line in, which when using headphones, makes the fx blend a "Mor-Me" type of headphone/foldback system. This is very handy in the studio (beleive me!).

And the whole thing is nice and small, making it a very easy haul.

Caveats: a bit of transormer hum, which only appears on the speaker outs, and therefore is a negligible "con" for recording; a bit light on the power output, which translates to loss of headroom and thus it can push your drivers a bit (although, to it's credit it cannot be driven into OD or square wave distortion).

 

BTW: I sold mine only 'cos I was not using it anymore, and had a student who REALLY liked it. I had replaced my BB with a Raven Labs mixer/DI and Raven Labs Pre (and yet another Raven Labs DI...the APD1..) running to a Stewart 2.1 power amp. I found that with the BB having only a single aux send was not enough to keep my loopers in line...and rather running my rack (with the Raven Labs stuff) into the BB (either in the aux loop, or worse, preamping the pramp, I would just run my small rack to a power amp and then to 2 2x12 boxes.

I still kinda regret selling it....it is known as "The poor man's Walter Wooods" for good reason.

IMHO the Baby Blue was the finest amp SWR made. I have tried the new ones, also, they are quite nice, but methinks I detect something different....or is it just me? (the Baby Baby Blue is nice for "refererence" sound and poratbility....damn, see now you've gone and given me GAS...)

Max