Today is bass day at Gear Gods, at least for the moment until I post about something else. And in honor of bass day, EBS saw fit to announce its new amplifier, the Classic 500. It’s essentially a higher wattage version of the Classic 450, but with a revised drive circuit.
It’s that drive circuit that’s the most intriguing. A much larger percentage of bassists have taken to using distortion over the last decade, but a shockingly small number of manufacturers are building drive into their amps. I suppose that since most bass amps are solid state, built-in vs. pedal distortion has less of a tonal difference. But I was a little bummed when Mesa/Boogie, a company that has had overdrive channels in its recent solid state amps like the M-2000 and Big Block 750, passed on the chance to build in some tube aggression when designing it’s new tube bass amp line.
Anyway, EBS has always been an innovative company. They’re still one of the only companies to release a bass-specific multi-band compression pedal. Very few people have heard the new Classic 500 as of yet, but it will be making its public debut at the Bass Player Live event in California on November 9-10. If it’s at NAMM as well then we at Gear Gods will make a point of checking it out.
