Decent bass tones without mains power

JCA2550

Doing a gig next week with my 4 piece group providing ambient folky background music, bass, acoustic guitars, fiddle  voice etc at a small food festival. No mains power available but still want to play electric bass. What have you tried as an amplification solution that sounds decent without shelling out daft money?

ICBM

Roland Bass Micro Cube.

Not the cheapest, but absolutely brilliant.

Kristo

ICBM said:

Roland Bass Micro Cube.

Not the cheapest, but absolutely brilliant.

I use one of these and completely agree. 

JCA2550

Hmm! £300 though

ICBM

Ouch! I paid £100 for mine second hand…

They seem to be going for £200+ now. I would probably pay that, given how good it is, but it’s a painful rise.

fretmeister

The 4 speaker one has been discontinued.

The new 2 speaker version is the £300 version.

Demos sound ace, but at that money, that’s a used Markbass head! 

ICBM

fretmeister said:

Demos sound ace, but at that money, that’s a used Markbass head! 

But which won't run on batteries...

The amazing thing is that the Roland (it's the 4-speaker one I have) not only sounds very good, it produces a usable volume *even outdoors* from six AA batteries and a claimed power output of 5W, which is quite remarkable really - there's definitely some sophisticated processing going on to achieve that, as well as the surprisingly heavy box and speakers. It's a very specialist product for a specific job - although admittedly, I mostly use mine on the power adaptor so I *could* take a 'normal' amp if I wanted... but it's still smaller and lighter than my 'normal' amp, which itself is a modern lightweight 1x10" combo.

pintspiller

Are they amplifying vocals? Roland seems go-to for buskers in general.

JCA2550

pintspiller said:

Are they amplifying vocals?

Usually, yes, but usually we have power laid on. In the end we did the gig fully "acoustic", apart from me who plugged the bass into a battery powered Roland busking amp that I borrowed for the day. Did the job okay.

pintspiller

@JCA2550 they sound like a good investment if busking for anybody (not all councils I believe allow amplified busking). I've been playing almost 40 years so unlikely to start now

spev11

If your still looking for a 4 speaker Roland RX bass cube I've got one for sale, swapped it with my mate for a telebass I'd made. Was going to keep it but I've bought a Dual Cube LX for guitar/portable use. Drop me a message if your interested ( I haven't decided on a price yet but it will be less than £200)

stickyfiddle

Yamaha THR30ii? Not super cheap but sounds great and would still be useful afterwards?

My bandmates are usually amazed when I show up places with a little thing like that and don't even need to plug it in

JCA2550

stickyfiddle said:

Yamaha THR30ii? Not super cheap but sounds great and would still be useful afterwards?

My bandmates are usually amazed when I show up places with a little thing like that and don't even need to plug it in

Hmm, I  admit the whole THR thing is appealing, how long can it be used on one charge I wonder? £450 is similar money to the Fishman Loudbox Mini Charge, if I didn't already have the regular Loudbox mini, I might have gone down that route?

stickyfiddle

JCA2550 said:

stickyfiddle said:

Yamaha THR30ii? Not super cheap but sounds great and would still be useful afterwards?

My bandmates are usually amazed when I show up places with a little thing like that and don't even need to plug it in

Hmm, I  admit the whole THR thing is appealing, how long can it be used on one charge I wonder? £450 is similar money to the Fishman Loudbox Mini Charge, if I didn't already have the regular Loudbox mini, I might have gone down that route?

Yamaha’s spec says “up to 5 hours”. I’ve never used mine quite that long in one go but I’ve definitely gone to around 4 and never had it run out. 

JCA2550

Update time. I got the Loudbox Mini Charge in the end and it seems every bit as good as the regular version but mainsless. So far very happy. Time to get rid of the old one.