Hard to believe, but there is an American-made bass head that’s 5.5 pounds and sells for $400. Odds are, it sounds good too. But let us digress. Do you know Carvin? Sure, you’ve seen the catalogs, but have you seen their company DVD? This is a must see. It’ll show you why Carvin is a national treasure. Lowell Kiesel started the company in 1946, naming it for his two eldest sons, Carson and Gavin. We met Carson and some of the staff. These are very nice and relaxed folks, and very competent instrument builders. And it’s still a FAMILY OWNED company, building just about everything in the USA. Best yet, they got a whole mess of cool bass gear that gets better all the time.
Take the new Carvin BX500 for example. This is not a “me-too” class-D micro head. First off, it has a 9-band slider graphic EQ. And it has a tube in the preamp that you can switch in or out of the circuit. All on a head that measures only 2.8” x 9” x 14”. Tres cool. But it doesn’t stop there. It delivers 300 watts at 8 ohms, 500 watts at 4 ohms or 2 ohms. Let’s repeat that. With the flick of a switch (which reduces the rail voltage), it is stable into a 2-ohm load! This is not common in the class-D world. In addition, the DTEC™ output section runs extremely cool and doesn’t take much power from the wall.
Want more? The nine-band graphic EQ is footswitch-able, there’s an optical compressor, a four-band, two-sweep tone control section with parametric low-mids and high-mids, and a Contour for scooped to flat tone changes. On the back are two of our fave combo Speakon+¼” outputs, the 2-ohm operation switch, footswitch, Direct Out balanced XLR, tuner/phones output, effects loop and tube bypass switch.
Beneath the simple exterior, the new BX500 has wild versatility, low weight and a silly price. The Kiesel’s and their engineering staff are making it tough on all other micro head companies. Guess that’s what happens when the family stays together. www.carvin.com
4 Comments
I bought the combo with the 15″ neodymium speaker. In RED!! Wicked cool look and ONLY 40 lbs!!! Oh, it sounds great too. You really need another cab. to get the most out of this beast. I use an old Peavey cab with an 18″ Carvin 800W speaker in it. I put the 18 cab behind the guitar player at practice last night and there was so much bass coming out the he almost soiled himself!!! If you get one, order the footswitch so you can kick the EQ in and out. Well worth the extra 30 bucks. I’m running a Power Jazz bass with Samarium Cobalt Noiseless p’ups in it and it just may be the perfect setup. Best I’ve ever had, anyway, and I played bass in my 1st band in 1965…..!
Hey Don,
How about a picture of that Red Combo?
MR
I decided it was time to add another bass rig to reduce moving amps so much.After researching the market came across the BX500 this head seemed to have all of the pro features at a ridiculously affordable price. Read a bunch of reviews and watched demos on it , so decided to buy one directly from carvin, Upon arrival i connected to an 800watt 410 cab 4ohms with everything flat grabbed my Warwick Rock bass the first sound out of it was smooth natural bass great highs and alot of bottum with this cab.With a little tweeking of the drive and the para eq this thing sounded like a bass monster.Finally turned on graphic eq it was a little noisy turned back off and hiss stopped??Added sum 250hz and was blown away at the response of this head with my cab seemed to have clean power and lots of headroom.For any bass player thinking of adding or replacing an amp this one is well worth the price!! My Trace Elliot will probably get a well deserved break for a while and I’m gonna checkout the BX1500 and the other Carvin bass rigs the Guys at Carvin have got a great line of bass amps. As a bass player I say thanks!
Oh and speaking of moving amp around this head is only 5.8lbs