Bassic Review – EBS Reidmar 752 Bass Head

Engineered to Perform

EBS’ amplifier is described as a soft-clip design that, where possible, breaks up in a more pleasing way, giving the unit more headroom, versus an amplifier with an in-built hard limiter on the output section. Yes, of course, use your ears, and if anything sounds ugly, it’s time to address the set up to see the cause.

Across the front panel, it is tidy, easy to read on darkened stages and there’s plenty of room between the controls, so nothing gets accidentally knocked when quickly reaching to tweak in mid-performance. On to the input, it’s as expected a 1/4” jack socket taking your bass signal straight in to the front end of the preamplifier, which has a 1M ohm input impedance. This high value means that it is less likely to load your passive pickups and affect their tone. This is useful for passive Piezo elements that require a much higher impedance unless they have a suitable active buffering circuit on board the instrument.

Reidmar 752 has a full complement of tone-shaping controls in the form of a 4-band active equaliser with a semi-parametric midrange. The potential to dial in the exact frequency of cut and boost for the midrange is invaluable both for purely stylistic choices (finger style, slap bass, etc.), but also can help in taming stages and spaces with difficult acoustics.

The bass and treble active equalisers are shelving types centred at 60Hz and 6kHz, respectively, with a massive 18dB of boost and cut. Slightly less for the midrange (12-15dB), but that’s still a massive amount of flexibility for dialling in those all-important midrange frequencies on bass.

On the right-hand side of those three bands is a bright boost. It’s a high-pass filter with up to 15dB boost (only) at 10kHz. 10kHz may seem way high for “normal” bass guitar, but for modern instruments and playing style, facilitated by speaker systems with high quality and transparent sounding tweeters, this additional air and harmonic brightness can add space and clarity to solo, percussive and tap-style playing. I love adding zing to new strings with a splash of reverb and delay when noodling at home, or for recording intro tracks for my videos.

However, one doesn’t even need to reach the EQ (which is activated by a push switch or remote control). Instead, I favoured the preset pre-shape “character” function. Essentially a “big cab” sound. Boosting the lows and the airy top end, whilst creating a dip in the upper midrange, gives any bass a fuller, deeper and clearer sound. It’s perfect for running directly to front of house PA.

Incidentally, the Pre DI output takes the pre-shape signal and sends that out to the balanced line DI, leaving the onboard equalisation for stage tone, alone – this is a really clever idea that makes the signal path so much more useful and saves us the hassle of running two signals, one for stage tone and one for PA tone. The Post DI, whilst we are on the subject, sends the entire signal path sound to the DI Output.

Flanking the equaliser section is a tuned-for-bass one-knob compressor with a compression ratio of 3:1. Its inbuilt attack and release is fast at 10ms and 100ms respectively, though it’s noticeable that even on higher settings there are no transient artefacts or undue noise. Brilliant, EBS! I like a gentle shaping of my dynamic range and am happy to leave the effect enabled throughout, though being remote-controllable, too, you could use higher settings when switching to, say, slap bass style or as a “sustaining” effect on higher settings.

Sunday Drive

Heating up the bass tone for vintage warmth or gritty rock sounds, Reidmar has a separate drive circuit. This effect is post saturation, right at the end of the signal chain before the effects loop. Like the compressor, it can be punched in using an external foot switch when needed, though again, I really enjoyed finding a sweet spot on the dial to leave it engaged all the time, especially riding the point where saturation just becomes noticeable. The tone of the instrument changes as the circuit is progressively boosted, making my ‘76 ash P-bass using roundwounds sound vibrant with energy. The drive circuit has its own tonal shaping crafted so that the distortion doesn’t sound brittle or anything less than rounded and organic.

Check out the master volume in my video! It’s set low! Add a stack of cabinets, or an 8×10, to 752 and you will not be left wanting for volume. Actually, as a point of note, I always suggest adding more cone area (i.e., more cabinets) to get yourself heard. Firstly, stacking the cabinets gets the speakers closer to your ears, but the effect of doubling speaker cone area has a marked effect on the fullness of your sound.

But Wait, There’s More!

On the rear of Reidmar, we are treated to all the connections we could possibly need to hook up the amplifier for live use, recording, and, well, any other application you could find for 752. It’s pretty good for amplifying bass synth pedals! Power comes in via the combination power switch and IEC connection (and no, it’s not called a kettle lead connector!). For those who travel, Reidmar 752 features a voltage selector for 110-120v and 220-240v operation, depending on where you are in the world.

752 is a class-D amplifier, and sure enough, packing high power into smaller boxes requires forced cooling, rather than having a much larger amplifier cabinet and huge heat sinks. It’s a tradeoff if you want a completely silent module, but if this chap is sitting on top of a cabinet on stage, well, you will not hear the fan, anyway!

752’s major update in the power section means that the full 750w RMS output can now be delivered in to a 2-ohm output load (450w RMS into 4 ohms and 230w RMS into 8 ohms). This has been a limitation in the past for those who have been wanting to mix 8 and 4-ohm cabinets with amplifiers that have a 4-ohm minimum load. With this feature, there’s no issue; indeed you could hang four massive 8-ohm cabinets off 752 and really upset your band mates with a solid low end onslaught.

Whilst we’re talking output, EBS fit Speakon® connectors for speaker attachment and this is my preferred method, as not only is it locking and more solid, it also stops people using instrument cables instead of speaker cables of cabinet connection.

A bevvy of sockets on the right-hand side of the rear panel further extends our options. An effects loop is situated after the pre-shape, EQ, compression and drive in the signal path. This is ideal if you want to add effects that typically work better after compression and drive, like time-based effects.

Silent rehearsal and practicing along to drum tracks or mobile devices are aided through the headphone and auxiliary line in sockets. It’s worth mentioning that in this case 752 will run without a speaker attached safely. This means that operating with the balanced line DI not only makes this a flexible head on stage, you can also use the whole thing as a preamplifier or front end for your home recording set up. Just pull the master volume down as the DI signal operates separately.

On stage, there’s no need to keep wandering over and jogging dials; there’s an optional foot switch (or you can use standard foot switches in each rear socket) that enable and disable the Character, Drive and EQ functions and a master Mute which is perfect for unplugging instruments mid performance without having to touch anything else. Happy engineer!

You may have noticed that overall, the 752 is smaller by a considerable amount versus the Reidmar 750, yet still comes cased in a solid metal frame. A robust handle attached to the side means that it’s less likely to slip out of post-gig, rock-worn and sweaty hands! The amplifier weighs under 4Kg (8.3lbs), too.

The Bottom Line

Rounding up, a great clean amplifier for super glassy slap bass and percussive tap technique, yet shape-shifting seamlessly in to a gritty vintage personality without the mass associated with valves, big cabinets and power transformers.

Get out and try a 752 through a stack of cabinets. It’s a pleasant noise indeed!