Carvin BX700 head, Just a review

Pine Apple Slim

Armchair Expert
After 4 or 5 practices and one outdoor gig, my thoughts on this head using it with my upright bass in a rock n roll context.
Some very useful features. Great eq section with parametric and graphic eq. Makes it easy to dial out a lot of the sub bass freq always causing feedback and bad tone with the upright. Plus you can zero in on just the right area of low mids to emphasize, and dial in top end to taste. The direct out works great to the front of the house, soundman loved it. A gain knob for the DI was a great idea, got it set perfectly for the soundman in a flash, plus sent him a post eq signal so he got same thing I was hearing.
At 8 ohms, it's a pretty wimpy 300w. Not nearly loud enough for rock n roll. No better than my 100w SWR WM combo really. Pretty useless except maybe for a jazz, bluegrass, or " unplugged" gig.
At 4 ohms the supposed 550w is better, but still power seems overrated. My old 50w SF Bassman blows it out of the water. Just loud enough to get by, no more, in a small cramped rehearsal space.
At 2 ohms, with 2 4ohm cabs to rated 700w it starts to get serious. This is working, in practice and also on a big outdoor stage.

Bottom line, good tone, nice features, but power is overrated. If you need really serious power get a bigger one. It's crazy , but my old 50w tube Bassman with a couple of 8 ohm cabs actually equals or outperforms this head at 700w.
 
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