With a Blacksmith bass amp onstage, power won't be an
issue—large clubs, major venues, or full-scale stadiums, Blacksmith covers it
all. A massive 1600-watt output delivers huge bass tone that will follow your
slightest move while playing those hard-rocking bass lines and hammering
riffs.
Taking bass to a higher level
Blacksmith
offers more than excessive power, with renowned Bass amp 2.0 features such as
integrated chromatic bass tuner, refined tone-shaping tools including 4 bands of
EQ, SpectraComp™ per-string compression, TubeTone™ complete tube pre- and power
amp recreation, and TweeterTone™ intelligent HF control. All this, allong with
its 3 user-defined memories, means Blacksmith takes bass amplification to a new
level in more than one respect.
8, 4, or 2 ohms, your
choice
Blacksmith is capable handling cabinet combinations all the
way down to 2 ohms, so ultimately you could fire up four RS410 cabinets
simultaneously—that's 16 x 10” or 8.7 square feet of speaker cones blasting air
in your direction. You better put that foot on the monitor to keep
standing!
Flexible Tone Controls
Blacksmith feature a
set of straightforward controls like most traditional amps, voiced to give you
plenty of tweaking options to nail the perfect tone. Chances are that this is
all you’ll ever need. However, if you’re not fully satisfied with the default
frequency areas, fear not, every tone control is also capable of being
semi-parametric bands. This way, you can pinpoint any frequency you want to
remove or boost for each tone control and then store the
settings.
On-board user memories
You might not think
you'd use presets, but If you use different basses or change playing styles
during shows, you know that a few amp presets would be welcome. Blacksmith gives
you 3 onboard user memories for effortless switching between 4- and 5-string
basses, or Rickenbackers and Fenders for that matter. Alternatively, you can
create 3 entirely different tones for one bass, for example, overdrive, slap,
and a vintage tone. Just plug in your bass and use the car radio style Store
& Recall controls to easily switch between your personal presets. Also, by
adding the optional RC4 floor-based remote control, you can switch effortlessly
between you presets without ever letting go of the
strings.
TubeTone™
TubeTone™ was originally developed
for the RH450 bass amp. Most transistor designs try to replicate tube sound
using one small preamp tube, but why not take the crucial characteristics of a
full preamp and power amp into account? Both are essential to the sound when you
want that classic tube warmth as well as when you go for a full-on, overdriven
rock sound with massive punch! TubeTone™ gives you exactly
that.
SpectraComp™
A conventional compressor is often
dominated by the lower string, but with SpectraComp™, inherited directly from
the original RH450, you get 'per string' multi-band compression that evens out
the compression across all strings. In short, you get even, rock-solid tone that
cuts through any mix whether you play fingerstyle, with a heavy pick, or slap
the strings hard.
TweeterTone™
The tweeter control is
usually located on the rear side of the cabinet, but on Blacksmith you can
conveniently adjust the tweeter level right from the front panel. Furthermore,
the sound also gets modified slightly with filters for much more intelligent
control over the high frequencies that are critical for giving your sound that
razor-sharp edge.
Built in bass tuner
Every bass
player needs a tuner, but virtually no other amp offers anything else than a
‘tuner out’ feature. Blacksmith does! Simply push the Mute button to get a
full-resolution tuner ‘light ring’ to help you tune your instrument quickly and
accurately. You can also use the RC4 remote control unit for easy floor access
to this functionality. Both speaker and DI outputs are muted automatically while
tuning. Finally, even when you haven’t pushed the Mute button, the tuner is
still active, only without the light ring
feature.
Transformer-balanced studio-grade line driver
output
Quality can vary wildly with built-in DIs, but Blacksmith’s
DI is transformer-balanced and galvanic-isolated from the rest of the amp, which
means that you get absolutely no ground loops or annoying hum. And don’t worry
about long cable runs. Blacksmith will draw at least 100 meters of cable with
zero loss of audio quality. Even though the integrated DI in Blacksmith does not
need 48V phantom to operate, it does not get harmed if your sound engineer
should happen to leave it on by accident.
AES/EBU digital
recording out
The AES/EBU connector lets you record straight into
your DAW. For maximum flexibility, it’s also S/PDIF-compatible and can be
switched between ‘Pre’ and ‘Post’ in the preamp section.