Fender Rumble 2370500000 200 v3 Bass Combo Amplifier, Black

Let me start by saying I just needed a small, light weight practice amp and this one fit the bill for the price. I have been playing bass for about 58 years and have a large rig 210-115 GK set up but didn't want to break that out every time I wanted to play on the porch, office or a buddy's house. The little Fender Rumble 25 is super light and the right size to move around.After unpacking the amp I noticed the workmanship was first rate so I plugged it in and hooked up a bass. Sounded OK but not what I expected. Pulled the removable grill off and noticed a very cheap speaker and a 3" port in the front that wasn't tuned, but for 99$ what the heck. Played some more and It just sounded cheap which it is. I wasn't expecting GK or SVT sound. I immediately went to ebay and bought a Celestion NEO 8" driver with a 2" voice coil for 55$ and it arrived today. I took the grill off and removed the Fender speaker and noticed how cheap is was and noticed too that the cabinet was hollow, no damping material so the insides of and old fiber filed pillow was sacrificed and the cabinet stuffed, also I cut a piece of round hard foam to fill the port. Put it all back together and now we have an amp. Real nice lows and great tone all through the different ranges. That did the trick.I know what you're thinking, this guy bought a 99$ amp and spent 55$ more to make it work when he could have just bought the 40 with the 10" speaker, but I would have had the same, but larger, cheap speaker for 199$. This now sounds great with a modest upgrade and the Celestion NEO is a MUCH better speaker that makes a small amp sound really good. 160$ total, light weight, nice controls, and that great Fender styling.Sorry I'm a purist and keep can't leave well enough alone and this was a small price to pay for a now great sounding amp, and by the way the pillow is pleased it went to good use. I gave it five stars for 99$ but now it's 6 stars.

In this article from the New Yorker, January 28, 2013 “Music To Your Ears.” Daniel Levitin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Levitin) “pointed out that most of the lowest notes on most pianos are actually inferred rather than heard. The soundboard on most pianos isn’t long enough to produce the bottom octave, but the brain hears the right overtones, which the piano can produce, and neurons in the brain begin to fire at the frequency of the missing bass note.”In days of yore (1950s – 1960s) this psycho-acoustic quirk was used in the design of “hi-fi” consoles to produce a semblance of deep bass without actually having an extended low frequency response.And so it is with the Rumble 25. I measured the response of this combo as shown in the graph. The red curve is with all controls set to 12 o’clock. The blue curve shows it can actually produce a reasonably flat response from 90 Hz to 2.5 kHz, +/-3 dB with the controls set as follows: Bass @ 12 o’clock, Mid @ 9 o’clock, High @ fully ccw. This means that it can only reproduce the 2nd harmonic of the lower bass octave (40 Hz to 80 Hz). Because of the normal 18 dB/octave roll-off for a vented enclosure, the 10 dB down point is about 70 Hz. As to the 2.5 kHz frequency, note that the 12th harmonic of a high A (220 Hz) on a bass is 2.64 kHz. The driver is low compliance and the box appears tuned to about 100 Hz, both of which are consistent with the measurements. These curves are smoothed with a 1/3 octave cepstral algorithm to remove insignificant non-audible variations in the measurements.There is a large resonant peak just over 3 kHz = 1/2 the driver diameter. This is tamed pretty well with the High control fully ccw, but still sits almost 7 dB above the average level. Given that the paper cone is quite stiff with no attempt in its design to damp sound waves travelling through the cone material, this resonant peak is not at all surprising. This peak corresponds to the 16th harmonic of the 220 Hz high A on the bass. This peak is probably a good “feature” for the attacks of slap bass (which I don’t do). Otherwise it is actually of little consequence.All this said, the Rumble 25 works well for me. It was low cost, is small, lightweight, and, in spite of lacking any usable output much below 100 Hz, it nonetheless “sounds” like a decent bass loudspeaker. With the controls set as noted for the flattest response, it works well for both my electric and acoustic basses, both of which sound best through a flat response system. The former is an all-original, ’63 Fender Jazz and the latter uses an NS Design “Copperhead” pick-up, a prototype kindly given to me by Ned as a present for mentoring one of his sons on bass.For acoustic gigs, even those using a PA for rooms sized for around 75 -100 audience, the Rumble 25 does the job in terms of sound quality and loudness. For larger rooms and louder gigs that’s why I have my “big” rig. This is custom set-up with a ruler flat response from 40 Hz to 2.5 kHz. However, It consists of a separate EQ, amplifier, and loudspeaker = much more to set up, is five times heavier, and it cost over 20 times more than the Rumble 25. That is what prompted me to try the Rumble 25 for smaller gigs. For what it's worth I play most all genres of music from classical to rock.One feature I like is Fender's built-in, non-adjustable, "Delta-Comp" limiter. This seems to work really well, holding things in check when the amplifier is over driven a bit. Push it hard over the limit point and some high frequency artifacts do appear. However, when running the amplifier near its limits it is virtually unnoticeable except for subtlly limiting the loudness.In spite of its measured performance, I'm giving the Rumble 25 five stars because its doing just what I need it to do.

This amp is incredible. I am a big fan of it. I play live shows with an Orange bass amp and use this Fender 25 bass amp at home and for home recordings. I have to have it on the lowest possible volume, it is so powerful, to not disturb neighbors. You could definitely use it for small venues and cafes. Sound, carry-weight, appearance, user options, everything is great on this Fender 25 bass amp! It is about half an arm deep and up to the knees tall. It's the best for price, sound, and size! I have had my first one for several years and it is still perfect. I bought another one for another location. I wanted to try a new product, but after sampling many other brands, none were as good for this price/size category of bass amp.