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Just acquired a B200s... Wow

Started by natman, December 19, 2017, 11:08:37 AM

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natman

It's amazing that one can find a forum for just about anything, including something as specific as a power amp head.

I've recently spent an inordinate amount of time finding a bass amp head for my younger brother as a Christmas gift. He was asking for an Orange head, but I immediately cringed at the cost of the model he was asking. After looking for some more budget friendly alternatives, I stumbled upon custom amp head at a mom and pop music store that had a B200s powering it. It's running a Peavy Max pre-amp, and it's in a beat up case that definitely looks homemade. It does look pretty awesome though, and I know he's into that beat-up road gear look. Anyway, it definitely caught my eye, and was within my budget, but I had no good way of testing the thing since I myself don't play bass, and I didn't want to use the store's nice equipment. The pre-amp did meet the requirements, and was a hybrid tube/solid state setup, so I rolled the dice and just bought the thing.

After getting home, I really wanted to try it out on his speaker cabinets with his own bass. He uses two large Peavy cabs, and I was concerned the B200 wouldn't be enough to power them both... Holy cow was I wrong. Even though his current head is rated at a slightly higher watt output, it's clearly not sending all the "umph", because this B200 unit was driving those speakers hard. I've never seen them visibly move, especially the floor sub. I could actually feel the thump in my chest from this thing. I feel if I crank it to max, it'll likely blow them...

It sounds considerably cleaner too, and I don't know if that's attributed to the B200 itself, or the pre-amp. Either way, I'm super happy, and hope he is too.

I don't really have a specific tech question, but was more curious about the thing itself. Like what year they were in production? Just something so I can give him some info on it. I can't find much about ADA in general, and even less on this model. This forum is about all I can find.

rnolan

Hey natman, welcome to the depot :thumb-up: :wave: .  B200s amps are very dear to our hearts here, many of us here have them and love them  :whoohoo!: .
This link (http://web.archive.org/web/20040216064642/http://www.adadepot.com:80/adagear/main.htm) will take you to the archive of "ada gear" bits of the original adadepot site, go to poweramps and then B200s to see the specs. There is also a board on here for B200s (http://adadepot.com/index.php?board=7.0).

Kim and MJMP will know dates better than me, I'm in Australia and we got them after the US and other parts of the world.  But it was the 2nd half of the 1980's IIRC.  The first B200s (which I had, now owned by my friend Mike) was improved a bit, I still have the 2nd model, I use it for guitar (mostly), and sometimes guitar, bass and vocals at rehearsal (into 2 Messa P112 bass cabs).

I would highly recommend pairing it with an ADA MB-1 tube/ss midi bass preamp (againd check out on the gear link above in preamps), these are amazing bass preamps (I have 2).

ADA made bass rigs also built around the MB-1.  They coupled it with the B500b which is almost the same as a B200s except has 250w per ch rather than the  B200s 124 w p/ch into 4 ohm cab.
Studio Rig: Stuff; Live Rig: More Stuff; Guitars: A few