Sovtek Bassov Blues Boy // Mig100B
This amplifier had been on my bucket list to try for many years. Ever since seeing Evan Weiss’ beautifully wood wrapped unit when Tumblr was still booming and the gear scene was still young.
I was ecstatic driving home from the McDonalds parking lot where I traded some unloved gear and a little cash for this hard-to-find cvlt amp worship head. I was, however, underwhelmed upon turning it on.
My assumptions and my hopes were that it would sound similar to the Mig100u I had a handful of years ago, but with a hair more clean headroom. This was mostly true but with a very different tone stack. It lacked a lot of desired brightness and wasn’t very usable with my current configuration of gear as a guitar amplifier. It had been modded with a spring reverb tank but the implementation was so subtle that it might as well not really exist. Neat for what it is, I suppose.
Shortly after getting this amp I picked up the Acoustic 106 2x15 and began running this as a bass amp. This is where it came to life (shocker, a bass amp sounded good on bass). It stayed very clean and was loud enough to rattle the hell out of my house and shake things off of my shelves. It stayed relatively clean when cranked with a nice wooly grind that was very easy to tame. I have some clips of this setup going live in a few days. I was pleased with how it functioned as a bass amp but the Solarus, while being less power, can hang right next to it and has some added brightness I prefer when playing bass. It just wasn’t the amp for me. This Sovtek has been sold and will forever be another tally on my long list of amps I’ve owned, but it wasn’t without learning a bit before sending it on its way. While it was nice to check another amp off of my list... Nothing has yet to come between me and my Sunn Solarus. I love that amp so much that I almost bought a second recently. We’ll see what challenger comes next.