Fender Rumble 200 1x15 200W Bass Combo Amp

Most Liked Positive Review

Can't Go Wrong

I've owned this little amp for about two months now having bought it in a panic when my small venue amp gave out. My first gig with it was a mid-sized blues/jazz venue. The band had two horns, guitar, and keyboards. And despite getting kind of rowdy on a few tunes, I was amazed that I never had to crank the volume up. It was steady, responsive and very impressive. The sound is amazingly vintage Fender bass. There's even a "vintage" (and contour and bright) button that is supposed to, I assume, enhance the Fender sound. But I found these buttons a bit annoying as they do little more than give you options that quite frankly were a little weak, in my opinion. What I found to be the true heart and soul of Rumble 200 is the equalization - bass, low mid, high mid, and treble. They're rotary dials with indents at the six o'clock position. Rather than nipping away adding to the bass or treble frequencies, these mid settings actually do dial in their frequencies to such an exacting state that they truly give you the ability to dial in wide array of sounds. Turn the bass dial to nine o'clock, and the low-mid to three and be prepared to say wow. Or dial in the overdrive "channel." on neutral EQ but with a bump in the hid-mid. Yikes! The Rumble 200 brought a whole new experience to my fretless bass. I could get as much or as little "growl" as I wanted without having to give up a fine deep tone. The upper registers are exacting, brilliant and clear as a bell. And on the fretted bass, the bottom end was a true note-for-note reproduction of that buttery "Fender bass" sound rather than muddy cover up like get with a lot of smaller amps. And again the highs were amazingly clear and brilliant. I've never used overdrive, not my style. But this amp has started to change my mind. The 200 offers a what they call an overdrive circuit which for all intents and purposes is a second channel (footswitch) which I've got to tell you is a gas to play with; it's just way too much fun to ignore. Add in all the expected extras like FX loop, speaker out, (but you won't need an extra cab with the onboard 15 in Eminence,) XLR out, mini-plug auxiliary in and headphones out, and at 35 lbs and the price you just can't go wrong because, in my opinion, Fender got this right.