The Steel Guitar Forum

I just today played the Sonoma County Fair with a Milkman Half & Half. Best I ever sounded. What an amazing amp. It makes me play better, because I never have to think about the tone. It's just there, and it's right.

Tom Campbell wrote:Anyone using the "Ashdown" bass amp heads or cabinets? They appear to be in the Gallien-Kruger and Carvin equipment class.

I recently bought a used Ashdown MAG300 EVO 2 300 Watt bass amp head. I didn't know anything about these, but it was priced right. It has a lot of features including active and passive pickup inputs, switchable 5 band EQ, compression, balanced direct out, effects loop, bright and deep boost, and tuner jack. It's rated at 307 Watts @ 4 Ohms minimum and approx. 160 Watts @ 8 Ohms. They are discontinued but can still be found used. The next generation is available. At approx. 19 pounds it's not as light a some, but it seems to be very well built. These amps might be overlooked.

Old Peavey Bandit 75 solo series, low imp. imput, with a old Ibanez DM1100 rack mount delay. Easy to move around, not huge so it can fit in small places, sounds killer with orig. Scorpion speaker. I never turn it up past 3....loud enough for 99% of the situations I play in...If I am in a field then thru the PA, but other than that...works great and indestructable...in a cramp situation, can bypass the rack case and just use the amp with reverb...that works too..No sense at all to me to use huge amps anymore. The days of packed VFW and Legions etc where I live are long gone. Its house parties and such now. I have several larger amps, heads, cabs etc that I simply don;t use, there is no need this small set up works. Plus, the amp is not super heavy, and if you drop it off a building you can replace it, if need be for about 50 bucks....if you really wanted to and I thought about it, get two and run a stero set up...but again, is it really necessary? Talking about this I think I will put one of my tube heads on here as I never use it....this is the whole magilla..at 64 its something I can handle.

I have a milkman half and half and a mini at my place in Austin if anybody wants to check them out. I do have one half and half with a 15" in stock ready to go if you are looking to buy one.

Another Half and Half user here. What a tone!