alm's Ashdown Engineering Amp Rig

That being said, it's still terrible in a couple of ways and i would never trust this thing on a gig. The battery drains even when its not plugged in. The electronics are both confusing and fragile. But for about 100€ you can't really expect more. Its good for practising on and for getting good at the instrument. Personally I've found it very handy because the scale length is much shorter than on say a p-bass. But thats about all it's good for.

I bought this to compensate my pretty one sided bass sound (two precision basses) and as soon as i had this instrument in my hands and heard it's sound I immediately disregarded all the blasphemy thrown its way by the wonderfull people of the bass forums. The neck humbucker sounds absolutely enormous and the minibucker compensates the lack of high end although you do have to raise its volume for optimal sound. It sits right in the mix with little to no eq. I personally love to turn the tone all the way down and solo out the mudbucker for smooth bluesy sounds, but it also sounds great with overdrive, fuzz, distortion and any modulation I threw at it. The one gripe i have with this bass is the ergonomics. You do need to wear a wider strap to prevent the neck dive and even then it would be clever to keep a hand on the body just in case. However, you quickly get used to this problem with extended use. You could probably add a counter-weight on the body or something if this really bothers you. But aside from that my experiences have only been good.

For budget bassing you really can't find anything better for the price on the secoundhand market. With onboard eq that can be turned on and off and a warm sound profile it goes will with basically any pedal ive tried through it. It has two patches for bass and treble boost which is endlessly practical. These patches can also be used as a gain boost when both pressed in. 300w gives you plenty of headroom but if you want to crank it you absolutely can without problems. The one issue ive had is one that goes with any piece of older gear, but this one more than most. Some of the pots are scratchy, for me its the gain and lower mids knob. I generally avoid touching them because of the very unpleasant noise they make but they give me no issues if left untouched. You could probably replace them yourself if you have the know-how, I am atleast thinking about it.