I don’t love dealing with bass amps in the studio, and often prefer to run the bass guitar direct. However, many engineers and artists disagree with that approach and prefer to mic up an amp. To that end, we have a vintage Ampeg SVT head at Panoramic Studios for folks who want to use an amp for bass. But the beast seems to need repair every 18 months or so, and it weighs a ton. It died again recently, and I think I’m gonna just sell it now that we have this new Useful Arts BF-700 bass amp, preamp, and DI that is purpose-designed for the studio. Both the tone and functionality of this amp have me not missing the Ampeg at all. And, while I can barely lift the SVT with both arms (while risking injury to myself), thanks to the little handles on the front of the BF-700 I can actually pick it up with one finger! Sure, I love vintage gear to a point, but there is so much current gear that builds on some of the best technology of the past combined with the advantages of newer technology; that’s exactly where the BF-700 lands.
Let’s start with functionality. The BF-700’s front panel has a 1/4-inch instrument Input and Thru, plus an EFX Send and Return. Five rotary knobs control Volume, Color, Bass, Treble, and EFX level. Eight small switches enable things like Hi-Gain mode, a HPF (high-pass filter), the EQ, Color, EFX, and a ground lift. One switch is worth mentioning separately: The standby (STBY): This allows you to practice a track with the band in the room, then switch to standby mode (which turns off the speaker outputs), put on your headphones, and track with no bleed, feeding your recorder from the balanced DI output on the back of the BF-700. There are also jacks for power amp input and four speaker outputs on the back of the unit (two 1/4-inch and two Speakon connectors). We did an album over the summer with the Brooklyn band, Slow Fiction, and this feature came in handy as they tracked direct and then re-amped all the bass tracks near the end of the session with almost no re-patching! The key point here is that the BF-700 can be used as an amp, a high end DI, or both, covering almost any scenario very easily.