Talk about a late arrival. This amp came out a YEAR ago. And we JUST got it recently at the Tampa Guitar Center. Not just Guitar Center – the local Sam Ash STILL doesn’t carry it.
But I got a chance to spend some quality time with it. After praising the Bassbreaker 15 to the high heavens, but lamenting the fact that it was limited by a small box, would the 30r fix these issues? Well…
The Good
If you like the Bassbreaker 15 but felt like you needed a louder two channel version with a bigger cabinet, here you go. Channel one is clean, and channel two does the whole crunch/distortion/overdrive stuffs. Some reviewers have said that the move to EL84 tubes has improved the sound. To my ears, um, well… I thought it sounded very good. If you love the Bassbreaker 15 and you gig, you should get the 30r, if you can afford it.
The Bad
The problem with the 15 is that it has a small boxy sound, due to the small box the speaker lives in. The problem with the 30r is that they’ve made the small box a bit wider but not much deeper, and it has slightly improved the sound, but not radically changed it. Some will think I’m nuts, but honestly if you defeat the internal speaker and route this amp to a better speaker box, you’ll be in heaven. One thing: on the model I used, the Bass knob on the clean channel did nothing when turned up all the way. Bad amp, or are they all like that? Check before buying.
The Ugly
Availability on this amp has been horrible in my area. Absolutely horrible. Either Fender didn’t make enough of them, or the big box music stores are betting that interest in this amp is marginal. The funny thing is that Fender won’t put the damn pieces together correctly. Every Fender amp has a huge but. As in “The Hot Rod Deluxe is a great sounding amp BUT the gain channel is still crap after four attempts.” Or “The Blues Junior is a great amp BUT the little boxy cabinet makes the amp sound like a little box.” The Bassbreaker 30r is a $900 30 watt tube amp that sounds great BUT could benefit from a better cabinet, preferably a larger one with a closed back and a Celestion Vintage 30. They need to make a head version of this amp.
There you go. Not the review I was expecting. If this amp were $500, I’d be jumping up and down about how great it is. But for $900 I expect a fantastic sounding amp. This is an incremental improvement over the 15, not a huge leap. Which is too bad – the head itself is fabulous.
