SHOULD I BUY ONE?
The general tone of the amp is very clean and that seems to be the point (distortion circuit excepted.) It certainly seems to follow the old adage of an amplified bit of wire, as the amp seems to inject only a little of it’s own character to the basic sound. Combined with the Krampera speakers this thing certainly shakes the house, and should be able to cope with anything you could throw at it, although it’s ultra-clean nature make be a bit less forgiving if the bass player’s technique is less than perfect. Despite this, I still really enjoyed playing with the Krampera, although I found that the more I strayed away from it’s basic sound the less I liked it, which defeats the point a little considering how many bells and whistles this amp is loaded with.
It could well be that the bass I used for this review (a custom-made J-style bass fitted with flat wound strings) just happened to suit the amp’s natural voice better than it did when we started adding the extra tone-shaping features and to be fair at no time did we feel anything other than that this amp is a 100% professional piece of kit. This final point naturally
leads us to mention the price, which at a glance at the relevant column in this review will certainly tell you everything you need to know. With a full set up coming in at around £4000 you will have to be a pretty serious bassist to consider the Krampera. Other big name bass amp manufacturers will certainly cost you less, but the Krampera does have a certain air of exclusivity about it and judging by the build quality you’d probably never have to buy another bass rig! Can I give it the complete Fonzy thumbs up? No, but by the same token I can see that some bass players will absolutely fall in love with this behemoth which recalls the days when bass amps of this quality were all reassuringly expensive. In the Krampera’s case you get a real old world charm topped-off by a completely modern feature set.
THE GOOD BITS:
THE NOT SO GOOD BITS: Compression/Overdrive section maybe a bit at odds
Build quality. Hi-fi tones. Plenty of usable features.
with the amp’s generally super-clean powerful feel. Price puts this rig strictly at the serious pro level.
KVB800’s bold sheeny sound is such a great starting point that is hard to want to start changing it to something a little grittier. The four-band equaliser offers a boost and cut of +/-15dB @ 40Hz, 300Hz, 1kHz and 6kHz frequencies, which is a very powerful and flexible EQ that should be enough to help you tailor your sound, although in the test I found only the smallest amounts of tweaking were necessary. The next section, Contour, is directly related to the EQ section providing as it does the now obligatory mid-cut smiley face EQ curve which is great for many modern styles of bass playing. The contour control sets how drastic the ‘scooped’ effect is and the dedicated Contour section volume control helps to match or boost the volume of the contour EQ curve when selected The effects section is a parallel effects loop meaning you can
actually mix the amounts of effects in rather than an all or nothing scenario. The next section is the combined Compressor/Overdrive circuit; the centre control adjusts the amount of compression in the first half of it’s travel then the amount of ‘edge’ distortion for the other half of it’s
travel. A bass players opinion of both overdrive and distortion are both deeply personal things and one man’s meat is definitely another’s poison so I can only give my own opinion. To be honest, I was a little underwhelmed by both; the compression is fine at lower amounts,
The KVB 800 system definitely flies in the face of the current trend for micro- sized bass amps…
offering a gentle smoothing, but any more than this and I found the sound distorted easily, almost as if the compression release characteristics have been set too fast, which will make it very responsive but prone to distorting on lower notes. The distortion is very edgy indeed, great for emulating The Stranglers but maybe it could have been more use to more bass players if it sounded like a valve amp or even something hip and groovy like an old EH Big Muff Pi. Still, if you go for the hard-edged almost clattery punk style bass tones this will give it to you on spades. PM
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