Fender Rumble 500 V3 Bass Amp for Bass Guitar, 500 Watts, with 2-Year Warranty 2x10 Inch Eminence Speakers with Compression Horn, Overdrive Circuit, Tone Voicing, Effects Loop and Direct XLR Output

Let me start by saying I just needed a small, light weight practice amp and this one fit the bill for the price. I have been playing bass for about 58 years and have a large rig 210-115 GK set up but didn't want to break that out every time I wanted to play on the porch, office or a buddy's house. The little Fender Rumble 25 is super light and the right size to move around. After unpacking the amp I noticed the workmanship was first rate so I plugged it in and hooked up a bass. Sounded OK but not what I expected. Pulled the removable grill off and noticed a very cheap speaker and a 3" port in the front that wasn't tuned, but for 99$ what the heck. Played some more and It just sounded cheap which it is. I wasn't expecting GK or SVT sound. I immediately went to ebay and bought a Celestion NEO 8" driver with a 2" voice coil for 55$ and it arrived today. I took the grill off and removed the Fender speaker and noticed how cheap is was and noticed too that the cabinet was hollow, no damping material so the insides of and old fiber filed pillow was sacrificed and the cabinet stuffed, also I cut a piece of round hard foam to fill the port. Put it all back together and now we have an amp. Real nice lows and great tone all through the different ranges. That did the trick. I know what you're thinking, this guy bought a 99$ amp and spent 55$ more to make it work when he could have just bought the 40 with the 10" speaker, but I would have had the same, but larger, cheap speaker for 199$. This now sounds great with a modest upgrade and the Celestion NEO is a MUCH better speaker that makes a small amp sound really good. 160$ total, light weight, nice controls, and that great Fender styling. Sorry I'm a purist and keep can't leave well enough alone and this was a small price to pay for a now great sounding amp, and by the way the pillow is pleased it went to good use. I gave it five stars for 99$ but now it's 6 stars.

In this article from the New Yorker, January 28, 2013 “Music To Your Ears.” Daniel Levitin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Levitin) “pointed out that most of the lowest notes on most pianos are actually inferred rather than heard. The soundboard on most pianos isn’t long enough to produce the bottom octave, but the brain hears the right overtones, which the piano can produce, and neurons in the brain begin to fire at the frequency of the missing bass note.” In days of yore (1950s – 1960s) this psycho-acoustic quirk was used in the design of “hi-fi” consoles to produce a semblance of deep bass without actually having an extended low frequency response. And so it is with the Rumble 25. I measured the response of this combo as shown in the graph. The red curve is with all controls set to 12 o’clock. The blue curve shows it can actually produce a reasonably flat response from 90 Hz to 2.5 kHz, +/-3 dB with the controls set as follows: Bass @ 12 o’clock, Mid @ 9 o’clock, High @ fully ccw. This means that it can only reproduce the 2nd harmonic of the lower bass octave (40 Hz to 80 Hz). Because of the normal 18 dB/octave roll-off for a vented enclosure, the 10 dB down point is about 70 Hz. As to the 2.5 kHz frequency, note that the 12th harmonic of a high A (220 Hz) on a bass is 2.64 kHz. The driver is low compliance and the box appears tuned to about 100 Hz, both of which are consistent with the measurements. These curves are smoothed with a 1/3 octave cepstral algorithm to remove insignificant non-audible variations in the measurements. There is a large resonant peak just over 3 kHz = 1/2 the driver diameter. This is tamed pretty well with the High control fully ccw, but still sits almost 7 dB above the average level. Given that the paper cone is quite stiff with no attempt in its design to damp sound waves travelling through the cone material, this resonant peak is not at all surprising. This peak corresponds to the 16th harmonic of the 220 Hz high A on the bass. This peak is probably a good “feature” for the attacks of slap bass (which I don’t do). Otherwise it is actually of little consequence. All this said, the Rumble 25 works well for me. It was low cost, is small, lightweight, and, in spite of lacking any usable output much below 100 Hz, it nonetheless “sounds” like a decent bass loudspeaker. With the controls set as noted for the flattest response, it works well for both my electric and acoustic basses, both of which sound best through a flat response system. The former is an all-original, ’63 Fender Jazz and the latter uses an NS Design “Copperhead” pick-up, a prototype kindly given to me by Ned as a present for mentoring one of his sons on bass. For acoustic gigs, even those using a PA for rooms sized for around 75 -100 audience, the Rumble 25 does the job in terms of sound quality and loudness. For larger rooms and louder gigs that’s why I have my “big” rig. This is custom set-up with a ruler flat response from 40 Hz to 2.5 kHz. However, It consists of a separate EQ, amplifier, and loudspeaker = much more to set up, is five times heavier, and it cost over 20 times more than the Rumble 25. That is what prompted me to try the Rumble 25 for smaller gigs. For what it's worth I play most all genres of music from classical to rock. One feature I like is Fender's built-in, non-adjustable, "Delta-Comp" limiter. This seems to work really well, holding things in check when the amplifier is over driven a bit. Push it hard over the limit point and some high frequency artifacts do appear. However, when running the amplifier near its limits it is virtually unnoticeable except for subtlly limiting the loudness. In spite of its measured performance, I'm giving the Rumble 25 five stars because its doing just what I need it to do.

Love this amp. 18 pounds of awesome. Mt standard bass has deep rich tones, and my new bass booms. Very pleased.

This amp beats any PV amp you can try. It is better than any PV amp heads. No harshness, just very great sound. The horn allows for a crisp top if needed. No cabinet vibration. Cooling fan is quiet. I can tell the amp design is good. Unlike PV, there are no pop noises when adjusting. The amp is grounded well. The amp is stable when shutting down, there are no pop noises or transients to ground. Unlike PV there are no startup thumps. PV amps are harsh and the woofers do not sound clean. This amp will work great for stage and practice. It will sound great in a moderate sized building as is. The output for an extra speaker will be even better with double the power and sound. I ran this for 2 hours solid at home. I felt the fan discharge only cool air. Even when I pushed it the amp ran cool. This is a great amp, trust me, I have tried many. Fender is going to be my choice from now on. BEST IN 30 YEARS. The simple to use tone controls work very well for adjusting sound quickly. My high end bass shines in this amp. The pre-amp gain is tremendous. When I turn the bass knob to full, this amp is a killer and the speaker does not hit X-max. Amazingly, the amp is light weight and you can not feel any cabinet vibration. 35 lbs. is just perfect for moving from place to place.

I was shopping for bass amps like crazy, and the Stage 800 was on my radar, but I was afraid to spend the $$$. But when they put it on a good sale, I pulled the trigger. MAN AM I GLAD I DID!!! I will never buy another NON-MODELING AMP ever again!!!! This thing can produce basically ANY tone from ANY popular bass amp in the world, has tons of built-in effects, comes with a footswitch, has a built-in tuner, can be controlled via the Fender Tone amp to change ALL settings from the comfort of your chair, can provide play-along-with tunes via Aux In jack (or Bluetooth, see below), is HELLA LOUD, supports external speaker cab to get even LOUDER, has STEREO DI Out Jacks, etc. etc. etc. -- the list is endless!!!!!@@@!! I have used Fender Mustang modeling guitar amps before, but this one is the easiest to use EVER. Yes, the Bluetooth is a little flaky, pretty much every time I want to play I have to (1) Kill/stop the "Tone App" on my phone, then (2) turn on the amp, then (3) relaunch the Tone App. It doesn't seem to reconnect gracefully unless you stop the app each time. Big Woop. Also, forget about streaming play-along music VIA BLUETOOTH while ALSO controlling via the Tone App VIA BLUETOOTH -- those two things did not seem to play nice together at all... but controlling via Tone App and doing play-along music via Aux In jack worked GREAT!!! I have used the Zoom B3n as an amp modeler for a long time... hate to say it because I love the B3n, but the amp models on the Stage 800 just sound BETTER, like MUCH BETTER! In the small room in my house I jam in, with the master volume to about 10 o'clock, every wall and ceiling in the room is vibrating in sympathy with the amp and my neighbors are starting to hate me! Haven't unleashed the full power in a larger space yet, but I'm guessing it will sound great cranked up! To play without making everyone hate me, the Master Volume only has to go to about 8 o'clock! Maybe 8:30. The thing I love about the Stage 800 is that the 2x10" speakers are very pure & flat & pristine, I guess they have to be to accurately model so many different amps and speakers. For example, when playing tunes through the Aux In jack, I expected the music to be muddled or bassy -- it was not, it sounded like it was being played through a great PA system! The only warn-off you will get from me is: This is not the amp for you if you are technically challenged. If tweaking knobs for Volume/Bass/Treble is about all you can handle tech-wise, this amp would be WASTED on you. BUT, if you know how to fiddle with tech a bit, and you want to have an amp that can sound like ANYTHING rather than being locked into a "one sound amp" for the same amount of money, then STOP STALLING AND JUST GET THIS AMP NOW :)

Look, this is a $299 cabinet that performs remarkably well for its price point. I have better stuff, but let's compare the two best at $299. I use these things as back line for bands and open mics in small/medium sized venues. They get the crap beat out of them. The Bugera BNT115TS at the same price blows the Fender totally of the water in deep low end thump -- but lacks in the high end clarity that the Fender produces. Depends on your needs, I guess The Bugera is rated 500w continuous/2000w peak vs. 300/600 for the Fender. But I have blown a Bugera with a 300w Ashdown (ABM500 running at 8ohms) running at less than half volume and barely driving the input/EQ. So there's that. The Bugera also weighs nearly 40 POUNDS MORE, and is deeper and unwieldy. So there's THAT, too. My biggest complaint about the Fender (and many others have it too) is the chincy, silly Velcro-ed on fabric Fender "grille". Ridiculous piece of engineering for any bass cabinet. It rattles and flaps around even at low volumes. After I first played a Rumble 115 for a few minutes, that fabric came off and was replaced by the solid metal grille from my old Bugera. Not only does it not flap around and sound like crap, it won't allow an errant falling mic stand to pierce the woofer. All in all, a solid $299 cab... and probably best in this budget-class despite the low frequency drop-off and silly fabric grille.

I have owned a lot of high end amps and cabinets and this inexpensive combo sounds so good I think it might be my favorite. Plenty of volume and punch and the tone is perfect with very little knob-turning. My only complaints are the lack of mute switch and the bright and contour voicings are pretty terrible to my ears. The overdrive channel is ok but I would prefer to get rid of all of the voicing buttons and give me a mute switch instead. Overall though, I love this combo and I would definitely recommend it.

This amp is incredible. I am a big fan of it. I play live shows with an Orange bass amp and use this Fender 25 bass amp at home and for home recordings. I have to have it on the lowest possible volume, it is so powerful, to not disturb neighbors. You could definitely use it for small venues and cafes. Sound, carry-weight, appearance, user options, everything is great on this Fender 25 bass amp! It is about half an arm deep and up to the knees tall. It's the best for price, sound, and size! I have had my first one for several years and it is still perfect. I bought another one for another location. I wanted to try a new product, but after sampling many other brands, none were as good for this price/size category of bass amp.