Acoustic Amplification AB50

Remember this is a small watt, small speaker electric/acoustic bass amp. It is meant to project, fill out and support the tone of your E/A bass. Here you play the bass not the amp. As mentioned earlier; two inputs (one per channel) with individual volume controls, summed 3-band equalizer, 1/4" line out, solid state electronics, made in China, 50 watts, a good quality 10" Eminence speaker, wedge design, black tolex covering. Inputs accept 1/4" jacks and XLR for microphone use. Amp is actually two separate 25 watt amps outputting into one 10' speaker.

Excellent sound when modified. See suggestion below. I'm currently using several electric/acoustic basses including a Fender Victor Bailey (just go get one, forget the price tag. Plugged into an amp it's glorious), a Dean Performer CF and a Fender BG 32 mini-jumbo. I love the open fullness of E/A basses and when I use one I always get favorable comments about my sound. Obviously not a rock 'n roll amp but great for quiet plugged-in accoustic folk, blues and jazz settings. Need more volume use the line out into the PA system and use the amp as a stage monitor. The Acoustic AB 50 Amp is perfect for everything mentioned above.

So far so good. I've owned it for about 10 months and use it frequently. Seems solid and I expect or foresee no problems. Note: it's kind of heavy for it's size and a little awkard to carry due to its wedge shape. But all-in-all no big deal. It's a great little amp.

Never had to comtact them.

Age 53 and going strong. Played bass casually for kicks for 30 years: rock, blues, jazz, folk, and Sunday morning church. Also own solid body Fender PBass, JBass, Spector Legend 4 and a beautiful gold Epiphone Jack Casidy. I also double on harp. For the bigger bar and outside gigs I use appropriate equipment including an Avatar 4-10" (love it, love it, love it!) and/or an old 1-15" Crate cab along with a Peavey FireBass 700 watt head (real nice) or an American Audio VLP 1500 (750 watt per side) power amp with a Tech 21 RBI preamp or a Dunlop MRX DI Bass pre. Here's the deal with the Acoustic AB 50: you may like the sound of this amp right out of the box. Good for you if you do. I liked it enough to buy it; but thought it could sound better. First thing you want to do is remove the piezo tweeter and get rid of the super high end. It sounds so much better without the tweeter. Slip a flat-blade screw drive between the top edge of the removeable speaker grill face-plate. It's held in place with velcro. Remove the tweeter, disconnect the leads, twist-tie them together so the leads don't dangle to far down or touch themselves. Then stuff'm back in and put the faceplate back on. Time taken: 5 minutes tops. This immediately accomplishes two major sound improvments. First, it takes away the obnoxious britle high end. Second it opens a port into the otherwise sealed cabinet and improves the total bottom end. Now it'll even sound great with solid body electric basses. Once again use common sense: it's a low volume amp with a 10" speaker. Play on!

Nice features, 2 inputs, 2 volume controls give 2-channel operation, 3-band equalizer, various input and output jacks. Very good looking, classic Acoustic style. Solid state, 50 watts, 1x10" Eminence speaker. Tilt-back wedge design. Tolex covered. Made in China.

This where the amp has a problem. First, the cabinet is made of MDF. Good damping, not so much for stiffness. That in itself is not uncommon, but the cabinet has two basic design flaws. First, it has just a single interior compartment housing both the speaker (which in itself seems to be a decent Eminence) and the amp. So the excursion of the speaker cone causes jets of air to woofle in and out of all the jacks, pots, and any other openings in the control panel. This causes a loud and extremely annoying noise like something is rattling or buzzing inside the cabinet, or the speaker is farting out. The second issue is that the speaker baffle board (3/4" MDF) is supported only on 3 sides. The free edge vibrates like crazy, which accentuates the first problem. This can be fixed with some added internal bracing; the first problem is a lot harder to fix as there is no other ventilatin for teh electronics. I laid a folded-up towel over the control panel, and it actually sounded pretty good. If you play only in loud environments, the noise may not be objectionable. But for playing acoustic-electric settings, not so good. I compared it to another unit at GC which had the same noise. As it is a function of the basic design of the cabinet, I suspect they will all be just as bad. I returned it.

I sent two emails to their support address, never got any response. No help at all.

I have been playing bass & guitar off & on for 40 years. Have played through a lot of great equipment, including the real Acoustic hardware. Acoustic Amplification aquired the name and aspires to the legacy of Acoustic Control Corp., but I found the problems with this amp to be basic and amateur. Not at all a robust design. I had high hopes and was extremely disappointed. With the towel on it, the sound was actually pretty good, but I refuse to live with a folded towel covering the control panel. I returned it. What were they thinking!?