Ashdown MAG-300R Head

I got this amp slightly used and wow! I borrowed a friends Peavey TVX810 400 watt 4 ohm Cab with tweeter and it blew me away! Im a rock metal player I play small to medium clubs and it its so ballsy bottom and such chunk and clarity. 300 hundred watts in your face! Im waiting to use it with my Eminence 210 and a 15 loaded in Seismic cabs! Wish it had a headphone jack and a fottswitch for the Sub harmonic feature.

I use a 1985 Yamaha BB450 with Bartolini Precision p/u's and Yamaha stock jazz p/u, Leo Quan bad ass II bridge. Very clean and ballsy sound out of my bass, lots of depth , low end, highs, mids its all ther to dial in. I also run a BBE sonic maximizer through the effect loop for must have clarity and balls too! My chorus pedal sings through it too!

Ive had this amp for a month and pushed it hard, no problems!

Emailed about specs and running different ohm speakers, immediate response. Running 1-8 ohm cab is rated 185 watts. and a minimum of 4 ohms is obviosly rated 307 Watts. Very Loud!

Ive been playing for 20 years.Ive played Others and this amp rocks, very versatile tone and ballsy!

05 model. i play church/rock/jazz/funk/fussion/pop. it gets the job done all those levels for shure.

two input jacks one for an active and one for passive basses.

ouput routing is okay if you are needing to only a small about of signal routing. 1) tuner out 2)speaker outs @ 307 RMS watts min omh load of 4. 3)DI out , its balanced and 4) effects loop. I use the effects loop to daisy chain my ampeg b 115 as a fill for our drummer,

there is a high and low boost button on the face: bright = +10dB @ 10 kHz and deep = +8dB @ 50Hz. cool in a pinch, but in my EXP. boost buttons for the more part take away more than they add, just EQ good. which by the way. the EQ is a 3 band + 2 Frequency knobs which basicly makes it a five band. The is also a by pass button for the EQ

ah my fav feature. the sub harmonic button. this feature reproduces the note you play at an octive lower and their is a mix knob to get just right so you have true tone, and you are working the subs good.


MY Biggest quirk with the features is there is no foot control action. its kind of a pain to go back to your rack to press a button to bypass the EQ or turn a boost off.

i play with two basses
a older Hamer (old enough to be a good bass)
and Carvin Acoustic bass. the Hamer has a P/J pick up , set up.
and the amp is too loud for an acoustic even with my sound hole cover .

there is a slight bit of AC hum on the unit. could be due to the fact that church has a bad ground. but its nothing a hum reduction unit couldnt take care of.

the tone is very much Brit. good solid tone, nothing to kill for. but not crap on the same hand

well when i first got it. the thing would fire off at all. i checked the power cable. the fuse, check the voltage at both and showed nill. so i took a risk and pull the amp apart and the connection for ground was not connected to the power input. prob. a mess up by shipping. but a promblem none the less.

and this point i still bring my 100watt ampeg combo along just in case. it has a lot a ground to make up in order to prove its self

but then again, i order through the mail. i should have bought it in a shop

havent talk to them yet, i am man i fixed on my own.

i have been playing bass for about 3 years, not long enough to have a point of view that counts but i like this thing even with the hick up in the start. 300 watts at 300bucks good deal in my book, decent tone i play it through a fender 2x15. this guy is in the same league as the ampeg B-2R, GK backline 600, not a huge venue rocker but good enough for most anything. if it got stolen i would save my money and step up to a little more high end amp such as David Eden.

all in all good buy. if you have been looking at it for a while, just get it.

although i bet it would sound so much better on a ashdown cab set up
(i must by the 4x10 next)

2005 model, purchased to be used locally in smaller rooms where my Ampeg II and IV Pro are simply too much amp for the job. 307 watts @ 4ohms is plenty of power- fits my needs perfectly. As for "features", all the ones included are pretty typical for Ashdown. Do I really need to list 'em out here? Probably not.

Using Fender P or J basses playing rock, blues, motown, and fingerstyle funk through either a single 12 cab or a 210 cab- this amp sounds really great. A very wide variety of sounds can be had, but the most important thing is that I can get a sound that I'm happy with. Which I can- a big, fat, juicy, roomfilling sound! Very satisfying. The subharmonizer is, as others have stated, a complete joke. It tracks fine down to B, but loses it with lower notes. I use an MXR Bass Octave on my pedalboard, so I haven't ever needed to use the amp effect. No big deal, really. For the money spent, the straightup tones this amp makes really sets it apart from the rest.

I've played about 120 gigs with it in the 7 months I've owned it- no problems whatsoever. We'll see what the future holds, but I'm not too concerned.

Haven't needed them yet. To me, that's the best kind of customer support!!

I've been playing for 18 years and am a busy professional player- this amp has been great to me so far. I wish it had a ground lift, but that's about it for complaints/suggestions. For small to medium sized rooms, this head does the job nicely. And they're cheap too! Should mine get stolen or run over by the drummer, I would certianly get another one. Great amp. Two thumbs up.

2005 made in China. Lots of knobs. Wish the direct out was pre EQ. VU meter is not calibrated to set up gain. Preamp will distort long before VU hits redline. Really good power if you go to 4ohms. Wish it had a clip light.

Truely awsome. This amp can get a lot of great tones. Overdriving the preamp produces a harsh sound though. great rock and funk tones. Great slap or Motown sounds. I use this head with two 410 mag cabs and am totaly satified. I truely believe these will one day be considered classics.

The first one I got showed up with a bent ear and not working. Their packaging leaves something to be desired. The second one came in great shape. I have pushed this hard in loud live settings for about four months with no problems so far.

Emailed once and got a reply the next day.

For the price this is a great product and I would recommend it to anyone.

The features on this amp are mare than enough to make any bass sound gorgeous, however it would be nice to have a full 12 band eq to play with. The VU meter is really handy for setting things up so you get a nice clean tone whatever or wherever your playing.

I use this head with an Aria pro II bass, it needs a lot of bottom end to make it sound nice and this amp certainly caters for that and gives me a nice punchy top end to boot. I use asdown MAG 2x10 and 1x15 cabs with this amp and it packs one hell of a punch, i gigged it for the first time the other day and it sounded so nice i didnt want to stop playing. This amp is too loud for many gigs, you can make the earth move with it :)

I havent had this amp for long, but it seems well made, although i do have problems with the vu meter not working sometimes, a decent tap on it sorts it out though.

i havent dealt with the customer support yet, but ive heard good things about them and the 2 year warranty is long enough for me to sort things out if it does go tits up.

ive been playing for a good 6 years, this is only my second amp but i have played on quite a few others. It kicks the crap outta my old 100w laney combo and is comparable to the hartke amps ive tried. I would certainly recommend this to anyone looking for a quality product at a sensible price.

Manufacturered 2004. I won't go thru all of the features which are comprehensive covered in the review above. The main characteristics of the amp are that it is very clear - it will operate all way up without distortion. There is an analogue (quite retro looking) level meter which is quite useful in getting the input level right, this helps ensuring that the sound is clear and undistorted.
Played thru an Ashdown Deep Mag 1x15 and Behringer 2x10 it is loud - enough to come through with a fit and enthusiastic drummer and guitarist with H&K 50watt valve amp wound up all the way. The EQ is very good - very subtle and progressive, but with a good range. The tone controls appear (particularly the intermediate two) to interact with each other, giving a versatile range. For what I use the amp for I can't fault it. The deep seeting and sub harmonic allow a full bass sound even with the amp turned low, which is excellent if I'm working with acoustic musicians - I have found with other amps that the sound is a bit thin when quiet unless the tone is so bass-y that it sounds muddy. The Mag 300 doesn't suffer from that. These controls can be turned off when playing loud unless you want to rattle the windows.

I play R&B (old R&B that is), blues, blues rock, jazz and sixties. The amp covers all these really well. I usually have quite a bass-y sound, but I can crank it up to pop and slap well too.
I can't get it to distort, it's clean all the way up. It has two fans which in normal use are inobtrusive, however I couldn't have it switched on in a room where I was recording.
I use three basses with it - two PJ formats (an Aria IGB38 and a Schecter Jupiter) and a Shergold Marathon with a Humbucker. The amp is pretty quiet as regards electronic interference - with a high treble setting, you can get an an audible buzz if you get too close with the single coil basses, but not too bad.

Can't say really - haven't owned it long enough.It's got a nice solid feel to it.I will take a backup to gigs - I always do.

Can't say really - haven't owned it long enough.Two years warantee and I have heard from another owner that the will fix faults beyond this if you approach them in person.

I've been playing bass for 32 years. I been buying and selling amps and basses all this time and this bass amp is one of my favourites.
I wanted something that would give me the volume I needed to come thru a loud drummer and guitarist but with a clean sound - I was using a 100 watt 12in combo and a 100 head with a 15in cab, but although I could get the volume, it was distorted. I looked at Peavey, Hartke, Marshall, Berhinger and Carlsboro, but this seemed the best quality at a reasonable price.
I also have Session, Marshall, Vox, H&H and Roland amps, but I think this is about the best bass amp I've got. I actually can't fault it for what I do with it.

2004 Rackmount version. 307 watts @ 4ohms. Built in octave is cool,but with it was a little more defined. EQ is cool, as well as the Deep in switch and the Bright in switch.

Ok this head is 307 watts at 4 ohms, but man does it sounds way way louder. It is very very deep sounding, That British Tone just does it for me! This amp is way better than my old Ampeg B2R. Its like comparing daylight and dark, plus its like $100 less!

havent had any problems great work Ashdown!

Great response from customer service, they always answer my questions with a day or less! Again great job!

Great sound,amazing price,great customer service,and as with every other ashdown rig, very very reliable! I will never play another amp ever again. I've owned Mesa,Ampeg,Traynor,Fender,SWR...The only thing that could even compare to this is an Aguilar, but unless you want to spend an extra $1,000-$2,000 dollars get this bass head!

This amp is great. It has imputs for high and low gain. On the the, however, there is only a 4 band, eq, but I've kept it flat so far; the amp sounds naturally great. There are also two 4 ohm outputs wired in parallel. The Effects Loop is one the front side of the amp, making it very accesible. There is also a tuner-out right next to the effects loop, which makes it possible to also send an un-amplified signal to another amp (like a combo amp for a monitor). Mixing is also easy because this amp had a direct out built in.

I like to play a little bit of everthing. In the band I am playing in, we play a lot of stuff that relies heavily on the sound of a bass, and this amp can definitely drive out the bass. I play through though an Ashdown 4x10 cab with a tweeter, so everything suounds great. I was worried about not getting clear lows, but this performed better than the bottom line ampeg amps that I tried, which were much more muddy sounding. Slap souds awesome, jazz comes out really clear aswell. Rock is what we mostly play, and this amp is perfect. I like a little bit of the jazzy sound with some pop, but also the thundering lows. Even for a band where the music is heavily reliant on bass, this will work well.

The amp also has a feature calle "sub-harmonics" which adds even more umph to the notes, but is definitly not neccessary. A fun feature though.

While I have only used this amp in practice for less than a week, it does seem like it will hold up nicely. All of the boxes are made of ply wood (much better than the particle board normaly ussed). One concern is the plastic corners. Where some corners of the wood boxes of amps an cabinets are steel, these are plastic. I think they work work out fine, howerver, and changing them to metal ones wouldn't be a problem. I can honestly, however, not give this category a rating.

There is a two year warranty on the amp, but other than that, I don't konw much about it. Check the manufature's website.

I've been playing bass for two and a half years, and untill recently had been playing a PEAVEY Grind Bass (a bit of a jazzy bass, but great) through a PEAVEY BASIC 112. During practice. I always had to turn the Peavey up to to point where the bass became distorted. I love this amp because it provides all the tone I could want, but will drive the sound aswell. I play with a guitarist and a drummer, and I only have to turn the amp up a quarter way to get the sound that I want. This amp is great. I used to think that I was set on a ampeg, but, in my mind, ampeg doesn't compare. Ashdown simple makes a better product. It's also much less espensive. I suggest looking at cabinets at the same time as buying this head; I purchases the 4 by ten +tweeter and it is more that I could haev asked for. The whole set up was $600 without taxes; about the price of just an MApeg head. Go to the store, check it out. If you like it, see if the guy will give you a deal on it. If you live in Seattle and you're looking a for a great store to check out, go to American Music on Freemont. It's great.

This is the new generation of Ashdown MAG bass amps. They are now built in China. This one is dated september 03, so I guess it's one of the very first ones made of this model.
This is a 307 W amp (under 4 ohms), and despite of its low price and light weight (only 8.5 kg), it offers a wide range of features :
- 2 inputs (active and passive)
- 2 tone booster switches (deep and bright)
- 1 switch to enable/disable EQ
- 5-band EQ
- Subharmonics with adjustable level and on/off switch
- Effects loop
- Tuner output
- XLR D.I. output
- Input and output level controls
- Input level monitor (VU type)

These features are more than I need and yes, this amp is definitely quite versatile. I mainly play rock, blues and funk, and all of these styles are matched by this amp.
I use this amp on rehearsal, on studio and on stage.

Now I play it with a Fender Jazz Bass (American, 4-string, passive). I previously had a Rickenbacker 4003 and hey, I had never heard a RIC sound so deeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
The EQ is very efficient, and the subharmonics is an extra feature I find useful on the lower notes, in case you want to start an earthquake.
There is no distortion in this amp, but I don't need any.
I can witness that in the past, I owned many amps that weren't that goodsounding and powerful.
I use this head with the matching MAG-210T cab. This gives me about 200 W since the cab is 8 ohms, but these 200 W are more than enough !
This is definitely an amp for bass players who want to cut through without making any compromise on the bottom end.

I've owned this amp for two months now, and experienced no problem at all. This is the rackmount version, so I mounted it in a rack case to protect it. I go gigging with it, without any backup.

Every time I emailed Ashdown for any question, they replied in minutes. Excellent point here, completed by the 5-year warranty on the amp.

This is the amp I've been looking for so long. I've been playing for 28 years now. I owned Ampegs (including 70's SVT), Peaveys, Sunn, but I really wanted something easy to carry, while powerful and goodsounding... and cheap if possible. I found it.