Carlsbro Kick Start Bass 25 Combo

I bought this amp for about #50 from eBay, and even for that price brand new it sucked. It's got a 3-band EQ, compressor and presence dial... The blue light looks cool but that's just about it.

The sound is very trebly and punchy... And when you turn the bass up it just rattles itself to pieces... I've never put it up past for fear of it just falling apart... I tightened all of the screws and it continued to rattle... It's very muddy, horrible sound quality... And it buzzes like hell!

Like hell would I gig this without a backup... I wouldn't gig it with a backup! I wouldn't gig with it as a backup... I wouldn't even give it away it's so bad. The speaker inside is a nice celestion driver, but the electronics are so flimsy... I could have designed a better amp! It's broken twice now... It was DoA, and it finally gave in last week - It just hums and no sound comes out, after a while it starts smoking. At least the blue light still works.

The customer support were lousy - Took their time even getting back to me when I told them about the problem, then said I'd blown it - Hadn't even plugged in, it just wouldn't work. It took 8 weeks for me to recieve it, and chunks of wood were missing and the plug exploded into a billion in the box... I'm probably just gonna take the driver out and put it in something good.

This is amp is so much bollucks I can't write it in words... It's the only amp I ever owned, and my computer preamp and speakers work better than this... When I tried another bass amp for the first time in my life I was blown away, and that was only a #30 piece of rubbish... Yet it was a billion times better than this!

25 Watt 1x10" Combo. Don't know what year, judging by the design of it some time in the bronze age seems likely.

Features: Three band EQ, Compression and Presence knobs, Headphone Jack. Not much but fine for my needs, if it worked properly...

I bought this about a year ago to learn on and at the time I knew virtually nothing about bass gear. I bought it on trust from a local retailer who had been very helpfull to me with guitar stuff and had never screwed me over before.

I use it with a cheapo saga kit bass which sounds bad but is actually a thousand times better quality than this amp is. I use a pick but this isn't entirely out of choice as the 10" speaker offers nothing in the way of low end and is useless for finger picking.

When I got it home it sounded absolutely awfull. Something inside was resonating very loudly whenever I hit a d. I tried sttanding it on it's back, side, top, standing my foot on it, nothing would kill that noise, so I went to work on it...

Inside there was no wadding whatsoever, this is apparently a point of principle for carlsbro who say it deadens the sound. This is fair enough in a large, solidly constructed, well braced cab but in a little chipboard combo with the circuit board right above the driver it's just plain stupid. It was immediately obvious that the vibration came from the thin (completely undamped!) piece of aluminium shielding the circuit board from the driver. This is such an obvious design flaw that I can only guess they all sound like mine. Shocking.

I covered the aluminium plate in gaffa tape, put foam around the joints and added some new fixings to hold the back on properly. It now sounds almost as good as any other small practice amp would have in the first place.

The headphone jack is noisy and the compression and tone knobs do nothing to the sound that I can tell.

Like I say, it's made of chipboard, tinfoil and anything else cheap and rattley which they had to hand in the factory. I'm sure it will go on finding new and exciting ways to break for as long as I own it.

Meh, what's the point? I can't imagine what it would be like talking to somebody who could design something this bad

My nan could build a better amp than this. Get something else.