Kalamazoo Bass 30 210 Combo

This is an update to my 2001 review. The features have not changed: Bass, Treble, Instrument. Very simple, and easy to get tone out of. I am now using this as a bass amp. Amazing!

This is a very simple amp. You get a loudness control, bass & treble. I could use mids, but I have that on my bass.

The amp is not grounded. It has a lot of hum. Especially when you dime all the controls. Shame, Gibson, for making an amp that hums when you dime the controls!

I'm just kidding. Tone is king. This amp has tone in spades.

I got this amp for a hundred bucks in 1992. I've never changed anything after I replaced the tubes (in 1992). It has 12ax7s and EL84s in it. It hums a bit, and smells like a tube amp factory after a while - but it's never broken down. And I've gigged with it many times.

If you call Gibson, they'll probably say "Kalamawho?" Regardless, this amp is so solid, you'll never have to call anyone. it's bulletproof.

I love this damned amp. It has scads of vintage tone, and now that I've had it for a few years, it's even better. The wood is cracked here and there, and the speakers have been replaced, but damn - it's just a wonderful amp.

It's class A like a Vox.

When you turn it up, it distorts.

And you can find them cheap in a lot of places.

This amp is a 2 - 10" tube combo with a clsed back. The tube power amp is screwed on top of the speaker compartment. The preamp has volume, bass and treble and is on a little flip down door on the back. It uses two 6EU7's and two 7591's for tubes. It has a solid state rectifier. It must be cathode biased to only claim 30 watts from this tube compliment. It has two Jensen C10p's dated from 1965. I'd say the amp was assembled then or in 1966. I give it a 5 for features because of what it is.

The amp has a very basic sort of tone when played clean. It's best to turn the bass off and the treble all up. The best clean seems to be had by turning it all the way up and turning down your guitar. When played wide open it really has a great sound. Boosted with an graphic eq or compressor it'll really rock out. Think Cream. I have only played it with my Tom Anderson Drop Top T so I can't say what a humbucker in the bridge will do. My guitar is set up with a single coil at the bridge and a splittable humbucker at the neck. This guitar will make any amp sound good but I still think this is a real good sounding amp. It does have quite a bit of 60 cycle hum but I'm sure it need new filter caps since it's all original.

Still running after nearly 40 years.

Yea right!

I have lots of pro and vintage guitar and amps that I've accumulated over the last 35 years of playing guitar. I would definitely like to have another if something happened to it. I highly recommend buying one if you get the chance. If all original I wouldn't hesitate to spend up to $300 on one. It is a fantastic value for a moderately loud tube amp with good Jensens.

Very old 30 watt Gibson econoline bass amp. Mine has the date still on the tag on the internals and was made in October of 1965. As far as features go, not a whole lot. 2 Jensen 10" horozontally oriented speakers with closed back. The controls are the coolest thing on the amp, the amp has a flip out control panel in the back. Once flipped out, you have a Loudness=Volume, Treble, which doubles as the on/off switch when turned back past zero, and Bass. Two 1/4" identical 1/4" inputs. The particular amp that I have is not labeled as "Bass 30" on the back flip out panel or badge on the front of the sliver grille cloth. I have found a few sites with pictures of other Bass 30's, and all seem to have this marking. I looked inside at the wiring diagram to make sure. This thing has two 5791 power tubes, which are very expensive and hard to find (they are just starting to produce them again) and 2 6eu7 preamp tubes. The ones in this amp are the origanals from 1965. Although this is a bass amp, I have always used it for guitar. I have played bass through it, it works much better at guitar.

This amp is very very vintage. It's tone is definately dark, but the nice thing is if you are using a strat or soemthing it really smooths out the highs and takes the edge off. The clean tone of this amp is dry but very neat vintage tone. What you hear is basically your guitar, with the signal running through two preamp tubes, two power tubes, and two really vintage speakers. Thats it. No bells and whistles. It is a very enjoyable sound if you like vintage. I actually used to plug a fender combo amps line out into the input of this amp (I was young and very very stupid) and surprisingly, this thing really sounded good. I especially liked the distortion sounds of this amp. The Jensen speakers in this thing are really astounding. They had a really good loose bass response with a really fat and chunky sound. You could probably make some really great blues rigs from this amp.

If there is one thing about this amp that shines its reliability. This thing is from 1965. It sat at my uncles house until around 1997 when he gave it to me as my first amp. I used to plug my 100 watt fender roc pro 1000 amp into the input of this and use it as a speaker cabinent (which once again, is really stupid) but the sound that came out was too damn good. I used this thing in this set up for quite a while, and it never broke down, and that is with 40 year old tubes. It's been gigged, dragged to college, and everything in between.

Well basically this amp is a cool toy to have around. I have a JCM 2000 half stack, and a fender roc pro 1000 for practice. Every now and then I'll plug into this thing and it really brings you back to that time period soulfully and accurately. By no means is this a shimmer and sparkle amp, but it just has cool tone. I don't plan on selling this amp. I'd like to keep it around as long as it lasts, since its 40 years old. I don't think anyone looking at the kalamazoo reviews would be looking at this in search of a main amp, but its definately not for gigging and playing everyday. At least not by todays standards. But it will definately raise an eyebrow when people hear the name or see it.

This is a 1970 Bass 30 Kalamazoo amp, the last year for Kalamazoo
I think. it has two inputs(both the same, no high & low). two 6eu7 preamp tubes, two 7591 output tubes.
It came with the original rebranded CMI tubes in it!
It has two Jensen special design C10P ceramic speakers in a sealed
plywood cabinet. The models like mine were made with the speakers
arranged vetically not like the early ones that were a squareish
cabinet. I like this better because it gets the speakers up higher
to be heard better,takes up much less floor space, you dont have to
reach way down to adjust knobs and the controls are on the front
not on the back on the flip out panel like the old style.
It has volume,treble,bass and off/on/polarity switch.
Mine was working when I got it. I am in the process of recapping
the whole amp. This is about $20 in parts and several hours work.

This was made for bass and I would love to hear a bass thru it.
I have only a strat copy and it sounds very full and rich.
Not a lot of volume but that may be because I have not finished
recapping it or testing the tubes in it yet. It is about 50% louder
than my Kalamazoo model two (yes have one of those too!) They sound
similar to each other but so much more rich and full from the bass 30.
The sound is clean even at max volume. I will remove the negative
feedback wire once I have completed recapping it and see if that
will get some tube distortion going to sound good with a guitar.
I guess bass players want to sound real clean. I may make this a
switchable option on it.

It was still working with all original parts for 32 years...
Should be good for another 32 years once I recap it...

Kalamazoo was part of Gibson way back when. I doubt they remember
this one!

I have had 4 other Kalamazoo amps: model ones and twos.
This is the first bass amp I have had. I would like to
have a collection of one of each of them I like them so much!
They can be found on Ebay easy enough.

It was made in the mid-60s. It's actually quite versatile as an amp - it's a bass amp, albiet a quiet one, and works well as a guitar amp as well. It can make quite the loud clean tone for guitar. It has an instrument volume, treble (with integrated on/off switch), and bass knobs, 2 inputs, and even has a retrofitted speaker output.

It's very low power but if you turn it up it distorts pleasantly. It uses three 12ax7 tubes for the preamp and two EL84s for output. Well, they might be EL34s, I'm not sure.

Its tone is pretty bassy unless you run the bass knob down, and then it's rather like a dark Deluxe due to the closed back. It has plenty of hum as the amp isn't grounded. When turned up it distorts pretty well and with a useable tone. Nothing special, but quite warm and pleasing with no bite. It's mostly power amp overdrive with a little speaker distortion. The amp came with blue Jensen speakers installed, but I replaced these with cheaper Fanes to save them - they're expensive.

It's never failed in terms of reliability - but then I've never gigged with it much. It's mostly a basement recording amp.

KalamaWho?

Nice amp. Gibson bought out Kalamazoo early on so this amp is quite comparable to Gibson tube combos from this era. I like it a lot and would probably not sell it anytime soon.