Warwick Blue Cab 20 Combo

Current (2005) model.
A nice well made 20Watt RMS 10" speaker bass amp for practice and acoustic jams and SMALL acoustic gigs.
TINY! - unbelivably so for a "serious" name brand bass amp destpit that it has a bit of a heft at 16 or so Kilograms I guess but still nice and easy to carry.
Simple controls - volume, bass, mid, treble but then that's all you realy need
Single channel with seperate active and passive in. Effects loop, line out, headphone out.
Some might say it would be nice if it had line in for practicing along to a CD/MP3 player but I've never found they sound great through any sort of bass amp anyway.
Kick stand at back to allow you to prop it back at about 20 deg. for monitoring sound.
Rear ported - hmmm porting's nice but prefer front porting myself - makes stage/room positioning less affecting of amp tone.

Not packed with bells and whistles but that's the way I like 'em.
9 for having every thing I need but for missing a line in.

OK only had it for a short time - just under a week so just what I've tried it with so far:
At the shop I tried it with a Mike Dirnt P bass (wow! what a seriously great bass) and it gave a nice growling tone an almost perfect and pure reproduction of Greenday's bass tone!
So far played through it with a Fender Aerodyne Jazz, Aria SB-1000, Rickenbacker, Musicman Stingray, Fretless Fender Jazz and a Status.
Style of playing goes from funky blues/jazz improv through to power pop and indi rock


OK so it's a 20 watt'er with a single 10" speaker it's never going to bring the house down sound wise but it has surprisingly well rounded tone and enough percusive attack to drive a beat even if it ain't going to get your flairs flapping.

Tone controls are simple - volume, bass, mid, treble.

Volume - well you know what it does :) sounds nice from about 3 some sort of limiter/compresser kicks in about 6 (which is loud enough for jaming with 2 acoustic guitars) and from that point on it's just a case of turning up to increase the dampening and adding sustain. It holds a steady tone almost until almost full volume when there's a small, and slightly anoying buzzing solid state signal clipping.

Bass, mid and treble do what they need to do. Turn them to where you expect to get a tone and you pretty much get it or close to what you need for practice - dark bassy blues? funk? driving punk? check, check and yep check, all there.

the line out isn't going to bring the DI box business crashing down in sudden obsolescence but it does the job well enough for demo recording or inserting in to a PA if you find that "cafe gig" is actually a small pub gig.

8 because:
1:Good as it is no amp this small is going to give you the punch to rock the house and shake the foundations but then that's exactly why you buy a practice amp - to lose that "killed by deaf" effect I guess.
2: Line out on pro level amps (even practice amps) should IMHO be as close as damn it to f pro DI units suitable for studio work and PA inserting.

hmmm I hear good things about Warwick gear and this, on the whole seems to be well up to scratch.

This is a SOLID unit, built like a tank - I'm a BIG guy (130Kg) and this can take my full weight easy without any sign of play in it's box. Beats all those cheap arse Bass combo amps that feal like they are made of cardboard.

Good quality, good looking speaker carpet. Full sized real rubber feet. Metal (real metal not chromed plastic) tone knobs and jacks. A good drilled metal speaker grill - all these exactly the same gear as on Warwicks pro stage amps and cabs.

Kick stand's the only thing that looks dicky - plastic and it would certainly break if you put any sort of weight on the front of the amp while you had it inclinded on the stand.

10 but for the fact that the little kick stand will break - not so much a case of if but when it will happen. so 9 instead.

never had to deal with Warwick service but bought it from a shop I know will look after me if problems arise.

Practice and small gig bass amps have come a LONG way in the 25 years that I've been playing (hell they've come a long way in just the last _5_ years) and this and similar units from SWR and Ashton that I also tried in the shop are a revelation to old school bass players like me who thought the only way to get good tone was through more kickin' watts and bigger speakers cabs (and more of them).

Plays good at neighbour friendly levels, cuts it nice in an accoustic jam and did nicely for a small "acoustics through cafe PA" gig - and you can DI in to the PA if you find you need extra.

Given the cost of this unit is a little over the cost of 4 sets of good bass strings that's pretty amazing value in any ones books.