Yorkville XM200 Bass Master 115 Combo

Greatest keyboard amp ever made!!! Match this with a cheap mixer and you've got the greatest live performance setup for the money, anywhere out there!

I play keys with a dedicated left hand bass output and there is absolutely no better rig for clear, crisp keys tones like organs, pianos, horns, etc. AND deep, thunderous, punchy bass lines. I play two separate keyboards (one with great pianos, horns, etc. and the "main" one with the Hammond B3 sounds and the left hand bass parts) and run them into a cheap Behringer Xenyx mixer prior to inputting that via a single line into the Yorkville amp. Then I can boost the EQs desired even further by using the Yorkville's 4 main EQ adjustments and "scoop" or contour knob.

These amps are built like tanks and rival the old quality of Peaveys and Fenders. Mine's rolled around in the bed of a truck but haven't dropped it yet so no comment on that part of its reliability. The weight, HD materials used, etc. are evidence that Yorkville's taking no gamble with its 10 year warranty.

Yorkville's moved over to Traynor (the original company name) but they still stock parts. The amp's single handle on the top is known for stretching and cracking (probably under the strain of lifting 60+lbs using a plastic strap!) and I had to get one replaced recently. Called their US center in New York and within a day or so had one shipped (free) to me to install. That's after the amp was 4 years old!! I understand their new (Traynor) stuff and maybe even the Yorkville nameplate has a 10 year warranty now.

ME: 40 years in the professional performance field.
MUSIC: Classic rock and blues
THIS AMP COMPARED TO OTHERS: Wins, hands down. Better than that foreign stuff from Ashdown and Trace-Elliot. A lot more compact than Peavey's stuff. Way underrated. Good quality Canadian construction and superb customer service.

WISH: It had side handles instead of the single top strap.

200 Watts and one 15" speaker + piezo tweeter. Passive/active inputs, 1 channel. Very basic 4 band EQ: Volume, Bass, Lo-mid, Hi-mid, Treble and Scoop. Tuner out and mute button are pretty useful for tuning silently on stage. It's has an optional cab extension which is useful for creating a larger, fuller sound. Plus all the rest of the basic features (effects loop, DI, XLR). Nothing impressive.

I bought this bass amp for it's super crisp sound, but as we mature, our taste buds change. I haven't been able to get a nice warm sound out of this, and as a result, it doesn't impress me. The very basic EQ doesn't allow for much sound creation, but the Scoop control does add a lot of bottom end. I find this amp quite noisy, even when I'm directly in. It's distorted a few times, but only when I was blasting it. I've played a lot of rock and alternative with this thing and it's done the job alright, but I'll say it again - it doesn't impress me.

I've gigged with this amp without a backup many times and it is a beast. It's built like a tank and you never have to worry about damaging the speaker (it's covered by a metal grill). HOWEVER I had one major problem - the handle was breaking on it. The rubber grip was tearing and one of the plastic mounts was totally cracked. A breaking handle is not a good thing to have on a 30 kg amp.

I emailed Yorkville about a replacement handle and they responded promptly. For only a few bucks, I was able to order in a new one from my local music store. However I can't find anything on their site about this amp - very strange, almost scary...

I've been playing bass for about 6 years now and this was my first big booming amp. I bought it about 3 years ago for it's super crisp sound. If it were stolen or lost I would be angry that I could've sold it and I would look for another amp. The amp was a little bit pricey, but it has lasted me very well from all the trips it's taken.

Features are decent for the price. I won't repeat them here, as everyone else pretty much has them covered. One 15" and a tweeter of some sort. 200 watts, etc..

The DI is pretty crappy - post or pre (at least they give you the option though)
The effects loop is noisy and has no mix control
Mute control for the tuner output is nice to see on a lower priced combo
Has enough power, but it's useless past 5.

But the most unforgivable thing is the lack of a gain knob. Even though there are active and passive inputs, omitting a gain knob is unacceptable.

But hey, at least it fit in the trunk of my car.

I play a couple of Warwick basses (Fretless Corvette Standard and Corvette FNA Jazzman V), along with a couple of Fenders and a Zeta Upright.

I hate this amp. I absolutely hate it. I can't believe anyone would give this thing a 9 or 10 in the sound category. Sure it's a nice amount of power for the price, but it's got no soul. This is an intermediate amp at best. Definitely not professional grade by any stretch of the imagination.

It has the typical ugly, muddy, boxy mids that Yorkville is known for. The scoop control warms things up slightly, but then what little definition you had dissapears. It's very hard to get any sort of musical sounds out of it. The only thing that improves its sound, is hooking it up to a NICE extension cab. I hooked it up to an Avatar 2X10" Delta cab, and things improved greatly. At least enough to get me through the few gigs I played it on.

Even though it's pretty loud, you won't get 200 efficient watts out of it. Typical Yorkville engineering. It starts to crap out around 6 or 7.

I'm not sure what kind of music you could use this amp for.. Really. Ever had your bass amp die at a show and had no other choice but to plug your bass right into the board for the rest of the night? That's what this thing sounds like. The old Fender BXR combo amps sound miles better than this amp does, and those things are terrible.

I'm really glad I didn't keep it. I was looking for a decent priced but reasonably powered combo amp for small to medium sized gigs and practices. This one has the volume, but lacks the most important thing: TONE.

Here is one area where I can give it a pretty solid rating. It's built pretty well. Strong but not too heavy. There were only a couple problems:

1) The speaker isn't tough enough to handle the output of the amp, and it begs for mercy when I hit the low B on my Warwick.

2) The speaker grill rattles annoyingly when you have it cranked. It's really hard to fix that.

Another big drawback here, is there are no side handles.. Just a single cheapo rubber handle at the top, and the dimensions of the amp make it awkward as hell to lug around with just that handle.

It'll probably hold up pretty well for the unfortunate kid who bought it after I returned it. And if he's anything like the rest of the people who wrote about this amp, he'll probably think it sounds good too. At least until he becomes a real bassist.

Never dealt with Yorkville. No need to. I won't be purchasing from them in the future.

I've been playing for 20 years and own (or have owned) a bunch of stuff - almost all of it high end. I bought this amp because my dealer got a bunch of them in for really cheap and couldn't sell them. I figured if I could get a couple decent sounds out of it, it would be worth the price I paid for it. Wrong. I took it back and ended up coming home with an Ashdown MAG-300 combo. The funny thing is, the Ashdown is much less expensive (Only $399 for the 1-15" 307 Watt Combo, compared with $519 for the Yorkville at musiciansfriend.com), and even though it's assembled in China, it smokes every combo I've heard at twice the price.

If any owners tell you that this is the best bass amp for the money, they are probably trying to convince themselves, not you. When you get a new piece of equipment, your brain automatically prevents you from hearing the bad stuff. After all, you just spent a considerable amount of money on a cool spiffy new amp! Of course it's the bomb! Your bank account says so!

The price range this amp competes in is FLOODED with better choices. So be smart and go with something else.

Its got:
-tuner out
-hi and low inputs (for Active or Passive pickups)
-mute switch...great for tuning on stage
-limiter switch
-1 volume control
-4 band eq...'mid' controls especially have great range, allow you to really change the tone
-1 'Scoop' control...amazing feature!! makes a HUGE difference
-XLR balanced direct out with Line/D.I. switch (basically allows you to have the preamp in our out of the output signal)
-effects send and return
-1/4" headphone jack/line out
-extention cabinet output (will deliver 200w @ 4 ohms)

Wish it had:
-side-mounted handles

Sounds awesome with my passive humbucker bass...quiet as a mouse when I'm not playing. The scoop control does tend to add a little bit of hiss the more its turned up, but it is not a real problem. It sounds very full and quite clear...you will not need any more 'bass' frequency thanks to the powerful 15" speaker, unless you want to break your neighbour's windows!

I play in a hard rock band with 2 idiot guitarists who seem to always be having a volume competition! This amp is very powerful, but with these guys I still find that I am struggling to hear myself. One thing that makes a big difference is to turn the mids up...it adds a volume boost in a key area of the spectrum. Hence, I have learned that what sounds good to me at home by myself and what works with a live band or on a recorded track are different things altogether. Adding another cabinet, esp. one with 10" speakers, would likely work wonders in terms or overall volume, projection, and clarity. But, unless you have to deal with a situation like mine, you probably will never need an extra cab...its nice to know that the option is there, though.

As others have said, this amp yields a fairly transparent sound, no tube 'growl' here...if you want that you'd better get a good preamp (Sansamp or something) or look for a different amp.

Can't comment...only had it a month or so. I can tell you that it is build like a tank, though.

NA

This amp has everything I want and nothing I don't...except for some side-mounted handles which would make it easier to haul. I played many amps before settling on this one, including others in the same price range and some much more expensive. I liked this one the best, regardless of price. I loved the warm, full sound and the simplicity of the controls. Some of the pricier amps had so many controls that if left my head spinning!

This is an exceptional amp (with a great warantee) and you'd be hard pressed to find anything better for anywhere near the price.

I had to write an addition to my earlier review...
I bought the extension cabinet Yorkville XC115X (299 Euros) for my bassmaster and i'm almost speechless...
I already gave 10 for the amp itself, but this cab made the sound of the bassmater even better !!! (i have now a slightly modified Squier jazzbass with Basslines pickups and thru body bridge)
You can get a large amount more of lows and much "clearer" sound than from the amp itself. I LOVE this combination and i recommend everybody who owns this amp, to try it with the extension cab - it really makes sense !!!

I've had the amp now for 16 months - nothing to worry about - still solid as a rock :o)

Features have been adequately described by others with one exception. The wattage. The XM200 is a 200W amp, but as the owners manual states only when running at minimum impedence of 2ohms. The problem is that the speaker inside the combo is 4 ohms. So by my calcs you're really only buying about 130W amp off the shelf. You can get 200W outta the thing, but you need a 4 ohm extension to do that. Sort of misleading advertising I feel. In spite of that, I'm not griping, I feel loud/$ ratio on this amp is great. Also the features for the money are pretty good. I wish that the limiter had an indicator light so that you would know whether is was engaged. During gigs it's easy to hit that as you're fumbling for the mute button to tune. A light would let you easily see if you'd hit turned it off by mistake.

The front of the amp is kind of bowed out so that instead of a flat front, there's a curve. I think this looks really cool (well as cool as a black box can look) but this exposes the knobs. They jut out past the protection of the sides of the cab and can get knocked around while moving it around. I haven't had problems but I noticed that right away and have made a note to be careful.

The amp is certainly loud enough for small and medium gigs. I see a lot of people writing here they've never needed to turn there's up past 6. I can see how that would be. The volume knob on mine seems to actually range from about 1-6. Turning it past 6 produces no noticealbe increase in volume. Another thing is that there is only one volume, not a pre and post(master) like on most amps. I like the simplicity, but I'm not sure if this setup makes excursions into distortion land more likely.

I have several different basses and play many styles of music. Mostly cover rock from the 60's to present. Sound wise I would agree with others here who have said the amp is transparent. It produces the sound of my unamplified instruments only way loud. People here who say this amp sounds like an ampeg or SWR or whatever are just plain wrong. It doesn't, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I like the fact the tone is so transparent. The scoop and eq section allow decent tone shaping but with this amp pickup selection, strings, and instrument tone knob/eq adjustment also carry a lot of weight.

One guy here had previously recommended a SANS amp driver to provide a little more "traditional" bass tone. After playing with this amp at practice and a few gigs I can see what he means. It all comes down to what your ideal tone is. If you're looking for that tube ampeg sound or hi-fi SWR tone, you'll need a little "help" to get it but this amp has a great tone all of its own.

The manual says this amp won't distort unless the preamp is overloaded. Apparently that's not too hard to do. I noticed on my first gig that when I attack hard this thing distorts into a warm but volume depleted buzz. Kinda of cool when I figured out what it took to get it to do this but I also realized the limits of how much volume I could get clean and was a little disappointed. I'd read here that it was hard to distort this amp, I didn't find that to be that case.

I have used my Carvin RL210 as an extension and I thought that brought a little something extra out in the sound both tonally and volume for sure.

Never had it break. I've only had it for a few months now. I have gigged with this without a backup twice. But not by choice. My ampeg BR-5 died for the second time in two years and I had to buy this to get me by while the Ampeg was in the shop. Frankly I've had too much trouble with amp(egs) in the past year to feel comfortable gigging without a backup, but I'm hoping this'll prove me wrong.

You'll have to pay shipping one way to Toronto for repairs if there isn't a service shop near you (and there won't be!). That's about the only drawback to Yorkville I can foresee. They have a great warranty but it will be a pain in the ass to use it. They need more authorized service locations. No one wants to ship their amp off to Canada for a month to get it worked on.

Oh yeah, one small thing. They mention in their manual to keep the original shipping box in case you need to send it back. The box design could use some help. The amp was shipping in a corrugated cardboard box that fix the amp like a glove. But there was no styrofoam supports protecting the corners. One of the metal corner brackets on my amp was dented in when I got it. It would seem obvious to me that a thin layer of cardboard doesn't protect this amp from the UPS gorillas. I guarantee you if I let this 58 lb amp drop, in it's box, from height of 3-4 inchs that the corner brackets will be dented and perhaps a lot worse. I'd bet that if Yorkville spent an extra $1-2 on packaging per unit they could save a lot of money on warranty work.

E-mail'd yorkville a question and they got back to me within a few hours. So that seems promising regarding any issues.

I bought this amp to see me through a few gigs when my Ampeg B5-R busted for the second time in two years. My main rig has been the B5-R head along with a Carvin 2x10 cab and a acoustic 301 cab when I'm playing someplace big. That's been a great rig, when it works. But from venue to venue I needed to tweak the tone a lot. Plus I hate packing a head and a cab or two. What a pain in the A$&.

For small to medium size gigs the XM200, by itself, serves incredibly well. I was playing a medium sized room and a local musician with 20+ years experience came in and told me I sounded great through the house system. Only I wasn't going into the house board, it was just this amp. The tonal transparency of this amp may turn some off, I can understand that. If you want tube growl, this aint the amp for you, at least off the shelf unless you want to pound the 'ell out of your bass all night. But for a working bass player looking to fill out the low end and achive a wide variety of sounds you'd be hard pressed to do better for the money. The fact that you get small to medium room sized volume, a DI, and decent tone for this $$$ all in one easy to use combo is hard to beat. Yeah! That's right! Beat it Michael. Beat it!!!! GEt oon with yo bad self! Oohhh whooooo!

The xm200c from Yorkville is an excellent solid state bass with just the right ammount of powerfor small to medium sized gigs to house bound jamming. From left to right the amps features are (tuner out jack, 0dB and -6dB inputs, mute switch for cutting back feedback and making tuning more plausable for an audience and yourself, limiter switch that allows you not to worry about your amp imploading from the huge amounts of sound let out, (controls)-volume, bass, low mid, hi mid, treb, and a scoop that alows you to enrich or darken ones tone and also flex the hi and low ranges on the amp, ballanced line/d.i. output, effects loop alowing send and return, headphone jack. on the back is an extension outlet for an extention cab best fit with the Yorkville xc115 extension cab). Only thing i see missing is gain control but its so expandable the scoop feature makes up for it.

Im using a fender jazz with stock pickups at the moment and the amp honestly sounds like im playing an ernie ball bass with active pickups. The 15" speaker is very responsive and the piezo tweeter adds aditional support for those lingering highs. im into progressive and classic rock n' roll and from playing this yorkville combo alone is just what i need and more. the tone in this amp is comparable to that of an ampeg or swr with killer bottum end and richly ranged tone starts getting noisey around 8-9 on volume but if youre pushing that hard you will probly want the extension mate. ive never realy pushed mine passed 4 theres no need to really its so loud. the amp isnt bad about distortion even on the lowest of lows. it has a huge selection in tone and sound, from punchy pick sounds to warm over the bend finger tone. over all the amp sounds great. its a lot more than what i had expected for the price and for how unknown it is.

this amp is a tank ive heard stories of beer being spilt inside the cab and after being wipped out and cleaned it played just as awesome as ever people droping them off stage and only denting the grill not effecting the electronics. they can take a beating and keep working as great as always. i could easily rely on this amp only for as long as i have it. i don have a backup so i guess i could say i could gig without a back up. i havent had any problems with my amp and even if i did the 2 year electronic and 4 year frame garantee (even if you do it) is enough to bring me in because lets face it thigs happen places especially when giging.

no problems with it yet but ive heard they are concerning and understanding with each customer.

ive played many combos and few compare in price range and sound quality. the xm200c is a power house of tone packed and ready to explode.i love the scoop feature and the extension out. the combo alone would probly do the job at small to medium gig but with the extension mate why not get that and use it too. there is nothing to hate about this amp its afordable, expandable and over all just a great quality combo amp. maybe it could use a different carying method though because this haus is as heavy as an elephant and akward with its original cary strap.

'2004' solid state 200 watts 1x15 with an fx loop and speaker out jack,limiter, tuner out, line out.

I bought this instead of a comparable Ampeg mostly because of the ext. speaker jack. I wanted a compact 1x15 amp that was loud enough to play medium size rooms and had capability to add another cab for bigger or outdoor venues. I also bought the matching 1x15 cab for this amp. On the plus side the xm200 seems to have plenty of low end and volume for just about anyplace I've used it. It also sounds pretty good if your sitting directly in front of the cab itself. However, if you are 'standing' in front of, or off to the side of the cabinet things get muddy quick. You can tilt the extension cab back and that helps, but I,ve found that the weak spot in this amp seems to be the preamp. It just doesn't offer enough tonal pallette for me, so I ordered a Sansamp Bass driver DI to run into the fx loop, thereby bypassing the xm200 preamp altogether and voila...instant tone! Now it sounds a lot like an Ampeg SVT. So the moral is....the money spent on this amp is worth it for the features ie: ext. speaker jack, 200 watts, fx loop,tuner out...BUT, if you want it to sound really good you'll need to pop the extra cash for the preamp of your choice. This is my opinion and your results may vary.

Had it a little over a month. Rehearsals, a couple of gigs, no problems.

Best warranty I've found.No experience with cust. service.

30 year musician, bass for about 12 years. I've had SWR, AMPEG,PEAVEY rigs in the past. My only bass is an early 90's Pecision Plus at the moment. If this xm200 gets stolen I'll buy a used Ampeg. I bought this because it was reasonably priced with features I wanted and I needed something right away. I'll be adding side handles and casters soon because it's awkward as hell w/out them. This is a decent live amp for any working players on a budget. Add a quality preamp and it makes a big difference.

Lots of features for the money. 4 band eq (wide range). Contour type of control that really can make the sound thin or very fat. Head Phone and tuner out jacks. Passive and Active input jacks. Mute switch (really cool). XLR and external speaker output. Ackward to carry but with a luggage carry dolly makes it real easy. Pieezo Tweeter. Effects loop. More info at www.yorkville.com

I have used this bass with Yamaha 4 string and schecter 5 string basses with active electronics. This amp is great for any style. Lots of punch and tonal capablilities. Great for rock blues and slap funk. Very clean and warm for jazz. Sounds just as good as my Carvin Cyclops which was 3 times the price. I constantly get compliments from other musicians on the sound of this amp when I gig.
Very clean and high volumes and sounds louder than any 200 watt amp I have heard before.

Would use without a backup. It is built like a tank. Great looking amp also. Never had it fail on me even in wet conditions. I have used it inside and outside in very bad electical situations and it never failed me.

Ask yorkville alot of questions via email and they responed within 24 hours to each question. Very helpfull and no pressue. Warranty on the amp is 2/10. 2 years if you break it or it fails they will replace it. 10 year parts and labor on repairs. Can't beat that.

I have played bass for 25 years and I teach private lessons also. I gig on a regular basis. If it were lost or stolen I would buy a new one immeadiately. This amp has the quality of amps costing 2 to 3 times as much. I compared this to an Ampeg BA115 which is a good amp but the yorkville blew it away as far as features and sound. The only thing I wish it had was casters. Yorkville has been in business for many years and they are huge in Canada but not the states. They also make top notch PA Sound equipment. In my opinion this is the best amp I have every purchased in this price range.

Purchased the XM200 new in early 2003 after a ten year layoff from gigging. I had formerly used a V/4/V4B Ampeg setup and Fender P bass which I had sold after 'hanging it up'. Yeah right! Like that ever happens. Getting back into the music arena required trying out a number of brand name bass amps and guitars. The Yorkville put out such clean rich bottom and high end for the blues, jazz, and pop venues I play, it sounded very close to my old long gone setup...(and way less $$$$!)
The "scoop" feature on the XM200 kinda sealed the deal
with its wide-range, continuously variable tone control, which is a one-knob rotary equalizer. This feature, along with a bass with active electronics, allows for anything a bassist is capable of playing.
Though compact in appearance it is built like a Harley and has a warrenty second to none.

I found the Ibanez SR 400 with DR Highbeam lights giving me a range of response and feel second to none with this combination. I've never had the Vol. past "6" for medium-size venues I've played, and with the addition of a Yorkville XC115X, (single 15" ext. cab), a drummer has yet to outdo me in sound pressure level.

Very dependable so far now going on two years. I installed casters on the XM200 and a pr. of side strap handles which works wonders getting it from place to place. Nylon covers by Studio Slips are used for in-transit and storage modes. Haven't had it long enough to give it a "10" so I'll have to go with an "8" at this point in time.

I e-mailed their Service Dept. regarding speaker params for the special Eminence speakers used in my setup. They were very cordial and prompt with the information.
Their basic equipment warrenty of two years parts and labor, plus a "long as you own it" transferable warrenty on all parts, might be the only one of its kind in the industry.

I've been playing bass professionally for 30+ years and have the very bad habit of being overly cautious when it comes down to buying equipment for myself. I tried SWR, Hartke, Fender, and several others, but found the Yorkville to have THE sound and quality at the right price. I also own a Yorkville 100KB combo which I've had now for about three years which I use for keyboard and bass practice. Same rugged quality throughout with excellent response.
Yes, I would replace it with the same brand if lost or stolen.