Music Man 120B

Made sometime in the 80's, I found one of these at a great used store for a nice price. Tried it out through a Mesa Boogie 2x15 w/tweeter and was blown away at the tones!

Single input. No lo/hi options, so watch out with active basses as they may distort the input. Nice transparent sounding Limiter with off/lo/hi toggle switch. Bass & Treble eq, augmented by a switchable 5-band eq. This eq is very powerful, and allows this amp to sound good with bass, keys, drum machines, even guitars - for an ultra clean jazz chorus type sound.

4-ohm speaker output, can handle 8-ohms too with no switching cause it's solid state. Preamp out and Power am in let you patch in outboard fx and gear, or use as a front-end for a louder amp. 120 watts at 4-ohms is a bit low for some, but it's plenty loud for rehearsals & small club gigs.

Tried it out at the store against an eden head and it held it's own. Have played Music Man and G&L basses through it and it sounds excellent. Currently use it with a G&L L1500 and vintage Music Man RH115 ported bass cab with an eminence b15. Vintage bass tone for days!

Let's see, 25 years old and still cooking! Vintage Music Man gear was top notch, and it stands the test of time.

The original Music Man company is long gone. I wish new Music Man would start reissuing their amps, cause they are just as good as anything else on the market for fender tones. No customer service, but there's a lot of online user forums to help, and Music Man amps are serviceable by any good tech. They get a 7 cause the amps are so well built and repairable.

For this price there is no other bass amp head for me. I've tried lots - Ampeg B2 and B4, Mesa 400, GK stuff, etc. Yes there is better, but certainly not for this price. And the best thing - I swear this amp weighs no more than 25 pounds. It's TINY and LOUD. I love it!

This is a Musicman 120B head (it is actually a bass head, but I used it for guitar.) It was made in Anaheim, Ca in the early 1980s. It is somewhat rare, I've run across about 3 on the internet over the past 5 years. I paid $320 for the head, I've seen them reach $800 on Ebay. I've heard this head called the best bass amp Musicman produced.

The amp is single channel. It wasn't loaded with effects, but that wasn't what I was looking for when I bought it. It has a limiter that can be set to hi, lo, and off. It has a Volume, treble, and bass knob. There is a five band equalizer which I generally always kept on. The equalizer allowed for a varying diverse range of sounds.

The head was extremely dependable. It never gave me any problems and always worked fine. I gigged and recorded a few times with it and it sounded excellent. It excelled in a band setting because it was loud and reproduced whatever you put into it perfectly. If you find one of these, get it!

The head is solid state, 80 watts at 8 ohms or 120 watts at 4 ohms. The load is "4 ohm minimum." It is super loud and lightweight. I played it through an 8 ohm cab equipped with four Peavey twelve inch Sheffield speakers. I used a 1992 Gibson SG with a Seymour Duncan Screamin' Demon pick up in the bridge position, and a Jazz in the neck. For awhile I used a Boss ds-1 distortion. It sounded excellent through the amp. Later on I switched to a Russian Big Muff and a Boss ds-6 digital delay pedal. The amp handled these effects extremely well and I think it always suited my style well.

However, my band mates often said that my amp sounded shrill and brittle sometimes. It was easily fixed by turning the treble down on the equalizer or treble knob. It would also be stupid to not point out that the head isn't a tube amp and thus it might not always sound warm. It does however remain very clean at high volumes and doesn't have annoying feedback.

Depending on the pedal I put in front of it, I could get any sound I wanted. I used it to play death metal a few times. I generally played indie rock. I've used it for stoner/doom metal and it sounded awesome.

It was super dependable -- a workhorse. It never let me down at all.

I've never talked to the company because they stopped producing these amps in the 80s.

I've been playing for around 8 years. I've played many instruments through it, Bass and guitar. It always sounds awesome.

I'd be pretty mad if it were stolen. I don't think I'd be able to find another one of these because there are rare. If I could, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. I would probably save up and get a Matamp, Sound City, Orange, Red Bear, Sovtek, or Sunn amp. I would like to purchase a matching Musicman head and cab in the future, though.