I spent a day with a bass bud in NYC, cruising the 48th street music corridor and we ended up chatting up Larry Hartke. My bass bud, who always went for the designer boutique high end bass gear, ditched all the heavy stuff (Eden, Schroder, etc.) and decided on two Hartke bass rigs with the new HyDrive cabs. He was smart enough though not to buy in NYC!
After I got home I started thinking about the design of the amps, etc., and cabs and the onboard graphic eq they offer. I went to my local store and plugged a T5 straight into a Hartke HA 5500 head and two-1-12 HyDrive cabs and the T5 tone was amazing! Straight in it sounded like the amp was just made for the T5. I went from clean, clear acoustic to sweet clean jazz tones with no effort, just with a bit of cut on the treble and a boost on the bass for jazz, a bit of boost on the treble and flat bass for acoustic. All 5 pickup positions sounded really sweet, unlike most guitar amps where I usually only use position 2.
This is not a new concept since the Fender Bassman offered sweet guitar tones for 6 stringers back in the day. It is just proof of what a different animal the T5 can be. I played other bass amps, like the Genz-Benz shuttle12.o and the 2-10 cab but nothing touched the Hartke set up I had plugged into. If you are a T5 player and looking for the best way to bring out the natural T5 tone in a live rig, give this a try.
I have written this before but another option is to take a full range PA Cab and use it as an extension cab to your guitar amp. This increases the frequency response beyond the guitar amp's speaker and works extremely well for a T5. Remember that the T5 is a broader range frequency guitar, (think more like a hi-fi guitar), that benefits from a broader range system.
I can plug and play the T5 into almost anything including straight into the board, but remember that it is a different animal and when misunderstood, can react in a way you may not expect or desire - like thin tone, or lack of punch. Using one of the above methods of live amplification will help you get that excellent T5 tone.
On the modeler end, now with all the recent multi-effect modeling boards, including the new BOSS GT 100, there are tons of options that will allow you to get away with good amp tone and not having to drag an amp along with you. I have tried just about all of them with the T5 and my fave is still the simple BOSS ME70, (newer model), which has an excellent clean amp sim that works well with the T5 and good eq and effects that are easily adjusted without the engineering degree to navigate the menues.
So, thought I would share this with you all, especially the T5 owners always looking for a simple path to good T5 tone.
davidc
