TAPCO THUMP TH-15A as bass combo

[elros]

 

So after I sold my high end rig (Eden WT800 and two AccuGroove Tri-112L speakers) I was hunting for a cheap but not crap combo for practice and small-ish gigs.
Well most of the cheap combos I found were either very underpowered or very crap. If not, they were too expensive.
So I stumbeled over the TAPCO THUMP TH-15A active PA type speaker cab.
It is basically a two-way speaker with one 15" bass driver and a horn tweeter. It is bi-amped: 298W for the woofer and 99W for the tweeter (that's what the website says anyway). and it is cheap! List price is $469 (I think) but it can probably be had for around $300 or so.
It has a simple 3-band EQ with sweepable mids, and a volume control.
The dumb thing is that it only has XLR inputs. Which means I'll need an adapter to connect my bass directly to it. Perhaps I'll modify it and install a jack input though. That would make sense.

Anyway, I ordered it a good while ago and it arrived just yeaterday, right before I had to leave for my Christmas vacation. So I barely had time to hook it up and see that it worked before leaving.
It works. And seems to sound pretty decent.
Quick test shows that it farts out a bit on the low notes though - I don't know why. And I can't investigate until sometime after new-year.
It'll be great if I figure it out though. It is very light wheight, I can easily carry it with one hand. And it can be stand mounted, or placed on the floor in avedge type position (two different angles even!) which is very convenient.

But more on this later.

Here are two photos.

[Richard]

Light enough to carry one-handed easily? Awesome!

Do let us know the verdict on the sub-bass farts.   


So glad you found this. Never heard of them before.

[subcontrabassist]

very cool, Hallgeir! thank you for posting it!

and have a great holiday. I leave tomorrow to visit my family for a week and hope to catch up a little on email and REST!!

[elros]

Update.

I used it for the gigs this week-end. Medium concert hall, seating 450 people. Large-ish stage with lots of drapes or whatever it's called. I had the Thump placed on the floor in front of me, beside my monitor (which was a Mackie SRM450 BTW).
I plugged my bass - the Conklin 9 into a Tapco passive DI box, and linked that to the FOH DI box. In other words, no pre-amp except the onboard RMC electronics inside the Conklin.
I ran the Thump flat (no EQ) and with the volume knob at about three o'clock.
It sounded quite good. Plenty punchy, even on the low notes (those below the low B). Clean and crisp treble, too.
The fart-sound mentioned earlier was there, but could not be heard at high volume levels. I don't know if perhaps that sound is due to a defective LF driver perhaps? If I get to try another one, I'll listen for that sound.
One other thing at low volumes though: the very softest sounds get squashed in a nasty digital-sounding way. As if the signal is right above the least significant bit of an A/D converter withouth dithering (if you know what I mean). it's that kind of thing that kills ambience in an acoustic type sound. Very unplesant. But only a problem at low volumes.

In other words: the Tapco Thump TH-15A sounds good at high volumes, and decent at low volumes. I can live with that.

[subcontrabassist]

I'm sorry to hear about the low volume squashing but I'm glad the gig went well. it sounds like a nice set up in terms of portability and simplicity of wiring!