Ashdown MAG C115-250 Combo

I bought this amplifier from Southampton in the UK. I went through ande tried as many head and speaker options, and this sounded the best for the price i paid. I paid £3oo for it and have no regrets.

It has such a great sound, even when you are not using the eq. When using the eq, there are five control knobs, tweaking each one makes it really easy to get any sound that you want.
I really like the sub-harmonics. At the puh of a button you can get an octave below. You can also control the volume of the sub-harmonics.
It also has a post eq xlr, which is great for recording. There is no need for a di box and the recorded sound you get is so good.

I had a few problems with this amp. After a couple of months of practice and gigging, the amp would cut out after it had been left on for a couple of hours. I eventually found out that the heat capacitor had fused. I got this fixed and it was fine for a while but the same thing happened again. I sent the amp off again and they installed a fan at the back. I have not had any problems since. (that was two years ago) The customer service was excellent.
It would be nice to see a pedal to change the sub-harmonics off and on.

This thing is built like a tank, made out of an aluminium alloy. There isn't much i can say, since they put in the fan at the back there have been no problems, this means construction and quality are fairly good.
I think the problem with not having a fan on the back is that the metal does not dissipate heat quick enough, which meant that the heat capacitor fused.


Great sound, good customer service, a really good amp for the price!!

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

I purchased my combo from www.soundslive.co.uk for about £380, which is damn good! Also got a MAG 210T cab from the same place as an extension, which is also very nice indeed...
The C115-250 model is not made anymore I don't think, but you can still buy it. Ashdown now do a more powerful one - the MAG C115-300. The Ashdown web site (www.ashdownmusic.co.uk) has details of the newer model, and my C115-250 looks exactly the same apart from a black grille (which I prefer).

This combo is excellent, I've had no complaints about it being too quiet, and it sounds clean and wonderful. As everyone seems to be saying, the Ashdown stuff is full of tone, it's not just bass, it's what ever you want it to be. The Eq is excellent at shaping the frequency response, from warm fat sound to attacking, bitting bass. Yummy...
I'm a bit of a power junkie and it would be nice to have some more power (the old MAG 400 would be nice), but money is the deciding factor. It does an English 250W RMS into 4 Ohms, and I have had complaints I'm too loud over drums and a Marshall 100W stack. Good!!
And it's got the soon to be classic Sub-Harmonics as will most Ashdown bass stuff. It produces a clean bass note one octave below which that you play. It sometimes get 'confused' when you play more than one note, and seems patchy, but that's only while played quietly. Really low notes are harder to hear, which you'd expect in such a small enclosure - an octave below low B is low!

There are no real dislikes I have with this amp at all. The usual complaint is that the cooling fan is noisy, you can hear it when you are playing very quietly or not at all, but that's it. When you play at moderate levels then the fan can't be heard at all - no worries. It'd be nice if it had the same "two fans but half as loud" as the ABM range, but that's the point with a cheaper range. There is nothing else to complain about, nada.

Construction and general quality of the product is very good. It's well built, seems sturdy and has solid controls. While moving it about I have taken chunks out of walls and doors, and it doesn't show it. The rotary pots on the front are just nice to play with, 'cos they feel nice, sort of fluid... Sad, I know.
I've made speaker cabinets before and I mainly use screwed, glued 18mm MDF. That stuff is nails, and the stuff I made is over engineered, it isn't going to break. When I first got it through the post (I didn't even have to leave the house!) it seemed a bit light at 28kgs, and compared to other combos it often is. Compared to my monstrosities, its svelt. But that's good - it's easy to move (I move it and the extension cab twice a week), it doesn't sound small!

This combo by Ashdown is brilliant, I love it. If I had much more money I would of course go for the ABM range, but you can't go wrong with MAG. If I had a little more money I might have bought things the other way around: the MAG C210-250 and a MAG 115 cabinet... but I didn't.
Other than that of always wanting something more, you cannot go wrong with it. It's excellent!

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com