All user reviews of 2/5 for the TC Electronic BG500 - 115

Used the BG500 2x10 for about 4 months with a Musicman Stingray HH and a fretless JB with Delano JMVC 4 FE/M2 pickups

This thing is loud! There is a couple of realy noisy guys in my band and this combo has no problem keeping up with them. If it is dB’s you are looking for, this is it. And it does it with ease: even after an hour of loud playing, it isn’t really warm.
The built-in tuner is really practical and works well.


Cons:
Stage user friendliness
We think the engineers at TC don't spend much time playing on stage with their own equipment. Why else would they use small black buttons on a black background? Impossible to work with in a low-light. And why would they put the 9 main knobs in a graphical order, rather than by function or importance? Or the XLR on the front panel?
TC claims a lot of new thinking went into this combo, but the result in terms of usability isn’t not a step forward.

Sound
My main frustration: the sound. It is almost impossible to get a nice an mellow sound out of this combo. It has an somewhat irritating ‘in your face’ type of sound with a very high amount of energy in the deep lows. It sounds very booming, bulky and undefined. Even with the bass en low-mid controls turned completely down, it still sounds bulky and intrusive. Esp with my Stingray, it demands constant fiddling with the knowbs without ever getting it to sound nice. I think the controllability would be better if they’d chosen 'lo-low' and 'hi-low' controls instead of a low-mid and hi-mid.

These sound issues don't just occur in the backline but during gigs too. Since I use this combo, our sound man keeps complaining about a fuzzy, muddy, but yet dominating bass sound.
It drives me crazy at times. I bought this combo to replace an old Yamaha B100-115 II with 15' extender cab, but I've put this back in use yesterday. All of a sudden, my basses sounded great and cathy again and I got happy faces from my fellow bandmembers.

It is well built. It was shipped here (a Caribbean Island) by FedEx. The box arrived pretty battered, but the combo seemed fine.

Because of my residence (A smaller Caribbean island), I coud not go to shops and make a choice. I bought it online, based on TC Electronics great reputation.

I am truly dissapointed in the soundquality to such an extend that I will probably not use it anymore ons stage.

I got the impressing this combo is designed by desk-people with calculators and not by working bassist with ears.

Penny wise, sound foolish.

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