Monolith Magma

[warandhairstyle]

Some here may be familiar with Monolith -  Wade builds some great cabs and pedals.  I'm happy to say his Magma preamp is now a reality, with sound clips up on the site.  It's based on the beta bass circuit, complete with CMOS, and sounds really f-ing sick.  The price is $779.  Here's a couple pics of the prototype as it was being built (from the FB page) and a link to sound samples.  Wade's a good guy - if you've got the scratch to pick one of these up I hope you'll consider it.

http://www.monolith-loudspeakers.com/magma-10-bass-preamp.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/MONOLITH-Loudspeakers-Effects/125780957222

[grimniggzy]

Looks cool, would love to try it but I don't really have that kind of scratch.

[chev]

Looks awesome!

[jdfarrell81]

Wade is the nicest guy you could ever hope to deal with. I just ordered the Magma, and it was a great experience working with Wade. I HIGHLY recommend the Magma and all of Wade's creations.

I'm a diehard tube hound, but I can't deny the tone and versatility of the Magma. It's a monster. It may be the last amp I ever buy.

On a side note, this is my first foray into using a separate preamp/poweramp setup. I'm a bit confused, honestly. Every guitar poweramp I look at is either 2 channels and/or stereo, and I'm not sure what the point of that is. As far as I can tell, for a straightforward guitar rig, I would only need to use one channel on any poweramp and simply ignore the poweramp's second channel. Is that correct? I'll be using the Magma for guitar, by the way.

Any thoughts are appreciated!

[loudthud]

You could simply use the 2nd channel to drive more speakers and have control of the volume of each set of speakers. With the Beta type preamp, you could extend that concept to having a separate preamp ahead of the poweramp driving each set of speakers.

Many Chorus and Reverb pedals have stereo outputs, once you have the Beta preamp, lots of possibilities open up.

[loudamps]

i own 3 Monolith pedals, 2 bass cabs and soon to be MAGMA. I can't wait to get it. I have been gigging the past year with 2 Monolith Bass cabs(BLKARM and 204). I am not selling my vintage Sunn heads, just switching to a rack setup with the Monolith Magma, 2 power amps and my 2 Monolith Bass Cabs. Wade is as stand up of a guy that i have ever met and makes QUALITY stuff.

[loudthud]

I'd be interested to know if the Magma uses the MC14506 chip to do the channel switching logic. Those chips are almost impossible to find in small quantitys. You can find them if you want to buy 100 or more but if you need one you are SOL.

[jetofuj]

i own 3 Monolith pedals

Please explore the subject

[MONOLITHLOUD]

I'd be interested to know if the Magma uses the MC14506 chip to do the channel switching logic. Those chips are almost impossible to find in small quantitys. You can find them if you want to buy 100 or more but if you need one you are SOL.

The MAGMA indeed uses the MC14506 chip. There are options to do logic switching using other chips but that section has to be modified heavily to incorporate other types of logic chips. We were able to find a reliable source of the MC14506 chips, we searched far and wide.