Marshall review DBS7400

Why did I buy it?

I didn’t have a bass amp and a friend was selling this rather battered amp and cab for a bargain!

How does it sound?

All the pots were really crackly however by using the EQ, the impressively good built-in compressor and balancing between the solid-state and valve (emulation) settings I got a pretty good bass tone, helped of course by the rather large enclosure. I use a music-man fretless bass and occasionally a “big muff” fuzz pedal which is quite a lot of fun (really good for benfold five type sounds). I also used it quite a lot with a Roland TD6k electronic drum kit which worked perfectly (and since it was old I didn’t worry too much about speaker damage!). A couple times I used the cab as an extension speaker for my Laney (reviewed below) to try and beef up the Laney’s sound, however this didn’t work ever so well.

Keep or sell?

I sold this in the end only because I wasn’t doing a lot of gigging and it was a huge amp. Mind you I know the guy I sold it to so do borrow it back occasionally but only to use with the electronic drum kit as I have since bought a couple of other much smaller bass amps. You can’t get them any more which is a shame because I found this a really tough and reliable work horse that you didn’t need to be too precious about and which sounded pretty good as well.