2000's Aguilar DB 750

Although I normally like all-tube bass amps for my personal favorite tones, hybrid amps like these really take the cake for more modern bass sounds. Especially for Neo-Soul, Funk or R&B. Aguilar made a very good sounding, although internally complex amp here that just rocks. With 4 full preamp tubes in the front end you get all of that tubey vintage grit and frequency response but married to a punchy solid-state discrete Class AB power section.

It came in with no sound at all but still powered on. This amp had been dropped hard - It had many broken preamp tubes inside that kind of imploded upon impact. Also one of the heavy gauge wires that served as the ground lug for the preamp section broke off from the PCB, meaning there was no completed power cicuit for the plates of the preamp tubes. It was installed originally with a lot of mechanical stress that meant it was naturally pulling up from the PCB instead of naturally lying flat with no upward force pulling on it. When the amp fell this did not hold, so it had to be re-soldered with a bus wire from the PCB to where the Ground lug wanted to stay on it’s own - about 1.5” vertically off the PCB. This insures that it will not break again regardless of mechanical stress on the amp.

That was the cause of all symptoms. The tubes were all replaced: V1-V3 = GENALEX GOLD LION 12AX7, V4 = JJ 12AU7. The Gold Lions are just great for Bass or Hi-Fi with their medium long plate design and wide frequency bandwidth. These tubes were picked specifically for this model of amp for best tone and reliability. All broken pieces of glass were taken out of the amp and the hardware was tightened. Job Done.