Before I bought my Ashbory, I already had a small Gallien Krueger backline 10. 100 watts, 10" speaker, about 35lbs. Sounded pretty good at medium low volumes with my Ken Smith electric.
But, contrary to other opinions in this forum, the GK 10 just sounded bad with the Ashbory. Too much distortion (not fuzz, just hard and unclean), too much low midrange and very little usable lows. When I would turn up the amp's bass control the sound just got muddy and the speaker would start to rattle. This is all in my home studio.
So, I spent $490 on a used but clean Acoustic Image Contra II. This is an older version, with 200 watts into the attached 3-way speaker cabinet (one downward facing 10", and forward facing 5" and tweeter). 28lbs. What a difference! Not extremely loud. Wouldn't use it for rock. But, for jazz or folk, beautiful. No harshness. No distortion. With the bass and amp both set flat it just sounds beautiful and warm and deep. Since everyone talks about the Ashbory's ability to mimic an upright, why not try an amp that is the most sought after amp for upright? And, as a nice side benefit, this amp and cabinet are full range and flat, usable with many other instruments. And, it has a balanced output for linking to a PA, as well as effects loop and tunable notch filter.
BTW, I tune my Ashbory CGDA, like my mandola, like my viola, like my RISA electric tenor uke, like my Godin Glissentar.
