I just received my Phil Jones NANOBASS X4C. The reason I bought this amp is that I am going to buy a Yamaha Silent Bass at the end of this month, so I decided to get a better bass amp than my current one (Greco 10W guitar/bass amp). I have only used cheap amps, so I don’t know the difference between the X4C and the high-end models. On the other hand, I found the sound of the X4C to be clear. It has an organic sound that is unique to the instrument. Also, compared to the previous 10W amp, I could feel new bass frequencies that I could not feel before, which increased the amount of information I could hear. For the first time, I could also hear the very slight sliding sound of the rough surface of round strings.
To use a YouTube analogy, the previous 10W amp was capable of generating 240p video quality, whereas the Nanobass has a resolution of up to 2K.
I thought there would be a big difference in sound pressure compared to the previous amplifier’s 10W at 35W in terms of specifications, but there was not much difference. Perhaps the physical design of the X4C is quite small, making it difficult to produce sound pressure equivalent to 35W. This is just my speculation. Some bassists may not be satisfied with this point and may try to buy another bass amp.
However, it is small in size and light in weight, and I found it a versatile tool that can be played in the park using a mobile battery, or while playing backing tracks via Bluetooth or AUX cable connection. It’s also good that the Bluetooth or AUX cable is designed to have individual volume control. The X4C seems to be the world’s first bass amp to support mobile batteries, and it will be interesting to see more battery-operated bass amps from other manufacturers in the future.
Postscript 10/6
Now I have more samples, I will write about the Pros and Cons of Nanobass in terms of sound quality.
1: Sound from 10W amp through headphones via AUX cable.
2: Sound from a cheap copy of iRig (about 8 bucks) through headphones via monitoring.
3: Sound from a Nanobass X4C microphone through headphones
Comparing these three, 3 was by far the best. It seems to capture the organic sound of the instruments.
Running on a mobile battery