tc electronic BH250

What's good about this amp?
* Lightweight and small footprint - fits in the pocket in your gigbag.
* Pre or Post EQ balanced DI - choose your post/pre EQ for the FOH feed so that "your" sound is heard and adjust your volume on stage without affecting the FOH feed.
* Mute switch - great for changing instruments or tuning up or for leaving stage.
* Built in tuner - always on so you can always check to remain in tune.
* Passive/Active input switch - adjust your gain to suit your instruments.
* TonePrint - beam your favourite TonePrint. The one knob is simple and very effective! I love the combined TonePrints and Mark King's flanger. I use the TonePrints with a 3 way pedal switch by "Loopi Pedals" (which features a mute switch and 2 TonePrints switches - for the TonePrint currently stored in the amp and one for the previously stored TonePrint ... so you have access to 2 TonePrints just like the bigger BH550 and BH800)
* Mini jack input - jam along to your mp3 or drum machine.
* Headphone out - this thing sounds fantastic through headphones! Essential for practicing.
* TC's intelligent EQ (Bass: 80Hz @ Gain: -24 to 0dB; 100Hz @ Gain 0 to +15dB. Mids: 500Hz @ Gain: -24 to 0dB; 800Hz @ Gain 0 to +15dB & 0 to -12 dB. Treble:
Center Freq.: 1800Hz @ Gain: -24 to 0dB; 5000Hz @ Gain 0 to +15dB). A small tweak goes a long way in adapting your sound. It's hard to make this sound bad no matter which way your turn the knobs.
* Quiet fan - I don't even notice it's on when it's on.
* Great for practice as a headphone amp AND great for rehearsing AND great for the studio AND great for a gig (with or without a speaker cab). I'm loving this little amp!
* International voltage - play this in any country in the world.

What's not good about this amp?
* If a wanted more EQ (hi and lo mids) and a seperate gain/volume I would go the BH550 but I think the little BH250 is a winner.

i have grown tired of lugging around heavy equipment and i decided to go for one of these small, lightweight new amps one sees all over the place.

i had narrowed down the list to 3 amps, after a lot of research and comparison my final choice was the TC electronic BH250.

as usual the shipping was done super quick, and i received the amp one week ago.

my first impressions were WOW, how small and light can this amp be!? after connecting my Yamaha 5 string and the Eden cab i was even more amazed.

the input gain switch is super hot when on passive, almost to the point that I prefer to use the active mode even with my passive basses.

with the EQ set to 12 and toneprint disabled i slowly opened the master volume and WOW again, this bonsai has power to spare.

then i started tweaking the EQ, remarkable response! very versatile, there is no basic sound i could not dial in to. fat, thumpy vintage sounds or slick, funky slap, anything goes.

i have yet to use the toneprint feature so i can't say much about it except that the stock effect the amp comes with is working very nicely but i am particularly interested in the compressor prints but that has to wait for now. you can hook up a foot pedal that lets you toggle between 2 effects and has a mute function but this is an additional purchase.

the tuner works well and is a nice feature, as well as the AUX input for a CD/MP3 source and a headphone output, making the amp even more desirable.

i used the DI out in both pre and post EQ and it works very well, for now i prefer the pre EQ setting on the DI.

all in all i can highly recommend this product to anyone looking for a powerful, versatile, light and small amp.

The amp itself works fine, sounds good, EQ is good for bass. The Toneprint is stupid, first of all it doesn't load all available tone prints but only the ones which are BH250 compatible, but more important, the editor doesn't work with the BH250 format. So you're stuck with presets that you cannot even tweak!
For a chorus/phaser that might be acceptable, but for a dynamics plugin it is hit and miss, also because the unit doesn't have an input gain, so you have to guess where the threshold kicks in.
TC makes a great separate tuner and it is therefor a total mystery to me why the included a less than basic tuner with two leds for the tuner and 4 for the strings, resulting in 6 leds that you cannot switch off. (result, a lot of flickering lights while you are playing)
This unit was designed by the marketing department...
I decided to send it back, and go for the Trace Elliot Elf which is a basic amp, but a good one.
The extra bells and whistles of this unit could have been nice, but were implemented so poorly that I can only recommend this for the amp functions.

I have been using this little amp for about a year in our band's rehearsal room with a TC 212 cab and it really sounds good, no complaints at all. The cab has too much bass (sounds crazy I know) and I can easily dial it out, so the EQ is nice. I just wish they have added the option to change the frequency band as I am not too happy with the MID frequency settings it has but for the price I think it's fine. The build quality is superb and it looks beautiful in person too. It's small enough to just pick it up and go and the DI on the back sounds clean and transparent.

Cons:
Oooh how much I liked the idea of having an option for some TC effects built-in. It is pure garbage. Not only does half of the presets sound strange (not to mention the volume issues) but it is 1 out of 30 times when I can "beam" the preset to the amp. I will stick with my pedals and never use this feature. The cooling fan is OK but a bit loud if you are at home practicing.

All-in-all for the price this cannot be beat.

Nothing to complain about. I never had an Amp of quality before, so it's just perfect for me. Easy to use. Nice and clean sound. The Toneprints are awesome. The tone control are way better than any other, because of that complex system. I can make a lot of sounds with it. It's light weight and small, I carry it inside my bass soft bag. And it is beautiful. I haven't had the chance to test it very much with max power because it's just too lound for what I intend that is practice at home and use it at the church (its a small church).

I recommend it and would buy it again.

Well I am truly stoked with this product. Taking into consideration its ridiculously cheap price compared to what you get, this item is a must have or any bassist. Love the tone print idea, have been experimenting with it and everything is going just fine. Only drawback about the tone print is that the delay effects aren't always as good as you'd expect, but all the other effect (flanger, octaver, overdrive, chorus, etc) are awesome and so easy to use. I would most definitely buy also the Switch 3 effects pedal as it would facilitate changing toneprints while playing live. This thing is ridiculously protable, so small you wouldn't believe it, but the power output that comes out from it is astounding.

Well done TC Eelectronic for putting this little bad boy into the market.