I bought this cab nearly a year ago and have been enjoying it since then with no regrets. While it’s certainly overkill for a coffee shop gig, its compact footprint lets you set up in a minimal amount of space. I generally use mine oriented vertically; and the top handle when doing so makes for easy carrying and setup when I don’t want to schlep my larger, heavier cabinets. For my weekly coffee house gig I often am carrying the Markbass in one hand, bass on my back in a gig bag, iPad, cables, tuner pedal and head in a small courier shoulder bag. One trip, as I often have to walk a few blocks. My wife was skeptical of the purchase initially until the first time we went to the coffee shop together. She picked the cab up one handed and walked in the door of the place just to goad the guys in the gig, and now she delights in carrying it so she can "show off".
I have the 4 ohm version generally drive the cab with a GK MB200 (as seen in one photo - for reference)
Performance wise the cab is transparent. It will do whatever you need it to from crisp and punchy to warm and fat. I’m usually somewhere in the middle; but I usually run the attenuator for the piezo horn pretty low, if not all the way off. It handles the low B of my SR5 or my L1505 very well. A few times a year my church band does outdoor services at the local American Legion under a pavilion, this small rig is more than adequate for that setup. The back of the cab has dual speakon connectors, and they are the type that will accept a ¼” phone jack plug in the middle of the connector. (just be sure you are using speaker cable)
Have done a couple street fair type outdoor setups with this combination: While I had enough power for the gig - I felt it was marginal & would have liked more headroom but in all honesty it was the small 200 watt amp holding back not the cab.
Value for the dollar: IMHO the Markbass cabs are a bit pricey as priced at GC or Musician’s Friend, but you can generally catch them on discount as an open box or on the TB classifieds. Mine was an open box at 30% below list and I’m happy with the purchase. My other cabs are Epifani and while I still like them alot, this Markbass cab sounds as good & is far lighter than my Epifani 210 and is a much smaller footprint.
I removed the Markbass logo from the grill. My intent was to reposition is so that it would look proper with the cab oriented vertically, however Its held on with double sided foam tape; and it was so much work cleaning off the adhesive foam residue, I simply archived the logo in a filing cabinet in case I ever want to sell the cab.
I also bought a cabinet cover for the cab from Tuki covers, but that was a separate purchase and will review separately.
