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I have no plans of playing out or getting a band together, but I couldn't resist a great deal on a essentially new Fender Rumble 500, and with the proceeds of a surprisingly lucrative Squier bass sale, I bought the amp. I mostly record with sims and a SansAmp VT pedal, and I currently have a really mediocre Ampeg BA115. With that in mind, I'm blown away by how an amp this small and light can be this usable loud. The distortion is pretty usable too. If I was playing with a drummer I suspect this amp would hold up just fine.

This is my second Class D amp. I had a Peavey DataBass back in the day, billed as a "digital amp." That thing was also light and small, but a completely unreliable piece of shit that regularly blew speakers on the way toward imploding. I'm impressed by the progress of this type of amp technology.

Before I bought my bass amp, I played both a Fender Rumble and an Ampeg BA-115. I ended up going with the BA-115 (the newer version with the 60° tiltback/wedge shape on the back of the amp) because I love that Ampeg sound, but it was a bit of a tough call as I thought they both sounded really good. The Rumble is a great little amp (though I never played the Rumble 500, only a 150/200)!

If you still want that Ampeg sound, I would heartily recommend a Darkglass Vintage Ultra. My bass gain sound is an EQD Plumes running into a Darkglass Vintage Ultra and it sounds fantastic.

My Sansamp VT is so important to me that the most I want out of a bass amp is just clean power. I can dial up anything else with the pedal. I was surprised at how good a sound I was getting out the Rumble with the "vintage" switch on and some light overdrive. No plans to gig (nowhere to gig anyway!) but if I did I could totally get by with the Rumble, a bass and no pedals.

The Ampeg I have is the older model, no tilt back and controls on the top.. It's fine, but nothing special. I could get it to sound nice with the Sansamp, but on its own, it was pretty plain. And compared to the Rumble, it's heavy as hell. Last rig I gigged with for bass was a Harkte 3500 into a Sunn 610 cab and it was pretty loud. But it was also huge set up and hard to move, and while it's been more than 20 years since I used that, I'm pretty confident the Rumble 500 is usably louder, at a fraction of the weight.

That sounds fantastic. I could be very happy with the Rumble it sounds like. I agree that most of the sound I want on bass can be achieved with pedals too. One of my old bandmates had a Gallien-Krueger that sounded epic, and I always wanted one of those. I never needed the kind of power he had though, since, like you, I also don't gig. Honestly, at this point, if I ever got a band and played bass (which I would actually really enjoy), I would just do the DI thing with the Vintage Ultra and not even have an amp. But at home, it's definitely required.