Ashdown recently announced that they're outsourcing some of the manufacturing from the UK to . . . China? No. Indonesia? Guess again. The United States? Yep. Another announcement is that one of these US made Ashdown products is going to be a massive tube bass head called the BTA 400. BTA stands for Big Tube Amp, so it's clear that Ashdown's looking to just get down to business with this one.

The BTA 400 contains Ashdown's ABM EVO III preamp, and its monster 400 watt power section packs in eight KT88 tubes and gigantic output transformers, meaning all interested bassists should probably hit the gym and beef up those pythons. It should be noted that this amp head has two handles on it, meaning that with a team of equally ripped friends, you can probably use it as a battering ram if you like staging SWAT team missions or storming castles.

Aside from the massiveness of this thing, the BTA 400 includes a sub-harmonic generator, built-in compression and Ashdown's classic "rotary plus slider" EQ that gives you more cut and boost options than a remake of Sweeney Todd by the characters from Gone in 60 Seconds. The BTA 400 also includes connectivity options like a balanced DI out with pre- or post-EQ switching, a sub-bass output, a tuner out, an effects loop and a line input. A four-way footswitch is also thrown in with the bass head for maximum control.

In addition to tone and control flexibility, the BTA 400 is built like a tank. It can survive running without speakers connected, and its chassis is suspended on car engine mountings. That's pretty insane.