I've never been to LA, but I've heard tell that it's a town obsessed with appearance. Synthetic hair, liposuctioned midriffs and prosthetic lips abound in tinsel-town (I've read) and to be honest, I'm starting to be a little self-conscious about the honest (re: hefty) frame I've been developing in Chicago's Canada-inspired clime. Looks like Carvin's new BX500 Bass Head won't have the same worries, though: baby clocks in at 5.5 pounds and delivers 500 watts at 4ohms. Figures -- Carvin's from California. They know the score.

The light-weight BX500 may be only 5.5 pounds thanks to it's class-D solid-state power-amp section, but it promises to deliver lippid-tastic tone via 12X7 tube-powered preamp circuit and a glut of control options. Drive and Contour knobs sit before a parametric EQ, which in turns leads to a 9-band graphic EQ that can be dropped in or out of the signal path. The head also sports an optical compressor with threshold control that acts like a fat suit in an insensitive frat-boy comedy, adding perceived corpulence to your bass's tone.

The generous rear panel hosts the BX500's Two combination Speakon™ - 1/4" outputs, a 2ohm operation switch, footswitch input, Direct Out balanced XLR, tuner / phones output, effects loop send and return and tube bypass switch, for when you want your tone to sound as lean at the amp is light.

The BX500 should be shipping by the end of this month (Januray 09) but Carvin is taking pre-orders now -- you can reserve a BX500 now for $400 US for a limited time. You can also wait for our Winter NAMM 2009 coverage to hear the thing.