Genzler Magellan 800+

Tour-Class Power, Pocket-Sized

The Magellan 800+ is the next generation of the head that built Genzler’s reputation for clean, honest power. It delivers 400 watts at 8 ohm and the full 800 watts at 4 ohm — right down to a 2.67 ohm minimum load — from an aircraft-grade all-aluminum chassis that weighs just 2.84 kg. This is a solid-state, all-analog design with no modelling and no menus, just a fast, transparent signal path that lets your instrument and your hands come through instead of stamping a sound on top of them.

The “plus” is more than a badge. Genzler reworked the input stage for greater dynamics and fitted new high-grade op-amps that lower the noise floor and raise the headroom, so the whole amp feels quieter, punchier and more responsive than the original 800 — you can dig in harder before it ever complains. It’s the same rugged, road-proven platform, refined everywhere it counts, and it still slips into the pocket of a gig bag.

The Preamp: Where the Plus Earns Its Name

At the heart of the 800+ is a 4-band active EQ with two sweepable midrange bands. Bass and treble anchor the ends, while both mids sweep across the spectrum so you can hunt out the exact honk, growl or scoop your bass and your room are asking for — far more surgical than a fixed three-band tone stack, and the reason this amp sits right in almost any mix.

The knob that changes how you set up, though, is the new High Pass Filter. Sweep it anywhere from 25 to 120 Hz and it rolls off everything below that point on a multi-slope, frequency-dependent curve — a filter that stays musical instead of just chopping the bottom off. In plain terms it clears out the subsonic rumble and boom that eats your headroom and turns your low end to mush, without thinning the notes you actually play. Set it around 30–40 Hz and your cabs breathe easier and hit harder; push it up toward 60–80 Hz in a boomy room or under a low B and the whole rig tightens up on the spot. It’s the single most useful control on the amp for a clean, defined low end at real volume, and once you’ve gigged with one you stop wanting to play a bass rig without it.

The Dual Contour circuit gives you two separately adjustable voicing curves — think an instant modern scoop and a vintage bump — and it’s now footswitchable, so you can jump between your core tone and a contoured sound in the middle of a song. Alongside it sits a new footswitchable Drive circuit that adds a wide range of tube-like harmonics and compression, from a subtle thickening of the note to real grit, all in the analog domain rather than a digital emulation.

Round the back you get dual SpeakON outputs down to a 2.67 ohm load, a pre/post XLR direct out for the desk, an effects loop, a dedicated tuner out and a headphone output, all fed by a universal supply that runs anywhere in the world. Add the optional dual-function footswitch and Drive and Dual Contour come under your feet. This is a genuinely tour-ready preamp in a chassis you barely notice carrying — pair it with a Magellan ULV cabinet and you have a complete, ultra-light rig with pro-level control over every part of your sound.