Small bass amp - Hammond 1750M, 1650N or another OT?

[Martin Beer]

I'm considering building a small bass amp of around 50 watts, using a PT from an old Sound City amp which I anticipate should give me around 420V B+ with a bridge rectifier. I'm thinking of something close to what JM Fahey discusses in this post, a single-channel B15 based preamp with Bassman power amp; Basic Simple 50 watt Bass Head
I will probably choose a Hammond OT as they are reasonably priced in Europe. I am looking at either the 1750M (bassman replacement) or the 1650N. Both have the same primary impedance but the 1750M has limited bandwidth at 50 watts, 70Hz-15KHz. I'm aware that the low-E fundamental is 41Hz, but I've also found that I tend to be quite happy with limited fundamental provided that the first harmonic at 82Hz is well supported. So I'd be curious to hear arguments for either using the larger, full-bandwidth 1650N or the more classic Bassman-esque 1750M.

[ThisLifeILead]

What about the Hammond 1760L? its a bassman OT with 4/8/16 taps. and CHEAP! but i think it also only goes as low as 70hz.

[Martin Beer]

What about the Hammond 1760L? its a bassman OT with 4/8/16 taps. and CHEAP! but i think it also only goes as low as 70hz.

I think the 1760L and 1750M are much the same spec as one another, except the L is 4/8/16 ohms secondary and the M is 2/4/8. I need 4 and 8 ohms, so either would work for my purposes. What I've been trying to decide is whether I should go for the larger 1650N which has the fuller low-end response or one of these smaller Bassman OTs. I've seen a couple of posts suggesting that an OT which saturates at the low end may actually be part of the sound people like about a tube bass amp, with the added harmonics seeming to thicken things up a little in the mid-bass at the expense of true low end. OTOH some are in favour of using as big an OT as possible.

[ThisLifeILead]

Thats the big question!
I read on SLO clones a guy was using the bassman OT for a SLO clone and compared it to the 1650N. He actually prefered the bassman OT as it had more low mid grind which really warms the tone up as the OT saturated.ALthough a slo is a very different beast compared to a bass amp. I too am very curious as the 1650N is nearly double the price.
Personally when i play bass (which is rare) i much prefer a non saturated tight tone. Distorted signals would be alot more forgiving to a saturated OT then a clean bass signal. more iron = cleaner bass.