To the bass-gear cognoscenti, Massachusetts amp and speaker-cabinet designer Jim Bergantino needs little introduction. After a long and varied career in electrical engineering and professional audio, Bergantino founded bass-focused Bergantino Audio Systems in 2001. Since then, his products have consistently enjoyed a sterling reputation among players (and bass magazine editors) because of their top-shelf materials, durable construction, exceptional engineering, and most important, superb tone. Of the many thought-leaders I’ve been fortunate to befriend and talk shop with over the years, Jim Bergantino has always been among the most passionate and single-minded in his pursuit of sonic excellence. While Bergantino made its name with a broad range of high-end speaker cabinets, the company took a huge leap forward a few years ago with the B|AMP, a high-tech (by bass amp standards) analog/digital hybrid head that I reviewed in the March ’17 issue of Bass Player. The B|AMP was a notable departure from nearly every other bass head primarily because of its extensive use of digital signal processing (DSP). The DSP allowed Bergantino to implement precise frequency-compensation curves that enabled flat frequency response when the head was paired with Bergantino’s cabinets. Beyond the B|AMP’s “Speaker Profile” function, the digital preamp meant the head could integrate a variety of other features that would be more difficult, costly, or impossible with an analog circuit. The B|AMP was an important milestone in the technological history of bass amps, because it was the first serious and successful implementation of a digital preamp in a pro-quality bass head. Analog-purist opinions aside, the advantages of DSP are legion — as the popularity of state-of-the-art digital hardware from Kemper, Axe-FX, and Line 6 affirm, not to mention the near ubiquity of analog-emulating plug-ins from Universal Audio in almost every serious recording studio. For some players, the B|AMP may have had one drawback: The user experience is more tech-y than with most other bass heads. Instead of pots, it has rotary encoders. An LCD dominates the front panel. Knobs serve multiple functions and interact with the screen, while programming and patch-saving necessitate a small learning curve. When I was writing the review, I recall thinking that it’d be so cool if Bergantino made a head that offered some of the B|AMP’s superb tone and flexibility, but in a more traditional package. And then along comes the Forté HP. It’s basically the muscle-car variant of the B|AMP — fewer bells and whistles, with a way bigger motor.StrongBeneath the somewhat conventional exterior of the Forté HP lies the same basic architecture as the B|AMP, i.e., a digital preamp is coupled with a powerful Class D/SMPS module (in this case, an ICEPower 1200AS2). Peeking at the Forté’s clean and well-engineered layout reveals three primary circuit boards, populated mostly with surface-mount com