Purchased From: American Musical Supply
- I bought this amp from American Musical Supply about 4 weeks ago. The buying experiance with this company was tops!!! and to make it even better they doubled the manufacturers warranty for no additional cost. They also have a payment plan on credit cards that breaks it into 3 payments at no additional cost. Lastly it was free shipping...good thing for this beast!
Price:$249.99 (Retails for $299.99)
Research: I researched everywhere and got varrying opinions on this amp. Their was no opinion that I found that was helpful because it was either slammed as crap or built up to be the best amp in the world. Hopefully this review will be a straight shooter and give you input to make up your mind.
Guitars used for testing: Fender American Strat (3 Single Pickups). Epiphone Les Paul Custom (Two Humbuckers), Ibanez GAX 70 two humbuckers.
Pedals used for some of the testing: Behringer Chorus Pedal, Behringer Equalizer, POD XT
Clean Sound Test No Pedals: At first when I plugged into this amp I was not sure if I was gonna be happy with it and was glad it came with a 45 day money back guarentee....but then I started fiddling. When it came in it sounded flat, no tone, no depth at all. After playing with the amp/cabinet switches I found the sound and I have to admit its got a nice clean sound. I did some setting up and added to it a built in chorus affect, got the low, mid high set right and it sounded very similar to a JC120. Next I plugged in the EQ Pedal and was shocked in that it actually sounded better than the JC120 (of course thats without an eq pedal on the JC120 so not a true fair comparision). Final conclusion, this amp has a very nice clean tone for jazz, blues and 70's rhythem type stuff.
Dirty Blues and Rock: Classic Rock is what I love most. A nice mix of crunch and clean, a "Dirty Sound" as opposed to a BLACK sound. Stuff like early ozzy, Black Sabbath etc... are what I like most. It some what succeeds in this area. I was upgrading from a Peavy Backstage 50 which was my litmus test on this comparison as I cannot yet afford a nice tube Marshall. And it was comparable but I was honestly expecting a bit more in this area. With my pod hooked up and the amp running on Cali/UK with flat tone it works perfectly but without the pod I get frustrated trying to get the tone I would like. It works and I am still happy with it but from what I have researched another $200 bucks coulda got me a Marshal Solid State half stack that would have done great for this aspect although the clean would not have worked as well.
Pure Crunch: I am no fan of playing tons of ultra heavy dark metal but OMG!!! This amp set to super hot and cranked up puts out some serious metallica like tone. I was so impressed I started playing more modern metal stuff just cause this amp makes it so much fun.
Summary: Its a modeling amp, its dirt cheap, loud as snot, heavy as crap, clean as a whistle, not as dirty as I would like, but crunchy when you need it to be! Bottom line, I would buy this amp again no problem. Even when I do buy my tube monster I will still hang on to this amp. Though I have not had a chance to test the durability of this amp I would imagine it would hold up just fine. Though I will be sure to update this post should I have problems.
Support: Well, I had both voicecoils go dead in this thing a few months after I got it. I called Behringer on the phone and they immediately issued a Return to Vendor. About 3 weeks after mailing it back I had a BRAND NEW amp shipped to me. Its been good now for well over 3 months with no problems. Must have been a freak thing. Their support was AMAZING!!!!
NOTE: If you hook up your pod have the output come out of the left channel and run it like you would a pedal, seems to work best for me. Also, I highly recommend spending the 30 bucks on an eq pedal. The amp comes with a two chanel pedal switch with independent effects switching but the eq pedal is a nice to have.
I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard and floor it. Floor it. That's technical talk.
—SRV
—SRV
