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What's up everyone?
I know someone else started a thread about this little big combo amp but I didn't want to post my thoughts on his thread as my views are very different then his.
That thread actually inspired me to go look at this amp and demo it as I've been wanting a smaller less powerful home practice amp I can play at lower volumes and not rip my house down.
So I went to the Guitar Center in Langhorne PA where they have one with their other Combo amps . They had No good quality Jacksons or Charvels so I had to settle for a Gibson Les Paul Studio model.
I plugged in , turned everything to 12 o'clock except volume which isn't labeled volume it's labeled PRE. GAIN isn't labeled GAIN it's labeled POST. I was all confused trying to set this head up to my liking and had to figure out what all the controls did that where labeled like this.
The amp before I started to play it seemed pretty awesome. I loved all the controls as really loved the idea it had for both channels their own Presence and resonance controls. Thats totally awesome to me as now I can set them per channel and really get some fine tuning in. I'm a total Tone guy and can spend more time dialing in tone then actually playing.
So after warming the amp up and playing around with the front panels adjustments I decided it was warm enough to start hearing what this soon to come home with me today badass little big combo can do. I tried to get a good useable clean tone. This is a no go. It's very compressed sounding and almost like someone wrapped the amp in a blanket and you had to play it through the blanket. And you can't get it fully clean. It breaks up even at the lowest settings. I didn't care for that as I prefer a clean clean channel. Think Fender and thats what I expect. But I figured that I could change my ways, find some really nice cleans with some dirt on it and add some Chorus , delay or use the Built in Reverb and away I could go.
The Rhythm channel after ALOT of tweaking, I got some useable tones out of the compressed sound this thing has. I felt yeah I could use this tone for something but it's not screaming BUY ME RIGHT NOW as I wanted to walking into the store. I damn just wanted to take it home and mess around with it with my guitars and gear.
But I have to find things that drive me to want to spend a few hours finding my tone with any amp I plug in and I really wasn't happy with how it sounded.
Then the lead channel was noisy and hissy. I'm not use this this kind of temper with an amp as my Krank is totally quite. This channel seems to lose some of the nice Mid Range push the Rhythm channel as but has more gain to it. I can get close to that gain with the rhythm channel but not quite as strong. I can see this channel only being used for lead tones only like a boost channel or something but I don't see this being used by me for my rhythm tones.
So I played this thing for about an hour or so and turned it off. I looked at it for a while and decided it wasn't the amp for me. Sure it's got a lot of gain and I probably could dial it in to the point that it sounds killer like a lot of bands I heard using the bigger versions but I knew it would be an uphill battle and I'm not willing to put in the time into a small practice amp.
I want to find a small practice amp that is strong like this one is but doesn't sound so damn compressed and has a actual clean tone. I might just have to go find a used Krank Rev 1 JR or something like that. Maybe I should check out the Tiny Terror and go through all these Mini heads and smaller version combo amps.
I'm sure there is another different amp out there I can be happy with. I really wanted it to be this one but it didn't work out.
I know someone else started a thread about this little big combo amp but I didn't want to post my thoughts on his thread as my views are very different then his.
That thread actually inspired me to go look at this amp and demo it as I've been wanting a smaller less powerful home practice amp I can play at lower volumes and not rip my house down.
So I went to the Guitar Center in Langhorne PA where they have one with their other Combo amps . They had No good quality Jacksons or Charvels so I had to settle for a Gibson Les Paul Studio model.
I plugged in , turned everything to 12 o'clock except volume which isn't labeled volume it's labeled PRE. GAIN isn't labeled GAIN it's labeled POST. I was all confused trying to set this head up to my liking and had to figure out what all the controls did that where labeled like this.
The amp before I started to play it seemed pretty awesome. I loved all the controls as really loved the idea it had for both channels their own Presence and resonance controls. Thats totally awesome to me as now I can set them per channel and really get some fine tuning in. I'm a total Tone guy and can spend more time dialing in tone then actually playing.
So after warming the amp up and playing around with the front panels adjustments I decided it was warm enough to start hearing what this soon to come home with me today badass little big combo can do. I tried to get a good useable clean tone. This is a no go. It's very compressed sounding and almost like someone wrapped the amp in a blanket and you had to play it through the blanket. And you can't get it fully clean. It breaks up even at the lowest settings. I didn't care for that as I prefer a clean clean channel. Think Fender and thats what I expect. But I figured that I could change my ways, find some really nice cleans with some dirt on it and add some Chorus , delay or use the Built in Reverb and away I could go.
The Rhythm channel after ALOT of tweaking, I got some useable tones out of the compressed sound this thing has. I felt yeah I could use this tone for something but it's not screaming BUY ME RIGHT NOW as I wanted to walking into the store. I damn just wanted to take it home and mess around with it with my guitars and gear.
But I have to find things that drive me to want to spend a few hours finding my tone with any amp I plug in and I really wasn't happy with how it sounded.
Then the lead channel was noisy and hissy. I'm not use this this kind of temper with an amp as my Krank is totally quite. This channel seems to lose some of the nice Mid Range push the Rhythm channel as but has more gain to it. I can get close to that gain with the rhythm channel but not quite as strong. I can see this channel only being used for lead tones only like a boost channel or something but I don't see this being used by me for my rhythm tones.
So I played this thing for about an hour or so and turned it off. I looked at it for a while and decided it wasn't the amp for me. Sure it's got a lot of gain and I probably could dial it in to the point that it sounds killer like a lot of bands I heard using the bigger versions but I knew it would be an uphill battle and I'm not willing to put in the time into a small practice amp.
I want to find a small practice amp that is strong like this one is but doesn't sound so damn compressed and has a actual clean tone. I might just have to go find a used Krank Rev 1 JR or something like that. Maybe I should check out the Tiny Terror and go through all these Mini heads and smaller version combo amps.
I'm sure there is another different amp out there I can be happy with. I really wanted it to be this one but it didn't work out.
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