Gorgeous Tone in a Small Package 
by Paul R. Potts from Ann Arbor, MI, October 2008
Music Background:  Amateur musician, podcaster, and producer

This is my first tube amplifier, and I'm 41 years old and have been playing guitar since I was about twelve. I have always wound up going with solid-state amps because tubes scared me a bit: I worried that they would be too fragile, and break, or eventually burn out, and tube amps always seemed very expensive. Bbut this thing is really quite a deal given that it is made in the USA, very well-built, and the sound that comes out of it is definitely worth the price.

The controls would pretty much only make sense to a guitarist: the volume control on the front really should not be called volume, since it has almost no effect on the volume. It is really preamp gain or saturation. The tone control largely controls brightness (especially of the harmonics). The real "volume" control is on the back: it controls the power sponge. Turned all the way up (down?), so that it soaks up all the power to the speaker, you hear almost nothing, but -- and this is the big selling point for me -- you still get a full signal from the XLR balanced recording output.

If you crank up the volume control past 12:00 you get a lot of "singing" smooth sustained gain and wonderful harmonics. It also sounds very nice if you bring the volume down quite low -- then, it sounds a lot like a classic blues combo, and you can use your guitar's volume control to set it right at the point where it starts to break up, and your playing technique then determines how much tube tone you get out of the notes. It's a beautiful thing! On the neck pickup, especially with a single coil or coil tap, you get a wonderful hollow bluesy tone. The bridge pickup, with the guitar volume a little higher, sounds more like, well, Joe Satriani.

The recording output works extremely well. I ran it into an Apogee Ensemble and got just the tone I was looking for with only a little bit of EQ. Turning the power soak all the way down means I could record a guitar part that sounded like a Marshall Stack in flames in my bedroom studio without even waking up my baby daughter sleeping in the next room. How cool is that? The only disadvantage I can see doing it this way is that you don't literally get feedback because the guitar strings won't "hear" the amp's output.

Oh, yeah -- if you're not an apartment dweller, you can actually run some of the power into the speaker instead of just heating up the power soak. It's a 5 watt amp but Class A watts are LOUD, so it sounds much louder. I haven't tried it, but I think it would certainly be loud enough for at least rehearsals and maybe even a small club gig, assuming you're playing a relatively low-volume style.

The amp loses a half-star because like another reviewer said, the tremolo is probably of limited use; it just isn't that popular an effect, although if you want to sound like "Crimson and Clover," you're all set. I wouldn't miss it if they took the tremolo out. Maybe they couldn't fit a plate reverb into this package, but a good reverb circuit would have been arguably more useful. Or Peavey could have used the space to put in a 3-band EQ instead of the single tone control. At the least, they could let you control the power soak from the front panel instead of reaching around to the back. But despite these minor things I might change this is just about the perfect package for the kind of playing and recording I want to do!

  Big things, little package 
by Chris W. from MD from MD USA, September 2007
Music Background:  Hobbyist, weekend warrior

Bought this little titan on the recommendation of sales associate Ron Daniel, and let me tell you how pleased I am with this amp. It has a power attenuator on the back of the amp that lets the user fine tune loudness and tone, while not jeopardizing sound quality. I am so pleased with this product that I might consider the 2-12 JSX package. Am a little dissapointed with the tremolo effect, personally I feel that reverb would be nicer, but oh well. Overall a teriffic product, totally satisfied.

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