On Friday, November 13, 2009 at 8:17:54 AM UTC-8, Richard Whitehouse wrote:
I'm a beginner jazz guitar student, looking at buying my first amp. Some
of my criteria:
- Light weight, small
- Good jazz tone
- Low cost
- Use it as a practice amp for now, but may want to gig with it at some point, perhaps in a year or two
Even though I would probably prefer the tone of something like a polytone
or henriksen, it doesn't make sense to me to spend a lot of money on an
amp, not yet, since I'm not doing gigs. I may never get good enough to
gig, or who knows, I might get sick of this whole endeavor, and just stick to piano (which I've been playing for about 50 yrs). I hope not, but you never know.
I'm playing a Squier Standard Telecaster at the moment. I'm going to stick to a tele for the time being, I like the simplicity of it. I might get a slightly better one, probably a MIM, pretty soon. I'll think about other guitars later, if and when I can play.
So, for a starter amp, I'm considering a Roland Cube 30x or maybe a 80x. The 30x seems like a good plan, but if I ever gig, the 80x seems like it would be more suitable - more power, more connection options (ext speaker, line out, etc.). On the negative side, it's 35 lbs, which is a bit heavier than I'd like. The 30x is 21 lbs, perfect.
I already own amps that I use for piano gigs: a pair of JBL Eon 10 G2's. These are small, 10" powered p.a. speakers. They have a line-level input. One option for me is to use a guitar preamp, like a Sansamp Blonde, and
plug that into the Eon. If I did that, I wouldn't have to buy a guitar amp. I tried that, it sounds pretty good. But, I like the convenience of having a guitar practice amp that just sits in my living room, ready to
just plug in and play. If I used my Eons, I'd have to set them up before and after every piano gig.
Looking for advice here. Is the Cube 30x a good choice? Is the 80x a better one? Are there other good starter amps? What do you guys
recommend?
Thanks,
Richard
I have a cube 15 and and a 30 both good for my solo finger style jazz, using a loar guitar with a floating Kent Armstrong pickup ( a crude bargain), mellow sounding guitar. However when I have to go loud I bring my Behringer k1800FX keyboard amp. This is
the cleanest combo amp I every heard,after I got it I sold my Roland KC amp, and it's got jazz tone that you can dial in with the eq and a good subtle reverb when used tastefully. Really good for faking the bass on the guitar too. I bought this amp used
for $70, but it weights about 50 pounds. It also takes a mic, cause I sing too. Really a great amp. I've also had the acoustic guitar version of this amp the 1800 and it sounds bad, the 15" speaker version also sounds bad (too bassy and honking_, but I
have the K900FX version as a backup and it sounds as good as the K1800FX.
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