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Roland Cube 30X

This is a great little practice amp and may be used for some recording. I bought it while playing in 4 bands simultaneously, having to go to rehearsals daily, and getting sick and tired of carying my 40 watt tube amp around all the time. Well, it turned out this was a mistake, as this amp, with it's 30 watts solid state power, cannot be used next to a live drummer very well. The clean channel can break through the noise of a band situatuon, but the drive channel doesn't have enough volume. I believe the Cube 60 is the smallest of Roland amps that you can actually use in a band. There is ofcourse another option. Put a mic in front of this little amp and plug it in the P.A. 

All this is not to say that this amp is bad in any way, but I myself did buy it for the wrong reason, as it did not stand up to my needs.

 

The clean channel is modelled after the legendary Roland JC 120 amp. It sounds very similar, so I must say they did a good job. Both channels have 3 band EQ, and can be combined with 6 Boss effects including chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, delay and reverb, with delay and reverb on a seperate knob from the others. The effects are pretty decent in my opinion, but there's not much room for customising the parameters, as these are simply adjusted with two rotating knobs. One knob adjusts the intensity (mix) of the modulating effects, and the other sets the delay time, or reverb decay lenght. All in all, pretty basic. This means you can have two simultaneously however only the modulations are footswitchable. Chorus is reasonable gives a nice twinkle and is tweakable enough and very useable Flanger isn't half bad at slower settings where it can add a nice subtle twist, higher intensity can be a little overwhelming however. Phaser is very strong even on the lowest setting it is very unsubtle and at higher settings it is just overwhelming. Tremolo is decent enough. Delay is mediocre really you cant dial in a decent delay with half a nob. Also it is either always on or always off which isn't very practical. I have to be honest even the Marshall MG delay owns this. It is very quiet and hard to hard especially on the lead channel. On the clean it adds a little extra depth but overall find it to be impossible to use Live and not ideal in practice either. However I am getting a separate delay pedal for xmas anyway. Reverb is reasonable does what you would expect nice feature.

 

The drive channel is very versatile, and offers a choice of acoustic simulation, Black Panel Fenders, Brit Combo (Vox amps), Tweed Fender amp, Classic, Metal and Rectifier Stacks, and Rolands Dyna-amp, which is essencially a Rectifier sound but with added dynamics. This is dony with their COSM technology, and for practice, it sounds decent, but for stage volume, not even close.

 

It has a mini jack aux in, great for playing along to tracks, you can plug any 1/8 inch jack into it. The tuner is great especially in Live situations can easily tune between songs as don't need to unplug guitar every time you need to tune. Pressing the tuner button mutes the signal, however it is very limiting as it is not particularly accurate and is hard to use with only 3 lights and can only tune to standard tuning. It's a nice feature especially for a beginner but I have since bought a Boss Tu2 which is much better. 

 

There is also a headphone out which sounds good and can be used for recording directly.

 

For playing in a live situation, be aware that the clean channel is louder. When set at a lower volume it is not so noticable, but when it's cranked up, there is quite a difference in volume between channels.

 

This amp can make a huge variety of sounds, to suit any occasion any style with effects too, lots of room to shape your sound with this. It's also good as a first amp to see what sounds you like before you buy your next amp and have a better idea of what they sound like. Great sounding amp models.

 

It is built like a tank and can take it's fair share of abuse, you don't have to worry about taking it anywhere, stands up great. Played it at several gigs never any problems. Very reliable and versatile.

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