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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHUmS6kKjRw
Hi guys,
I got the heads up on one of these having arrived at Ivor Mairants, London (JHS distributor) and tried one out today. I used a Fret King HSH guitar with the unit plugged into a H&K 1X12 speaker (probably a 60 watter) and both belonged to the shop.
To my ears, the unit is a little more dynamic than a Boss multi-fx unit or a POD and responded well to guitar volume and tone knob changes, but it's not as dynamic as a valve amp. It's pretty versatile and fairly intuitive to use and most sounds are pretty generic with a good degree of control over them and the EQ. In fact, I found the sounds not too dissimilar to a Hughes & Kettner amp and that's no surprise given Thomas Blug's input and association with the company. I liked the clean sounds (spanky and funky were in there but not chimey) and the vintage overdrive was nice and quite touch sensitive to the pick. There's also more than enough gain on tap in this thing, especially when you engage the boost, and it reminded me of how I use my own EP Boost on my overdrives for a general thickening up and pushing of the sound. That brings me to the lack of noise from the unit and I didn't need to deploy the inbuilt noise gate even when the gain was high up on the modern channel.
To be honest, I couldn't get a harsh sound out of the unit and whereas I'd previously found it hard to dial in good overdrive sounds on my old H&K TM36, on this it was a doddle.
The reverbs nice and smooth too and I missed it when it wasn't on.
I think to get the most out of the unit live, you will need the additional footswitch. Also, you know what it's like in some music shops regarding volume, well,whilst I had the volume and master up a fair bit, I didn't think the unit was producing a lot of volume, so I do recommend playing around more with the additional channel volumes, trying different cabs and seeing if you can turn the wick up on this to a decent level.
Bottom line, I liked it and I think it should be tried. I think it's a useful piece of kit to build a rig around or have as a spare amp or even use for recording, but I'm not sure of the price. I don't want to offend Mr.Blug or his R&D people, nor do I know what the quality of components are like in this unit, but I'm not sure I'd pay £595 - it seems steep and I wish this was more around the £350-400 mark. I dunno, maybe I've got that wrong for such a versatile unit that includes a power amp. I also need to be convinced that a gigging volume can be obtained from this thing (it claims to have a 100W power amp) and I'd like to plumb in a few of my own pedals, like a compressor, delay and favourite OD and try it again with different cabs and speakers.
I hope that helps and I look forward to seeing other people's comments on here once they've tried it.
As the last posts here were a couple of years ago now, I was curious if anyone else has since tried or bought the Amp1, who can share some further thoughts on it.
The reason for my interest is that at band practice I'm using whatever amp is in the rehearsal room to run my Vox Tonelab SE. Some are very good, others less so. I don't want to take my own amps, simply because of weight. The idea of a compact power amp that I can put in my gigbag and plug my TLSE into and use with the studios 4x12 cab for a more consistent tone, appeals, especially as the Amp1 comes up used at way less than the new price.
My band's new album features some tracks using it. I wish I could recall which overall but the outro to this one is definitely the AMP1:
I think the main lead on this (four minutes or so in) used it too:
It was largely reliable but developed a faulty trim pot. JHS were really good to work with though and priced reasonably out of warranty.
My band, Red For Dissent
I'm popping out for a few hours, but I promise to come back to this later on. I think using it for the Tonelab would work fine and sound decent, though. Later...
I don't know much about the Tonelab, but if you can run it without modelling an amp, you might enjoy the Amp1 clean and vintage channels as a pedal platform. I do. If it sends MIDI commands you'll be able to change channels and toggle the boost and reverb, too.
The tone controls are interesting. They aren't intended to be used to 'shape' the guitar sound. The custom controls on the side set the basic channel tonality and then you leave them be. The tone controls are used to adjust the overall tone for the room you're playing in. Seems to work well like that.
Risks: If it breaks, you'll need to send it away to be fixed. I bought mine second hand and had a small problem - one custom control pot was very crackly. JHS swapped the Amp1 for me even though I wasn't the original buyer and the replacement has been fine for over a year.
There's a lot more to the Amp1 than this, but if you're using the Tonelab, you won't want to use any of it, I expect.
Out of interest, are there any other similar compact amp solutions at a sensible price that might do the same type of thing? As this is to be used with my Tonelabs, its simply a portable power amp with its own EQ & volume control that can deliver clean tone to power a cab - my TLSE/TLLE will do everything else effects & amp modelling-wise.
https://www.andertons.co.uk/p/44MAGNUM/compact-pedals/electro-harmonix-44-magnum-pedal-power-amp
No, but I have seen a couple of dead ones. No idea how bad a percentage it is, since obviously people only bring me them when they break! Not economically repairable - if at all - of course.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I wanted to see if the promise of lots of "real world" functionality could be delivered in the small, light package it came in. In the main, it does and I'm comfy with the functionality it provides that I actually want to use. Therefore, it's staying for now!
One of the changes will be going to a very lightweight head and cab. I'll almost certainly buy a Neolight cab and I've been looking at a few lightweight heads. The Bluguitar is one of them but I'm also looking at the Matrix VB800 and the Quilter 101.
I'm leaning towards the Quilter, which is a 50W unit and is less than 1Kg. It's £315 from the UK dealer but I'm in the US in a few weeks time and can pick one up for $299 which is £240 at current exchange rates.