radovan's Reviews

Very well made!

All tube, class A, 5 watt made in UK Marshall amp, and affordable.

I got this amp to play alone at home and take it to band practice from time to time, and it’s just perfect.

There were three (combo) versions: 1st was closed back, which apparently had rattle issues. That was fixed in the second open back version, in which they also changed chassis position, so the tubes face downwards. I have the third version, where they added a low power mode, and that was one of the reasons to get the final version.

I wanted to get the last version for the headphones output / low wattage mode, and I almost never use it.

Low wattage is ok if you really want to be quiet, but the gain gets fuzzy, in a bad way. With pedals it gets better.

Headphone out is good only for clean sounds, and nothing else! Any gain, from pedals or the amp is just terrible.

Full power is awesome! Nice full cleans up to 3-4 (not loud enough for a band), and than it starts to break up. People call it the 5 watt bluesbreaker.

I was considering buying Marshall origin 20 or 50, and when I went to the store to try one I was underwhelmed by the build quality. It didn’t even look as a quality amp. Even to touch it felt cheap, and when I plugged in it was just flat and lifeless. Other people managed to get great sounds out of them, but in my opinion for the same price, only with 4 knobs it’s impossible to get a bad sound out of the class 5.

The amp doesn’t have effects loop, and it doesn’t bother me personally, but if you only want to use gain from the amp, and lots of reverb or delay, you might not like it. In that case, I would probably mod the amp and have effects loop installed before looking for another amp.

Anyway, the amp is awesome!

Preferred Settings + Usage:

Perfect amp for beginners and good for advanced players

This amp is perfect for beginners - it can easily be used at home at low volumes, and it also has a headphone out for late night practice.

Most of the amp modeling has been done pretty well. I wasn’t able to test it against the real amps, but I have tested the tube screamer and big muff, and they sound exactly the same as the real thing! I was amazed! I don’t like some amp models and presets, mostly high gain ones, but there are so many other amp models to choose from, it’s really not a problem. They definitely spent more time working on modeling for fender amps, but most other brands are just as good.

As I said, for a beginner, this is a perfect first amp, because it’s an amazing tool to learn about different amps, pedals, and signal chain, so when you buy a first “serious” amp, you’ll know more or less what you’re looking for. There are some PDFs that will help you make the most out of it, explaining exactly which models correspond to which amps, pedals and cabinets.

Even for an intermediate or advanced player I think it’s a great amp to try different effects and easily experiment with signal chain, and it’s a lot better for home practice than a 100 watt Marshall.

Looper is a great feature but it requires a foot switch. I had some problems with the foot switch, but I still recommend buying it.

In the digital/modeling amp category (boss katana, Marshall code, Yamaha thr, etc) I personally find this one to be the best overall. I tried the boss katana and Marshall code, and considered buying Yamaha thr because it looks amazing, but I’m glad I got this one. It sounds good, looks good, and the biggest selling point compared to the other amps in the category - it will help you learn a lot about guitar gear.

Oh, I also use it as a Bluetooth speaker because it has hi-fi speakers. It’s not for an audiophile, but the sound quality is pretty good!