Vathek

Have had this sweet little thing for 5 years, now. What can I say, great cleans, juicy distortion with the typical Orange grain when you push the gain knob past 12 o'clock, discreet but nice reverb, includes a very handy tuner... Only downsides are: 1) The overdriven sounds you can get before 12 o'clock are quite dull by themselves (although I manage to get out of it an oddly exact replica of Willie Kizart's tone on the infamous "Rocket 88" by playing on the neck pickup with the tone knob rolled all the way down on a humbucker guitar). 2) The amp seems to ruin the sound of any pedal meant to go into the Effects Loop (mods, delay, etc.) when those are plugged in front of the amp. Am I doing something wrong ? Maybe. 3) Pretty dark sound overall, many will find the use of something like an EQ or overdrive pedal helpful to squeeze more life out of it; I use a treble booster based on the Dallas Rangemaster myself. Awesome practice amp anyway, I warmly recommend it if you're in the market for one !

So I was looking for an acceptable bass amp for rehearsals and small venues when I came across this cute little thing. Playing in an Extreme Metal band with two guitarists (who used a hybrid Hartke GT60 and a BOSS Katana 100 to give an idea) and a loud drummer, it had a largely sufficient output to be heard among the noise without ever going further than about a quarter of the volume knob's capacity. "But, but, but, bass amps need at least 5000w to be heard behind a smooth Jazz drummer with brushes !" Yeah, right. Unfortunately, in less than 6 months after purchasing it, I had to change fuses several times, which is ridiculous. Big no no, angry face. If you're looking for good clean bass sounds, look elsewhere, as somehow dirt manifests whenever you push the volume beyond 9 o'clock. Another problem is that with the size and shape of the amp, it all goes in your big boy (or big girl) knees unless you're a halfling or a goblin, and you can't really solve the problem with an amp stand or putting it on a chair or something like you would with a combo for example. To conclude, if you're an Ampeg fan and you don't play the cleanest, most precious styles, and you want a cute little micro Ampeg stack to jam around a bit in your home, it can do the trick. But I wouldn't recommend it for anything beyond that, especially with the fuse problems.