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Is this unassuming box.
It's just bloody great and it goes in the gig bag, and I can get a good tone anywhere without power. You can plug in a singer too.
(OK bass is a bit farty sometimes, but what do you expect?)
If this thing had a jack line out it would be the most useful thing ever. I kind of prefer the tone to my AER. It sounds great with my Tele and ES175 and great with my Maccaferri.
Also, the chorus is rad.
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09-19-2018 02:36 PM
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BTW - the chorus is in stereo! How badass is that? You can pretend to be the Cure circa 1986!
I don't think my (mono) recording facilities will be able to do it justice.
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BTW I got this back in May I think, so it's done I think 5 or 6 gigs without power. This is my appraisal based on using the amp professionally.
If it dies tomorrow it's served its function.
But I have yet to change the flipping batteries.
Might be a bit quiet with drums but it is surprisingly loud. I think you could play with a brush drummer no problem.
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very light amp...:-)
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My main interest is this is purely hobbyist. Couple reasons.
First would like to run my guitar and an mp3 player into the amp and get a good sound to mic for videos. Also, maybe mic and guitar in case I want to make demonstration vids that don't suck as much as mine now tend to do. Volume is less important than a clean sound.
Second would be to sing and play songs for my mom (-turning 89 next week), some with just me and guitar, others with a backing track. (She always wants to hear "Watermelon Man" with the Aebersold play-along because she loves the sound and feel of that piano part.)
Third to have a LIGHT amp to carry to play at a friend's place.
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I think it would work for those functions. There's also a headphone jack which you could use as a line out for recording maybe.
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How is the actual guitar amp sound? Does it have amp models like the other Cube amps (not clear to me from the specs)? My MicroCube is 8 years old and long ago earned it's keep, but the input jack has started to get flakey and I'm contemplating a replacement.
Originally Posted by christianm77
My best purchase in the more recent past is a Fender Champion 20. Sounds like a real amp, weighs next to nothing, takes up very little room, can hang with a drummer (within reason) and is comically cheap, but not battery powered.
All in all, I think we're in a golden age of great gear in pretty much every "use case" one can imagine. But the small and/or battery powered amp realm is ridiculous, especially compared to the old days when Pignose and Mouse was all there was.
John
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That's pretty cool.
My little microcube is my most used amp. Pretty much every plugged in video I've ever made and posted here is done with it...records (through a phone) much better than any other of my amps. I don't think it would be loud enough for anything than the smallest coffee shop gig though, so hearing that it has a louder "big brother" is kind of tempting...
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Would you consider it a mini Jazz Chorus or is it more like a stereo Micro Cube?
The difference to me is Cube family amps are voiced to sound more like tube amps and take pedals etc. Where as Jazz Chorus family are proud solid state amps, they seem be designed to give you the cleans with zero interest in imitating a tubey response.
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Haven't tried it with pedals, I don't really use them for gigs without power.
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From a YouTube video about this amp I learned that the battery life is "about 15 hours". For 6 AA batteries, that's pretty danged good.
Also, the "Center Cancel" setting sounds nifty. (I take it this would take out the vocal or lead guitar track from a recording so you could add those parts yourself. Might be a fun way to practice a new tune.)
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TBH I haven't tried DI'ing it, simply because, well why? It does the job I got it for - but I would be very surprised if the in-built electric guitar patches (E-Guitar, Crunch and Gain IIRC) don't correspond with the usual COSM versions of Blackface, Plexi and Cali. It also has vocal, acoustic guitar and I think keys? There's also an Aux in. Originally Posted by John A.
The thing is even some of the inexpensive solid state amps on the market could make viable jazz amps with a £60 speaker swap and the Class D revolution has blown this stuff wide open because we aren't so fussy about everything having to sound like a cranked Plexi or Mesa (which ain't never going to happen with the best modelling). Haven't tried the Champion 20...
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It's inability to get cranked Plexi tones through a Tele bridge pickup while the cowboy G, D and A chords are strummed (in any order) will massively hinder its review-ability on youtube guitar gear channels. Most seem very perplexed by a clean sound and don't quite know what to do with it. Originally Posted by christianm77
Last edited by Tal_175; 09-20-2018 at 08:36 PM.
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A demo vid that covers the basics. Not a jazz demo, but you can't have everything...
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My birthday's coming up and I think this will be my present to myself. My girlfriend's giving me a nice new laptop---which I need more---so that's taken care of. ;o)
Could make decent versions of some of my old songs. I wrote them using a 4-track, which is long gone. And I don't really want to work like that nowadays. This looks to give a clear sound and allows some color for vocals. (Mine need all the help they can get.) So yeah, this looks like it's just the thing for me. Plus, small. I'm taking care of my aging mother and the tiny room I'm in is quite cramped. This could be put anywhere, and tucked out of sight when not in use.
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I tried this side by side with the Street Cube which is also battery powered. The street had more power and I preferred the sound... but it's more expensive too.
I got it for an outdoor wedding I played. The wedding was on a bluff above the ocean with noise from the surf that I had to cut through. Also I ran a mic through it (it has an xlr input) for the priest and a couple other folks that talked at the wedding. It worked great for that. It's pretty much a more powerful micro cube with two channels and two speakers.
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The street cube doesn’t go in the gig bag. The Street Cube EX is a serious a piece of kit. Could work as a main gigging amp.
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Regarding flaky input receptacles on amps, most amps these days have the input receptacles machine soldered directly to the circuit board, not mounted on the chassis and wired to the board. Given the mechanical stress of plugging and unplugging a cord repeatedly, sooner or later the input gets flaky at the board connections. This happens on LOTS of amps--especially Fenders.
A better design, arguably, is the old input jack mounted on the chassis approach. Far fewer breakdowns. You see this on some circuit board amps (e.g., Fender '59 Bassman), but not, say, on the Fender Blues Jr. or the Roland Micro Cube.
One cheap, sloppy solution: leave a cord plugged into the amp and wrap it around the amp when done and packing out.
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My pet peeve. I think I've had the problem with every device I own where some mechanical part is soldered into a PC board. Jack, switch, pot etc.
The fix is to reheat the solder joints. But, you have to get access to them, which sometimes requires a good deal of disassembly. If you do it, you may want to reheat every one of the solder connections for every pot, jack and switch. And, hope you don't flow any solder where it doesn't belong.
Not that I've done it, but I think that a good idea would be to get or make a cable with a right angle jack on one end and a female 1/4" on the other. Maybe a foot long. Then, plug the right angle into the amp (right angle so it doesn't stick out) and put some tape over with a skull and crossbones, suggesting misfortune to anybody who touches it. Then tape the female end to the amp someplace and always plug into that. A "Plug In Here" label would be a nice touch.
This recreates what the manufacturer should have done in the first place, which is to mount the input jack to the chassis and connect it to the board with a good old fashioned flexible piece of wire. On the other hand, you didn't pay for that.
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I've had the MicroCube RX -- big brother of the Microcube -- for a few years now. It has 4 small speakers and sounds just great (like the rest of the Cube Series) It is super handy for jamming since it runs on batteries or chord. My only complaint is with the fabric handle -- it occasionally comes loose from the amp body making it easy to drop the amp. But overall a good sounding and useful micro amp.
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Borrowed a friend's Roland Micro Cube GX the other night for a duo gig and was really impressed having previously considered such amps as mere toys. . Lacked some bottom end ( not surprisingly perhaps ) and wondered if anyone could recommend a pedal that might improve this situation?
Thanks.
David
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I love mine. No less than three friends have bought one based off playing through mine. Unfortunately, I don’t have a pedal recommendation. Just wanted to give a big +1 on them.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
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I have the older non-gx (same thing with somewhat fewer feature). The lack of bass is a function of the speaker and cabinet, and of the amp's limited power. There's no pedal cure for that. It is what it is.
John
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The Brit Combo setting with gain down low will yield the fullest clean sound in the case of this amp, unless you take a line out to a PA. You'll be amazed if you do, BTW!
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The only cure for the Cube Micro Cube GX's lack of bottom end...is a GX40...or GX80.
You lose the battery powered portability, but gain the better tone.
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