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I bought this amp several years ago at a music store as part of a starter combo with a Fender knock-off guitar for around $200 all total. I wanted to play guitar to annoy my parents and pay off my wife's student loans. Of course, my parents are happy that I've finally found a productive hobby, and the student loans will follow the old lady and me the grave. Go figure.

It's light and easy to move around. It's also quite cheap. Having played the amp at parties, it looks like it's been through a war, yet it keeps on ticking. For a dinky little amp, it is cabable of satisfying a single room of drunk headbangers on a budget.


It sounds like a clock-radio lit up on meth. The distortion is very muddy, and the soul-penetrating hiss it exudes at even moderate volumes can grate on your nerves. You can fiddle with the dials all day long, and it will never quite sound just right.

It has survived beer spills (Pabst no less), a U-Haul, and people falling on it. It has also been knocked off of a chair. All in all, it seems quite durable. The dials are a smidge off though; when you turn them all the way down, none of them match with the zero mark, which is annoying to me, but maybe not to you.

This is an absolute starter amp. When you've learned to play your second chord, it's time to take this little girl to the pawn shop and let some other budding rocker have a go.

Note: if you have a lot of digital filter design experience, you may be able to put together professional recordings with an amp this cheap, but it does take determination and some serious creativity. If that ain't you, I'd recommend buying a better amp.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com