I keep ending up carrying my hot rod deluxe (or worse, pro reverb) considerable distances and every time I swear I’m going to buy a light weight amp
the other guitarist at the last gig had a Roland blues cube artist and it sounded awesome. I think it’s about 10lbs lighter, and there’s a smaller version called the stage.
Is the stage as good as the artist or would I be disappointed? I think the head would be the best option but you can pick up a stage for about 300, the artist for 400 and I think the cheapest I’ve seen the head is 650.
Maybe a TMDR would be better?
Comments
Now that's the sales pitch done....I'll sell you mine for £375 because I've gone down the Fractal route and have decided that my amps are going...although my wife is probably more the reason
a much better option. I own one of these. Also I have a Laney Lionheart Foundry 60 watt amp ( LF60-112 ) which is really
good. My valve amps are Rift PR-35. DR Z Maz18JR & Fender 68 Custom Princeton reverb.
My best advice is take your time and try out a few amps and yours ears will tell you what is right for you.
One of the blues jams I attend has one as part of the back line and it’s been 100% reliable for years and easily loud enough for a decent sized pub.
edit - just remembered another friend who has the Blues Cube Hot which I think is 30W. I think it’s a simpler affair with no provision for the tone capsules but it still sounds good.
I use them clean as a pedal platform. Comparing them side by side, I think the clean channel of my HRD IV has a bit more warmth or body (for want of a better description), but the Blues Cube Artist sounds good.
I don't use the drive channel of either amp live. But when I compared them at home, the drive channel of the Blues Cube Artist sounded quite nice to my ear, whereas the drive channel of my HRD IV isn't to my taste, shall we say .
I got a Blues Cube Hot (27.8 lb) a few months ago, after suffering the embarrassment of taking my Blues Cube Artist to a Blues Jam, and it was twice the size of everybody else's amp. However, I did establish that the drive channel of the Blues Cube Artist sounded good at a Blues Jam.
I'm pretty impressed with the Blues Cube Hot. It never gets past the 15W setting at Blues Jams and is plently loud enough. The Boost channel is actually like adding a distortion pedal, and isn't too bad but I prefer to use a separate drive pedal.
I compared my Blues Cube Hot on the 30W setting to my HRD IV and Blues Cube Artist at home. I was surprised how much it held its own against the other two when I cranked it up, until I was worried about annoying the neighbourrs. But I havent had chance to try it in a full band gigging situtation yet as I'm not in a band at the moment.
I find the Blues Cube Hot to be a very bright amp, but it's OK when I back off the treble quite a bit to about 3 to 4.
Shane from intheblues thinks the bandit is as good as the blues cube, although the bandit is a pretty weighty beast so that defeats the point!
TBH I’d like to go lighter than the BC Artist. Maybe it’s time for an FRFR cab.
Must be getting on to the point where they revise that range. I think they're pushing ten years old.
Since the repair it's been fine for many years.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've noticed a few posts on problems with the Artist model but not with the other versions.
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/123716/modelling-amp-latency-and-cumulative-factors/p1
It's fine if there aren't too many things in the signal chain with ADC/DACs. But as I often use a Helix in stompbox mode into my Blues Cube, I start to feel the cummulative latency sooner than a full analogue chain, as I get further from my amp. But it's rarely a problem, as I'm usually pretty close to my amp or there's a monitor nearby on bigger stages.
It sounded good direct too but I preferred it with a cab.
I mainly used it through the speaker of a Peavey bandit so nothing high end and it sounded great.
I used it once through a blackstar artisan cab, 2 x V30s in a good quality cab and it sounded absolutely massive.
V30s on paper are probably not the best match but it was ace
Put it on the 100 watt setting, turn up the master and it's the equal of most valve amps.