Has the Bluguitar Amp 1 died before it got going? Nah!

strtdv

That demo sounded pretty good, but I'd need to hear it in person. If it were £300 used it would make a very useful backup amp for a gigging musician. I doubt the nanotube is doing very much, and a class D power amp should be very reliable. 

It didn't quite nail the tones it was going for, but it did a pretty good impression most of the time. I particularly liked the Vintage channel.

My main reservation is the lack of any sort of power amp tone controls, the modern channel in particular sounded like it would benefit from a presence and resonance control.

ThePrettyDamned

The modern rectified sound doesn't sound much cop to me...

That's just one setting, mind.

monquixote

Just tried one.

Mind blown

steamabacus

That sounds positive.

ThePrettyDamned

monquixote;540632" said:

Just tried one.

Mind blown

More info please!

monquixote

Will do a mini review later. I've got a stand to man atm!

keithf

this looks very interesting, Looking forward to your review @monquixote

firepaulmusic

Mine blown x2! Finally tracked it down at the JHS stand. Without stealing thunder of the mini review coming from Monquixote, it was superb.....

EricTheWeary

monquixote said:

Just tried one.

Mind blown

the must see thing of the show said @monquixote to me earlier today. So...I forgot to look...doh... |)

firepaulmusic

Order going in tomorrow.....

ThePrettyDamned

@monquixote I've been refreshing this all evening just for this.

Genuinely pretty excited.

Kebabkid

Glad you liked it chaps as I was impressed with it too.

What do you think on the price? Worth it? Should be less? It is feature-packed and the sounds are better than a POD (agreed on that??) but I can't work out price-wise where it should sit other than just for my own pocket, I wish it was sub-£400.

Let's be having some reviews

photek

If it delivers what it claims to and the 100w is proper then I think it is worth the money. They have thought about this properly by the look of it, all of the features seem to be covered and the switchable master on the remote is the icing on the cake for me. Very keen to have a play with one!

strtdv

Does it always need a speaker cabinet connected or can you run it purely as a DI output if you wanted? If it's the latter I'd seriously consider getting one when they become available used.

steamabacus

It has a speaker emulated line out and will run safely without a speaker load. It really does seem to be everything you need for a portable gigging 'amp'.

monquixote

ThePrettyDamned said:

@monquixote I've been refreshing this all evening just for this.

Genuinely pretty excited.

Sorry to keep you waiting bud, had to drive back from Birmingham and have some dinner.

I didn't have a huge amount of time with the Amp1 and the show is very noisy so you'll have to take it with a slight pinch of salt.

I tried it with a Vintage Thomas Blug sig (appropriately enough). Firstly it's really quite small and very light. I can't quite believe it really is 100W, but I wasn't able to crank it to find out. It does seem well made though I am slightly worried about how durable it is purely because it has a huge number of features in a very small box and it has active cooling which always worries me.

Clean - I was really hoping that this was going to do the biz as I play clean so much of the time and I wasn't disappointed. It was really quite characterful and encouraged you to dig in on the neck pickup. I noticed that the boost was engaged so I switched it off and it got a little bit flatter and more jazzy. This was a bit more like I expect a solid state clean amp to sound I didn't tweak the side mounted tone control at all so I don't know if I would be able to get it a bit snappier, but even if I had to run it with the boost on all the time I'd be quite happy.

Vintage - Really nice on the edge lighter drive sound loads of great classic rock tones in there. 

Classic - I lurrrved this mode, big fat plexi tones that made me grin. I just couldn't help but rock out with this mode and do lots of daft rock riffs. Didn't want to put it down.

Modern - Erm .... it has lots of gain. I don't understand things with lots of gain and I was playing a vintage strat so your guess is as good as mine. I tried this channel for about 15 seconds then went back to being silly with the classic. 

The reverb was passable certainly good enough to avoid having to buy a verb pedal if you don't want to.

I'm hugely impressed I think it's a decent buy for £600 and at the £475 Thomann are doing them for it's a no brainer. I think it actually sounded better in the flesh than I expected from Mr Blug's demos.

To get the most out of it I think you need to add MIDI as that gives you a 4 channel amp with, boost, attenuator, multiple master volumes and reverb. The real question is how it stands up to playing at a gig, but with what I experienced it's the gear of the show for me.

@strtdv - You can indeed run it unloaded.

Kebabkid

Nice one Nick and cheers for the review.

Like you, I didn't get a chance to turn it up so I've no idea what it'll sound like at volume, or indeed if it will actually be really loud.

ThePrettyDamned

Exciting! 

I am not amazingly bothered if the high gain sounds are good or not - the main ones for me were the other three.  I can run a blackstar HT metal into one of those for the heavy stuff.  

I need to try one out - this is a definite contender amp for me, versus JCA22h and an Orange rocker 30.

Sassafras

Isn't this reasonably priced compared to the Quilter amps which don't have half the features. If it's well built and proves to be reliable then for a 100 watter, the price seems about right to me.

firepaulmusic

I've just ordered mine and so has the mate I was at the show with yesterday. The JHS guys gave me Ivor Morantz number and said they would price match GuitarGuitar at £489 delivered next day (tomorrow on my day off - bonus!). In addition to the thoughts above on the unit:

I had two of the fiercest critics of my guitar tone with me - Koneguitarist and my son Ben. Both of whom were completely blown away by the unit.

I did get an opportunity to wind it up above halfway and it is bloody loud but retains it's composure at highr volume levels as well. The FX loop seemed very transparent and the delay unit on their board sounded great. The boost control was set to full which obviously sent the clean a bit over the edge but tghis can be adjusted to suit.

I noticed that Thomas keeps his clean gain level flat out so I did the same. The clean was a pleasant surprise straight away, really full and sweet (I have a Carr Slant 6V so I appreciate a classy clean sound).

What we need to remember as well is that there are incividual channel controls for three of the cxhannels on the side so balancing all three should be a doddle.

I lowered the gain on the Modern channel and this made it much more useable for classic rock and blues lead sounds.

I'm hoping reliability won't be an issue as Thomas has been road testing the amp for ages now. He has a lot riding on this being a success and reliability issues cannot be a factor for him.I'd like to find out how long the manufacturers warranty is, can't find it on the website.

Anyway, my first gig with it is next Saturday - standby.....