Friday, November 07, 2008 7:36 AM
Last weekend I purchased a new guitar amp for my bedroom. I had certain criteria in mind when heading out for the purchase. First, I wanted something small and portable. I have tons of music equipment, but I needed something that was easy to fit in the bedroom and didn't take up much space, but had a good sound and packed a punch. The second thing I was looking for was hopefully a digital recorder built in. Often, I will be playing my guitar and come up with something cool and rely on my memory to try and piece it all back together later. That worked ok when I was 16, but at 31, not to say my memory is shot, but I think I have a little more running through my mind on an average day. Anyway, it's a lot harder to remember good riffs than it used to be. I went out with a budget of $300, but admittedly when I left the house, I talked myself into spending up to $500. I was introduced to the Line 6 - Spider Jam and fell in love immediately. The amp is so cool. It took me about 5 minutes of playing with it to realize I was buying it. First off, the sound is excellent. It has great control over sound, and also has tons of built in preset sounds, so if I want my guitar to sound like Metallica's Master of Puppets, there is a setting. If I want it to sound like 311's Down, there is a setting as well. It has ton's of band sounds, as well as different sounds for different moods that were put together by their studio musicians. Another cool feature is that it has built in drums and songs that were added by real musicians and not generated through some MIDI device. It records up to 34 minutes (I think) and has effects loops for vocals, accoustic guitar, bass, and drums all through a mic input, which you can record through the digital recorder as well as your guitar. You can layer your recordings, loop, punch in, so if you have a cool riff that you come up with and then want to solo over it, it is very simple to do. It's got outputs to push your recordings out to the computer or to some other recorder. It has an input for a foot pedal as well. I plan on buying that after Christmas. We'll see if I can hold out that long. All in all, I think it has every feature I could want in a small bedroom amp. It cost me $449. I would recommend this amp to any guitar player looking to add to their collection.
Happy strumming!
Jake