When I first saw this amp, I thought, man, 5 watts ain’t going to cut it. When I play on the street I use a 50 watt Crate Limo (a great amp, by the way). I couldn’t understand why Roland would put out such an under powered product.
Now I understand. It is a LOUD little amp. I’m amazed. And it sounds so good. When I first got it, I plugged in a guitar and couldn’t stop playing. The amp modeling and the effects are wonderful.

This amp is aimed at solo performers and street musicians, and would make a nice practice amp. This amp works well for the steet and small venues. If you’re a typical loud, obnoxious guitar player, you might want to look elsewhere for a product that more suits your needs.

In an act of unmitigated generosity, a bass-playing friend bought two of these to us guitar people to use. The lightweight amp sits on good rubber feet. Unless dropped, the enclosure should hold up pretty well. The front grill should take a light kicking without letting the foot into the speaker.

The amp uses two ~6.5 drivers with whizzer cones. The speaker cones appear to be paper for good sound, so keep them out of the rain. The enclosure is a ported/vented enclosure, so bass rolls off sharply, but for frequencies about the resonant frequency, the amp will be more efficient than a totally sealed enclosure. When unfamiliar with the amp, I tend to prop up the back of the amp so I can see the controls. Once the controls are are set, the angled back works nice playing outside my local Orchard Valley Coffee. Because the amp has good corners, it can be set on its end. The handle on the amp a vinyl wrapped metal strap affair that I found uncomfortable to slip my hand under. Overall, the amp fit and finish are quite good. I like addition of the Neutrik 1/4″ / XLR jack on the clean/mic channel. Thank you for not putting a blue LED in the amp, anywhere, nor marking any knob “Presence.”

The amp sounds good for its weight. It goes loud enough to feed back my acoustic/electric guitar at a few feet distance. I feel that amp sounds a lot better than the Cube Micro, and delivers on its promise.

Effect-wise, you have reverb, chorus, delay, and tremolo. Their are footswitch jacks in the back for most of the effects, but as far as I can tell, there is no clean/dirty channel selection, which would have made more sense in the real world than the other switch-able effects.

[Because there is an clean/mic channel, perhaps it could be a/b with a switch-box.]

The effects use functionality overloaded pots or encoders whereas you have more than one effect per knob, so you may not be able to mix the effects you want. Fortunately, they applied common sense in putting the special-effects on a separate control from those the reverb and delay, the ones that simulate room acoustics.

The amp has a rotary selector switch for cabinet/amp simulations. I found that I could dial-in a decent soft gain/distortion situation. As a player, I’m not big on the myriad of self-similar amp choices, such as: does this amp-sim have more of this when I turn this up, and so on. I would rather just have a 5-band EQ, and perhaps a single notch filter to cut down on squeal on acoustics.

IMO, the “COSM” thing is a marketing shpeal the likes of which would make Strunk and White roll over in their final resting places. I would have preferred not to read the paragraph concerning it in the manual; I want my innocence back.

I am not sure of the battery life yet. I have found that the amp will run from 2,700ma NiMH batteries; your success may vary. If you plan on using batteries, but don’t need to run the amp for more than a few hours, it may save you both money and landfill to use rechargeables. You can find NiMh from 2,000-2,700 milliamps per hour, so get the highest capacity ones you can find, and recharge them before you leave.

[Otherwise, using the 3 battery amps we use: 2-guitar, and one-bass, which have 18 batteries, deplete 2.3 batteries an hour!]

Perhaps they could have used C-sized batteries, but perhaps also they would have made the amp too heavy. I wish the amp had an option for a built in Li-Ion charging system. A low-battery warning LED would have been nice touch, but there is none.

I wish they included the protective bag, which is available separately. Overall, these are good little amplifiers.

This amp is one of the best pieces of gear I have invetsed in.

BEST FEATURES:
1. Portability: Thanks to this, all my live rig is in a small carry on flight bag. Amp, mics, stands, cables and all.
2. Battery: Get yourself 6 Sanyo rechargeable cells and they go a long way. if you’re playing FULL volume the batteries will last say 2 hours. Otherwise on Moderate volume they’ll last upto 10+ hours. If I’m only using this amp at home, I charge once a month.
3. Vocal sound: Will flatter most voices. I have sued this as a recording preamp as well for both vocals and guitar. Very good rich sound. The reverb and delay are good too. Roland quality.
4. Guitar sounds: VERY good. The crunchy has crunch the hi gain has gobs of distortion. The acoustic sim is one of the best out there. Impossible to distinguish from a real acoustic guitar on tape (after recording).
5. Loudness: It covers say about 40-50 people easily. Its loud enough for a solo performer. Obviously don’t expect chest thumping bass. That cant happen with this.
6. Extensible: One of the things I love about this is that you can connect this to an existing sound system and do your thing. Its like having an effects processor, amp and mixer all in one unit.

APPLICATIONS:
Its very useful and versatile and I’ll just list the different ways that I’ve used this:
1. Busking – With a Shure WH20XLR Dynamic Microphone – Cardioid this is just perfect. No stands no complications, just plug in and play.

2. With a full PA and DJ – Vocals and guitar go straight into the cube and the headphones out go into the DJ’s XLR mic in. Gorgeous sound. I did this just last Sunday and the vocal quality sounded amazingly good through the PA. Enough has been said about the cube’s amp emulation. The Vox model is pure rock and roll.
Mic once again I recommend the Shure WH20XLR.

3. With a full PA and Live band – Vocals through the pa, this little amp MIC’d up. Wonderul sound. Small amp – BIG sound. That’s true as the sound you get it well defined and more controllable. You can use the acoustic sim for softer numbers and the recto for your Ace of Spades relief xD the mic’ing makes a huge difference and this amp is VERY mic-friendly. I sometimes even run my acoustic guitar through this and then mic the amp. Gives a nice crystalline sound.

For my videos using this amp, search ‘arjun kaul’ + roland on youtube.

I’m on youtube as arjunkaul the king of rocknroll