My father bought this amp on the strength of Roland’s reputation. He used it on four gigs with his jazz/pop quartet in a small lounge, playing a Yamaha piano. I am sorry to say that he, I and the rest of the band found the sound of this amp thin and lacking in headroom to the extent that every dynamic flourish and most low notes were unpleasantly distorted. We returned to the store and A/B’ed this amp with the identical floor model, a cheaper Ampeg bass amp, and a more expensive Markbass Micro. After finding the floor model performing identically and thus ruling out a product defect, he settled on the Markbass Micro which costs 0 more – but sounds easily 6 times louder and cleaner, with no fuzz. It is a quarter the size to boot! However even the Ampeg combo – same size and less – outperformed the Roland. Bottom line: Maybe OK for synths, or lower volume, but this amp cannot handle piano as should be expected for the price, compared to others in its class.

At the time of writing this review, there was one very negative review, and one very positive review. I think maybe it all depends on the purpose for which you are using this speaker. The negative reviewer was trying to use this at gigs, and I think it may be a little underpowered for that. There are several versions of this speaker, and you may need to carefully consider your power requirements. So here’s my situation.

My wife and I started teaching ourselves to play the drums about two and a half years ago. We started with two compact, tabletop electronic drumsets, a mixer, and a set of mutimedia computer speakers. A year later we graduated to full size electronic drumsets. After a while the mixer failed, and we decide to get new speakers instead of a new mixer.

We went to Guitar Center and started connecting all their speakers to the drumset that was just like ours (Yamaha DTX500). We couldn’t seem to find the right sound. Just then, a salesmen who kind of knows us came along, and once he realized what we were trying to do he said he had just the solution. He said a keyboard amp had the range of frequencies needed for the drumset. Really high highs for the cymbals, and really low lows for the kick drum. He plugged us into the Roland KC-60 and it was kind of magical. THAT was the sound we were looking for!

We purchased one for each of us, and haven’t had any problems with them. We’ve had them for about a year and a half now. We’re not in a band, we don’t play gigs, we just pound the drums here at home. The KC-100 had more controls, but I felt that might be too much power for our set up.

So there you have it. For our use, these are perfect. In fact, I plan to one day buy two more so I can set us each up in stereo.

I am going to slant my review towards comparing this amp to the Roland KC-110 3-Channel 30-Watt Stereo Mixing Keyboard Amplifier because both are in the same basic price range and I checked both out before settling on the KC-110. I have come to wish that I had purchased this model instead. My point of comparison is one of the pianists with whom I am in a project uses this amp and I had an opportunity to check it out up close and personal.

Here are a few reasons why I prefer this one over the one I wound up with: This has the same number of channels as the KC-110, and is almost as portable from weight and size perspectives (the KC-110 can operate from batteries, which this one cannot).

This one has tone that is a little short of the KC-110, but has considerably more volume, and at higher volume levels is richer sounding. The key difference is this has a sub output that works beautifully with my PowerWerks Single 12 inch Powered Sub PW112S. Even though this amp lacks the stereo link arrangement of the KC-110, the low end with an external sub takes it to a level that you will not achieve with a pair of KC-110s.

Another feature that I love about this amp is you can mount it on a standard speaker pole versus the proprietary (and expensive) stand that the KC-110 requires.

Where the KC-110 clearly beats this is it has EFX (reverb, chorus and wide), a tilt back stand and ability to run off batteries. It is also easier to use the KC-110 as a monitor and pass the mix through to a main PA (although you can do it with this model as well).

If you are trying to choose between this and its sibling the key factor to consider is whether or not battery operation is a requirement. If so, the KC-110 wins hands down. If not, you really should check these out in person, side-by-side, in a music store before making a final decision. Had I done that I would have opted for this model. However, you cannot go wrong with either if you play small venues.