Roland Blues Cube "Stage"

New Amp Day!!!!!

Well not quite. Those that follow my threads may remember that I got this beautiful amp for my birthday (December 2016)
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Its a solid state amp that produces a tube like sound (not not digital modelling) loosley based on the tweed style amps of the day.

As I've said before, the BC has its own sound, its got the warmth of a tube amp, but its not as expressive as tubes are, but its just a damn good amp. One thing the videos do not capture is the warmth and presence the thing has. its quite amazing, really outshines some smaller tube amps and when you add the different watt switch, the clean and crunch tone can be played together as well and add all of the other plusses a solid state amp has, I just can't go past it.:cool:

After playing it for nearly 6 months I am seriously impressed. Soooooo

I got the Ultimate Blues Tone Capsule!:eek:

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I wasn't expecting a whole lot and I was even ready, if it did nothing for me, to send it back for a refund.

But seriously. woah. Tone City.:o

Not only is the sound, but it acts differently and "compresses" differently to the original Blues Cube. Its like a totally different amp. and takes some getting used to.

Hi Andy, was half expecting a sound demo??? How much did the upgrade set you back and is it a better buy than similar priced all tube amps?

I kinda started this thread to force me to do a sound demo.....eventually

It cost a lot less than say a Fender tube amp but more than a Joyo or other Chinese amp.

At the time I bought it, I had enough of solid state amps and really was going to buy a tube amp. I tried a lot of tube amps for a couple of months, friends amps and in the stores and just fell in love with this one.

The things that won me:-
- the different watt settings (0.5 watt/15watt/45watt and 60watt) means I can play at bedroom sounds and still get great tones (and sometimes can gig);
- It produces rich creamy tones on the clean, biscuity crunch on the gain channel and reacts differently depending on how you play the guitar and, to my average ears, sounds as good as a tube amp;
- weighs about 14kg;
- never have to replace tubes and probably wont die;
- its not based on digital modelling - very simple, 2 channels, simple EQ, reverb, master vol.
- takes pedals well.

One draw back (not for me but others) is that it does not have a lot of gain. I would not recommend it if you wanted to play with a lot of gain all the time. Would need a pedal.

Thanks Andy, you described it well.

Not all amps need to have massive amounts of high end gain as that is so easy to achieve with an inexpensive pedal. Much better to have a variety of useful sounds you like than be stuck with a one trick pony.

I have been lusting for an all tube amp and gravitating towards the Bugera 5w combo as it is also switchable down to 1w and then 0.1w plus you can use headphones on it too. All the YT sound demos indicate it has a great sound but will need to check one out in a shop, and nearest supplier just happens to be Mooloolaba Music.

Still trying to justify why I need another amp as the Vox VT40+ can do so much more than what I have yet discovered, and let's face it, how many of us can really tell the difference between an all tube and a hybrid these days? The Vox uses a 12AX7 tube in the power stage to create it's unique tone and has plenty of onboard preset sounds to play with. Also sounds great with a small overdrive unit that I purchased recently too.

Hmmm, might just hang on to those funds in case I am tempted by something else.....

Maybe you could try your hand at building some pedals........relatively inexpensive.......but addictive

Hmmm, my soldering skills and the amount of patience required do not bode well for a quality built DIY pedal.

Just pulled the trigger on a Bugera. Had been watching them on eBay and saw a supplier drop one by around $100 then boom eBay goes and offers me a further 10% off until end of this month for all purchases over $100. Temptation was too much as $429.00 retail = $293.05 via this offer. Stay tuned for a product review in a few weeks time.

@Waz. You may want to get yourself a decent set of replacement tubes for it as the stock ones can sometimes be prone to vibrate/rattle at certain frequencies. Very annoying. Also, the lowest power setting can make it sound a bit muddy, but 1 and 5w are much better.

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Originally Posted by WeirdBits

@Waz. You may want to get yourself a decent set of replacement tubes for it as the stock ones can sometimes be prone to vibrate/rattle at certain frequencies. Very annoying. Also, the lowest power setting can make it sound a bit muddy, but 1 and 5w are much better.

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Hi Scott, thanks for the 'heads-up' as at these prices there was bound to be a weak spot somewhere.

I bought one of the Fender Champion 600 amps when they came out about 10 years ago, and the Chinese 12AX7 in it rattled so much that it made more noise than the amp did!

Nice one Waz. Would love to hear it.

OK, so the consensus is that the stock Chinese valves will need to be replaced... but with what? Open to suggestions.

I don't know where Docs gone Waz, haven;t seen him in a bit.

A mate put Sovtek tubes in his Twin and is pretty happy with them.

No necessarily a recommendation because I haven't heard it just putting it out there

OK, thanks Dave. Think I will try it out for a bit to get an indication of how things sound and then decide which way to go. Looked at some YT vids and the sound difference between stock and upgrades was ever so slight. Hearing things in the flesh will tell a different story no doubt.

Yeah YT like soundcloud compresses the crap out of whatever you put up so it really is only indicative of what it will sound like unless there is a known reference as well

So true with any digital music file format compared to the original source.

In the past I have put 32bit wav and flac files on SC and once up there you can hear the artifacts of the compression SC puts on when you play them back.

I tend to use either JJ or TAD (Tube Amp Doctor) valves when I replace mine - though not because I've done much research or sonic comparisons, rather that they are decent valves for the money and seem to perform well enough for me. Very few valves are made anywhere as well as they used to be back in the '50s and '60s, so NOS valves can sometimes be worth the extra if it isn't a ridiculous premium being asked. Plus the more your amp's worth, the more it's worth spending a bit more on the things that make the sound.

Even within a brand, there are normally several options for better quality valves at a slight price increase. The 'gold pin' versions of valves are often worth paying a few extra dollars for.

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Originally Posted by Andy40

I don't know where Docs gone Waz, haven;t seen him in a bit.

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I believe I owe you guys an explanation for my absence from the forum, basically, someone sabotaged my NBN internet connection on Monday last week by pulling the fibre optic cable from out of the NBN Co. Box located outside near my front door, had to wait till this morning for an NBN Co. Tech to come and fix it for me, I've got no idea who pulled the fibre optic cable out, or why they did it, I'm just glad to be back online again.


@ Andy40 Cool looking amp you have there, I've heard lots of good things about those Blues Cube amps so you scored well mate, I managed to find my little 5 Watt Legacy amp at uni last week, I've got it here at home with me and I'll start a thread about it cause I think you guys would be interested in checking it out, it's a Valve amp that also has some solid-state circuitry in it.

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

OK, so the consensus is that the stock Chinese valves will need to be replaced... but with what? Open to suggestions.

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It really depends on how much you're willing to spend on replacement valves, when I decided to buy some new preamp valves for my Marshall amp, I felt justified on spending about $150.00 on a set of three Gold Lion ECC83 (same as a 12AX7) valves because the amp deserved a set of decent valves to sound it's best, the Chinese made 12AX7 B valves I had in it weren't quite up to par and sounded a bit weak.


You could try having a look through all the valves that Evatco stock.


http://www.evatco.com.au/product-list/

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

I believe I owe you guys an explanation for my absence from the forum, basically, someone sabotaged my NBN internet connection on Monday last week by pulling the fibre optic cable from out of the NBN Co. Box located outside near my front door, had to wait till this morning for an NBN Co. Tech to come and fix it for me, I've got no idea who pulled the fibre optic cable out, or why they did it, I'm just glad to be back online again.

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Glad there wasn't a sinister explanation for your absence Doc. was starting to get a bit worried

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Originally Posted by Andy40

Glad there wasn't a sinister explanation for your absence Doc. was starting to get a bit worried

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I was having withdrawal symptoms from not being able to socialize with my forum mates while my internet was down, so it's great to be back online again mate.

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

I was having withdrawal symptoms from not being able to socialize with my forum mates while my internet was down, so it's great to be back online again mate.

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Could have used your phone as a mobile hotspot so no need to suffer too much :)

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

Could have used your phone as a mobile hotspot so no need to suffer too much :)

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I suppose I could have done that, but apparently all the wireless networks have been switched off after the NBN system was implemented in Darwin, I guess I could have used my Samsung Galaxy y phone, since it can operate as a wireless modem, but Samsung don't have any Windows 10 drivers for it and it'd cost me an extra $100.00 to buy internet credit for it, my Old School Nokia phone is too old school to have any modem functionality included in it, so I was stymied whichever way I looked at it.

I do have a Telstra 4G Wireless Internet USB Dongle, which I tried yesterday and couldn't get it to find a network to connect to.

G'day Doc,

When traveling I use my Galaxy 5 as a mobile hotspot for both laptop and iPad, no drivers required for the laptop.

When you enable the phone hotspot your PC WiFi should be able to see it and you simply connect and tell it to auto connect when the hotspot is enabled.

Chews up a bit of data allowance but at least it keeps you on the air.

Having said that I browse various forums and email from the phone too

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

G'day Doc,

When traveling I use my Galaxy 5 as a mobile hotspot for both laptop and iPad, no drivers required for the laptop.

When you enable the phone hotspot your PC WiFi should be able to see it and you simply connect and tell it to auto connect when the hotspot is enabled.

Chews up a bit of data allowance but at least it keeps you on the air.

Having said that I browse various forums and email from the phone too

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Cheers mate, I'll keep that in mind for when the next time my internet goes down, I'm just glad to be back online now after all this time, and it didn't cost me anything to get it fixed.

Just be aware of how your data plan works Doc, mine throttles down but I pay no extra, others will want a kidney per Mb over limit

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

Just be aware of how your data plan works Doc, mine throttles down but I pay no extra, others will want a kidney per Mb over limit

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Good point, but since I usually end up with about 499 Gigabytes to use per month after I pay my internet bill, I'm usually pretty well sorted, I'm paying $75.00/Month for my NBN internet service, and I get about 499 Gigabytes of data, and I'm technically supposed to get 100Mb/Sec for my download speed, and 40Mb/Sec for my upload speed, but in practice they're more like 94Mb/Sec for downloads, and 30Mb/Sec for uploads, still pretty fast, well definitely much faster than my old Telstra 4G Broadband Wireless internet I was using before switching over to the NBN, 4G Wireless Broadband was also way more costly too at $100.00/Fortnight for 6Gb worth of data, so you can see why I switched over to the NBN.

I was so impressed with the Ultimate Blues Tone Capsule I had to get the New York Blues Tone Capsule. The gain setting is outta this worldhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...221c34b196.jpg

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Cool, I love the blue glow coming from the module, so what does the New York Blues Tone capsule sound like in comparison to the ultimate Blues Tone capsule, other than the amount of gain?, is the basic tone roughly similar?

The NY blues is supposed to be modeled from an EL84 type amp. Its certainly chimey.

The Ultimate Blues is modeled from a 6v6 blackface type amp.

The Blues cube original is modeled from a 6L6 tweed style

They are really difficult to compare as they react differently to the way you play. No one type of guitar sounds better with any type of amp, just different.

That is a really bad review, I know, but I am still getting to know each.

There was a deal on the NY blues tone cap and I couldn't have lived with myself if i didn't get it.

I might have to get one of those Blues cubes one day, seeing as my guitar playing is going more in a Blues direction, I'm planning on buying myself a new Vox AC30C2 amp next year.