Decent enough amp for that money. Anyone who thinks it’s not, clearly didn’t start playing electric guitar in the 1970s, when you would get a beginner’s amp at the department store for $60 to $90 (that’s $400 in todays value) and it would have a 6” speaker, volume and tone and that’s it, and would put out *maybe* .2 watts. Btw, what indicates to you that this is “for sure” a digital amp? I know that the delay circuit would absolutely be digital, as that’s the cheapest way to put a delay in there, but everything else in amp chassis looked like typical analog solid state circuitry. Including the aluminum heat-sinks, which are typical in analog solid state amplification.
A Blackstar Debut 15 costs $90!! I’m constantly recommending it to people who have much much more professional equipment setups already on that ground alone!
@@GetOffset Oh, sick sick. Yeah, it’s my favorite “practice” amp I’ve ever owned or to come along in the last couple of years. I definitely think it will end up as revered as a Roland Cube. I own both and I have this idea for a real rig of doom setup running one clean and one dirty with an ABY switch. Or either with my Pignose. I definitely think if I was trying to I could get a noise violation in a coffee shop with either the Blackstar or the Roland on its own.
I have a GA20 I bought. The 6" speaker was insufficient. I wound up making a project out of it by using an old Ibanes 15w practice amp to hold a magnavox golden tone 10" 25w wired to the amp head. It sounds... better.
Cleans sounded great, very usable. The gain sounded horrible at first. Maybe a different eq setting with gain could help. The bass sounded good, and even with the gain at first until you changed the settings. Over UA-cam even when you cranked the treble with the guitar is sounded good. Probably because it sounded sparkly and pokey. Which I like for cleans.
@@GetOffset true, but newbies aren't tone snobs like us , they just need something loud enough to enjoy - I've still got an ancient Fender transistor amp from the 80s, it sounds awful now but I thought it was great at the time - nice channel - thanks
It sounds like the perfect little garage rock amp. Not an everyday thing necessarily, but nice as a tonal option when you want something outside of the box. Surprisingly nice bass tones!
If not more. I don't think a speaker change would hurt it, but you're still up against that EQ stack. I agree that it's not awful, but it was really jarring in the room is the best way to describe it. Especially when I plugged it in and immediately set all the tone controls to their mid-point. IMO, this should be marketed as a bass amp.
I’ve been curious about this amp. Lookswise, it looks “Fender”, and it’s orange. I want it because of the way it looks, lol. I’m relieved to find via this demo that it seems to sound pretty good. Thx for the good demo; it conveyed information at me. Greets from Texas. I’m mesmerized with your sharp Telecaster!
That's a good deal. It's not a digital amp! It's got analog opamp IC's in it and the heat sinks are for the analog poweramp transistors. The Delay is probably digital though, but if it's bucket brigade ( research SAD1024) that's analog. Nice tonal range, and at 40 Watt's I would give a $110 option for a 10" speaker. The dirty sound is just how you describe it, torn speaker. Wait...as I listen on, that distortion does have decent settings. You should state if the knobs are say, 1-9, 1-10...whatever, then say the number of the setting as you demo. ( I posted a few caveats below, I imagine it will get me disappeared into the back pages) As an amp builder/ collector, I'd absolutely love for someone to clone/reissue the great 1976 Ampeg G110 , FET transistor guitar amp. It has foot switchable Tremolo and Reverb, a closed back, 10" speaker and a 4" single round bass port on the front. The G110 is very warm and can be clean and loud, or turning up gain gives it the perfect Keith Richards or Lynyrd Skynyrd spank distortion. FET's (Field Effect Transistors) are very warm and you can use the G110 for keyboards or vocals as well. This Ampeg was like the Gibson Lab Series FET amps of the day. BB KIng used a Lab Series. Actually when I went to Musicians Institute in Hollywood 1984-85 it was the last year of MI (GIT,BIT,PIT) in the old actors studio (across from it's current location, upstairs from the Wax Museum. I think they wanted all new gear for the new location so we had some amps that were on their last legs. Classes before ours had the Gibson L5 combo amps with key lock on/off with the key broken off in the ON position. Knobs missing and chassis bent up. I always wonder what the brand new school got. To give a little perspective though in 1984 in Hollywood, I was able to buy a 1950's Tweed Fender Champ from a used music store for a hundred bucks. I got a Dan electro masonite electric guitar in an amplified case for $150 in great shape. Got a Vox Pathfinder (Thomas Organ, not UK, but same amp) for 100 bucks. I paid 15 for a MuTron Phase SHifter. I kick myself for not scraping 125 together for a Mutron Bi-Phase. Finally, I wanted to start learning amp repair so I asked one store if they had any junk amps. He brought out a '64 Bassman brownface chassis, a pre-CBS '65 Blackface Bassman chassis, and a '71 Twin Reverb silverface chassis, and said, " How about 75 for all three?". I fixed them all easily except the output transformer was blown on the brownface Bassman. The best part though, was two of the amps had Bear Mods I was able to copy and use for other amp mods.
I'm kinda falling in love with this company. I bought a $90 mic that sounds better than my $250 mic, the most comfortable drum throne and it was half the price of my last one, and the the bright baby blue arm I got for the mic is even as good at $18 as the ones I bought for $40 last year. If you say the amps are good too, that's where I'm going next. They are on my up and comers list with Enya and EART.
Thats pretty umm.... bad. Its bad lol The speaker itself is probably the biggest issue. There was clearly physical distortion even playing clean. Id guess the speaker isnt even a guitar or bass speaker. Probably just a cheap speaker youd find in a cheap radio. Guitar and bass speakers operate on different frequencies than what you find in a radio.
I was thinking the very same thing. Would love to hear this with a budget minded speaker swap. I also wonder if the cabinet can accommodate a 10 inch speaker instead. An 8” is likely too small, aside from what you said about the type/quality. And if Emily is right about it being more like 6”, it would make the distortion on “clean” even worse. Usually a ten inch amp speaker is suitable as a great all-around speaker. Would love to know if Emily would be willing to find an inexpensive but good speaker to swap and test whether it’s 8 or 10 inches. I’d also love to know if those weird knob quirks can be easily modded so the tone, etc. don’t totally turn the guitar’s sound off as if it were a volume knob. Maybe it’s easy to tweak by moving some wires or swapping some parts? Could be a fun mod project.
It sounds like the amp is mis-labeled. The "Boost" doesn't boost the signal. It is a separate Overdrive Channel and simultaneously it's own volume knob. Probably the reason the EQ knob roll sounds down to zero is so the amp can be used as both a Bass Amp and a Guitar Amp.
It has a good clean tone, but typically of these low cost digital amps the distortion is below average. I have that type of amp ,so my best solution is to stack some overdrive pedals.
I really like the distorted tone, its super nice. If it was in pedal form people would go crazy for it but it sounds nice on here, just everything else on it is so cheap it almost hurts!
Tremelo was perfect 50’s; warm was warm and who is licking about wonky bass. Listen to left channel bass on Stones early stuff, this is not bad it is classic! $90? Blackstar may have that better speaker but for old hill billy, chet adkins, perkins or buddy, this is screaming good
The bass actually sounded decent. I think there's better options for a beginner and I'm a million years older than you, but this actually sounds way better than my Gorilla amp that I got in like 1983 and paid around 90.00 for back then.
Have to agree, not old but ive tried some of those old gorilla amps and they only way i liked them is with them cranked and with a fuzz in the front of them.
I'm not sure I've ever seen that on an amp! It's so weird. Something I forgot to mention is that this arrived at my house with the switch ON, gain channel ON, things turned up every which way. That's also very unusual.
It's the speaker. In almost every cheap solid state combo geared to a beginner, they just put cheap full range speaker instead of at least a midrange one.
This Amp is NOT sold in Germany. Fender seems to block Fender copies or Fender lookalikes in Germany. There ist NO cheap amp available in our country that sounds a bit like a real amp. Making musik in Germany costs you a fortune and the chances to sell your songs are a lot less than in other nations :(
This thing sounds awesome. Surprisingly decent cleans and has a broken distorted tone that I usually try to get via pedals, lol. At $90, I'm dangerously considering this. /Thanks a lot/, Emily. Lol
You do not want bright sound but you are demoing on a telecaster, which is the brightest guitar in the market, If you do not like bright you should be playing a guitar with humbuckers. I like bright sound and that amp sounds fine, I will be looking into it.
@@GetOffset Any tele that uses single pickups both on the bridge and neck is bright by design, unless you have a humbucker bridge It is bright. That is what makes Strats and teles bright single pickups. There are hundreds of review vids on that. If you have a Les Paul or 335 one of the mods people use is coil tap to neutralize one side of the humbucker and get that tele voice.
Sounded okay as a cheap beginner's amp, though for the same price you can probably get a 10 or 15 watter that's better suited to practice. I think the boost button and gain is actually just a separate dirt channel, even if it isn't louder than the clean, also because there is no master volume. I agree it was more of a ripped speaker or fuzz thing going on than distortion. Nice that delay was in there I suppose and I thought that slapback sounded decent on the Tele. Overall though I thought the bass sounded better through it than the guitar did. Cheap and cheerul I suppose, but with a little research you can probably get something more focused for your needs.
I think this amp will hit the exact market it is intended for, folks on a budget. Beginners etc. it looks cooler than it sounds, can’t knock it though ☺️✌️
Hey thanks so much! I actually think it's pretty passable as a bass amp (for the price). It's kind of a farce they're also promoting it to guitarists, and that treble EQ band is criminally bad.
I'm curious how much difference it would make if one routed out the front of the amp to properly fit the speaker diameter. Probably more trouble than it's worth for an el cheapo, but it would be an interesting experiment. Have a great day Emily!
I agree that the Gain/Drive just sounds like a busted speaker for both the guitar and the bass. Did you reach out to see if that's correct, or if something's just wrong with your particular unit?
@@GetOffset Then I'll definitely have to add my agreement to @johnkotchkowski's comment about the Blackstar. I will admit that in its non-fuzz form, it has a nice sound that would probably handle pedals well.
5 Core Guitar Amp 40W Amplifier for Electric Bass Acoustic Practice Amp Small Portable Mini Orange Amplificador Para Bajo with Built in Effects - GA 40 ORG. Sure it's not an Ibanez?
Delay rather than reverb: I believe I've read that Eddie Van Halen liked delay better than reverb. Maybe the maker of the amp thought that opinion popular! Who knows?
@@satanism_rocks I can only imagine.😀 I think I understand the delay not reverb logic: In a large-ish club or hall of some sort, you may get a natural reverberation that will eat and hide any simulated reverb. That can't happen with discrete echoes, so delay effects don't disappear. With that in mind, I went ahead and made some delay-equipped but reverb-less patches on one of my multieffectors. Different, but not bad at all.
The tele starts out bright, but a humbucker is more warm so that extra treble would probably be better suited for the Gibson style guitars. But yep...the distortion is useless. 😂
Awesome review Emily thanks for sharing! Quick question: what amp are you running nowadays for your gigging situations hope to hear from you take care 😀🙏
@@GetOffset awesome! I was just wondering because I need a smaller/lighter rig and the Seymour Duncan power stage and the milkmen “the amp” are two options that I have been looking at lately. I’m totally going to check out the Seymour Duncan power stage I just haven’t been able to find one to try out yet! I tried a milkman the amp and I thought that one was pretty good as well! Thanks for your response! Cheers! 😀🙏
wonder what a RAT going through it sounds like. i'm not curious enough to got get one to find out, though. also, does it get loud enough to get through a "full" band scenario...i'm guessing no....
What? The Master volume isnt the master but all three of the tone controls are? The Gain channel just adds mudd. Maybe they sent you a damaged amp. Being as it is so different than any other amp I would worry that its a fire hazzard. These are not tried and true circuits. I would make sure it stays unplugged
Not bad but is it really grounded? I'm not been paranoid here, I have seen too many cheap devices from a certain country that have a ground plug but are not actually grounded. Unplug the amp and take a multimeter in continuity mode and touch one probe to the metal chassis inside the amp and the other to the ground pin of the plug and you should heir a tone from the mutimeter and it should read 0.
Thanks for the review. You did good job on the piece. A lot of people can’t put several hundred $$ for an amp. Reviewing more affordable gear lets folks know what is available in the $100 range. Those bloated titles are search keywords. I bet they are just trying to cover all their bases.
LOL! I was surprised to see it there. 5% commission rate, so I'd get like...$5 if someone purchased the amp from Macy's. I think Walmart and Macy's allow marketplace sellers now, the same way Amazon does.
I'm a horrible guitarist and horrible a bass player. I know I will never be a real musician, however, I play just enough, above being absolutely crappy, that I could fool non musicians into thinking, I'm an okay guitarist, playing through that amp. It's a great purchase for a fake musician like me.
@GetOffset l play instruments for fun, I appreciate music, but I don't love music.. musicians appreciate music and love music. Goofing around with a cheap amp and cheap guitar is all I'm interested in. All the people who know me, know music isn't "my calling", and I don't pretend like it is. But thanks for the encouragement👍
Digital...? There is nothing digital about it, perhaps the delay is, but even that I do not believe! and 40W? No way this amp is 40W.....20W max perhaps!
@@GetOffset Yes I did, nothing digital about it, just a cheap and simple (nasty) 2 power transistor class A-B amp design, linear power supply (transformer, bridge rectifier, 2 cheap filter caps), cheap op-amps (8pin chips) in the pre amp circuits for guitar and mic, mic input not even balanced, cheap analog delay circuit, and a cheap speaker! The cabinet and the chassis are the 2 most expensive parts of this 20W max amplifier....! Safe your money, for a little bit more you can buy something that does not sound like a cardboard box..! And yes I am a electronic engineer for more than 40 years.
THIS is the exact tone people mean when they say solid state sucks No- they don’t mean the pretty good SS amps from the 90s that everyone bags on despite *obviously* not hearing these types of amps lol This was super common in the 70s and 80s, but it’s such a legitimately rare thing to hear this I’m confused as to why on earth the company couldn’t just pump out a modern, cheap, decent sounding SS amp instead of this bad 70s relic.
I had a Peavey mini stack that had stereo chorus-real cool with the speakers spread. It's overdrive/distortion was okay until it's almost maxxed out. But it wasn't the sound you hear here. This one has a high-end noise that sounds like the speaker is made of aluminium foil-just like the little ss Fender amps like Audition, Frontman, etc. And those Fenders get it when the od/distort is cranked. But this 5 Core has that sound almost all the time during this demo. It's because of cheap and/or/both mismatched parts. But with these amps is it really worth it to replace those crappy green chicklet capacitors, and install metal-foil resistors (unnless the plans/schematic calls for carbon specifically).Most times it's not worth it unless you have obtained the amp and replacement parts by the cheap or free. Notwithstanding, I have come across articles that were mod's for various ss amps. Some are really worth it if you can solder with confidence and read schematics , plans, etc. What helps the most is improving the headroom on the amp- if done correctly, it tends to get rid of that "foil" crumbling sound.
@@user-hy6yq4uk8e you know what you’re talking about! That ‘foil’ sound is something peculiar because it’s *just* a sound like any other sounds ppl hear, and ppl generally like to love all sorts of sounds that are much different and extreme, but for some reason humans just REALLY dislike that sound in general lol
First thank you for your video number two the first comment that is on the comment is kind of what I was thinking myself it sounded like a radius really bad radio you know the feature set doesn't mean anything if it sounds like crap and yeah it sounded like crap at best that sounded best with the bass on Queen once you turn the overdrive the overdrive on it or whatever it's called on that end it sounded like that sounded horrible it wasn't usable I can't see that as being usable in many genres for anything but then again to each their own right I think our overall I didn't hear anything out of that that was actually a pleasing to my ears I own a mustang one version one with an 8 inch speaker in it and it sounds like years ahead of this and I bought it for $119 I think with new at the time so yeah this this isn't seem to be worth it to mehow anyone could get with something like that is beyond me unless of course you might that but yeah I guess that's kind of my opinion of it and you know we all have different tastes but sometimes horrible sound is this horrible sound horrible tone is this horrible tone and garbage is garbage I really don't think that this app is worth 90 bucks that's just ridiculous you can buy something different 10 reverb there would be a whole bunch of different things you can get for 100th that would blow this out of the water anyway thank you for your videos sincerely David Rafael AKA Bob the blind bedroom guitar
Perfect match for your $99 Amazon guitar with included strap! - Be ok for a student. No offense I can hear it from here and I'll pass. It probably starts to splatter all over around 3 with little assistance from the drive. Save your money and buy a decent amp. Not an amp it's an investment. Now shut up and play yer guitar!
"Midwestern Interesting" is a real IYKYK-type deal, eh? I remember reading a story from Quincy Jones where Prince visited with him and Michael Jackson and was calling Michael's house or animals "interesting" and Quincy clearly didn't understand what Midwesterners mean when they use that word in that way.
Affiliate links
5 Core GA-40 Guitar/Bass Amp: amzn.to/3SmbSxj OR 5core.com/products/electric-guitar-bass-amp-20-watt-amplifier-built-in-speaker-headphone-jack-aux-orange-5-core-ga-20-org?ref=emily_harris
Fender Player II Telecaster: prf.hn/l/w9k3qW9
Bronco Bass: prf.hn/l/G9Jpo2o
I got a Spider Line 6 15w for 8$ at a Goodwill. Now that's a bargain amp! Perfect for my low budget studio!🤘🤠🤘
Is it still available, and where do you live???
I got my Line 6 at pawn shop for $40.
Having almost no volume when every knob on the tone stack is at 0 is actually pretty common. A lot of tone stacks are designed in such a way.
Which ones? I guess I don't usually turn the tone all the way down
@GetOffset hard to say from memory all the amps I've come across in the wild that behave as such, but I have a B-52 AT-100 that did the same thing
@@GetOffsetthat’s how the old 3-band fender tone stack works (and any amp or guitar pedal that uses it), all EQ knobs at zero = no volume
@GetOffset my Artist Tweedtone 20R is like that. It's a fantastic amp.
Cheap c*** amps do that nothing that is decent would do that at all.
Decent enough amp for that money. Anyone who thinks it’s not, clearly didn’t start playing electric guitar in the 1970s, when you would get a beginner’s amp at the department store for $60 to $90 (that’s $400 in todays value) and it would have a 6” speaker, volume and tone and that’s it, and would put out *maybe* .2 watts. Btw, what indicates to you that this is “for sure” a digital amp? I know that the delay circuit would absolutely be digital, as that’s the cheapest way to put a delay in there, but everything else in amp chassis looked like typical analog solid state circuitry. Including the aluminum heat-sinks, which are typical in analog solid state amplification.
I meant for sure solid state, my bad.
You, sir, are correct. Can confirm 😄
That’s a pretty nostalgic sound for me. Grunge was born on amps like that in bedrooms in the 80s
Absolutely. I had a Heathkit 2x12 with a Big Muff. Sounded like absolute garbage, which was perfect.
A Blackstar Debut 15 costs $90!!
I’m constantly recommending it to people who have much much more professional equipment setups already on that ground alone!
Oh I'd be curious to try one!
@@GetOffset Oh, sick sick. Yeah, it’s my favorite “practice” amp I’ve ever owned or to come along in the last couple of years. I definitely think it will end up as revered as a Roland Cube. I own both and I have this idea for a real rig of doom setup running one clean and one dirty with an ABY switch. Or either with my Pignose. I definitely think if I was trying to I could get a noise violation in a coffee shop with either the Blackstar or the Roland on its own.
Cubes are incredible. So glad to own one 🤘
That blackstar tube?
Amtrak ride plug in in the restroom.
This sounded much better than I thought it would, It has a likeable quirky tone, suitable as a practice amp for beginners!
When you broke into the distorted sound, it reminded me of some old CCR songs. For 90 bucks? First Mic wars now Amp wars...I like it.
I have a GA20 I bought. The 6" speaker was insufficient. I wound up making a project out of it by using an old Ibanes 15w practice amp to hold a magnavox golden tone 10" 25w wired to the amp head. It sounds... better.
That's a nice idea...
I’ve only seen exactly one riff in this video and I’m hooked on your playing! Just needs to be said: “…backwards and in heels”
Cleans sounded great, very usable. The gain sounded horrible at first. Maybe a different eq setting with gain could help. The bass sounded good, and even with the gain at first until you changed the settings. Over UA-cam even when you cranked the treble with the guitar is sounded good. Probably because it sounded sparkly and pokey. Which I like for cleans.
But why should I hear it?
Actually sounds pretty good for that price, and I bet after the speaker gets broken in it would sweeten up a lot.
The active input is common on bass amps for basses that have low impedance active pickups.
Yeah, I definitely think this is a bass amp that's sold as a guitar amp.
Also common on many old amps like Marshalls. High/Low or Gain/Clean.
looks like a Fender frontman tolex'd in orange
I wish I remembered how my old Frontman sounded. This is physically closer to the Champ X2/XD/40 in size (and, obvously, wattage).
I wouldn't want one, but a newbie would be fine with it - better than my first amps in the 70s
A newbie might be fine with it...or they may get frustrated with how hard it is to dial in a good tone. That EQ stack is BANANAS.
@@GetOffset true, but newbies aren't tone snobs like us , they just need something loud enough to enjoy - I've still got an ancient Fender transistor amp from the 80s, it sounds awful now but I thought it was great at the time - nice channel - thanks
@@frankcarter6427 fair enough! My big thing with beginner gear is "Is this so bad that the person using it will quit music?"
@@GetOffset we were tough in the 70s!
5 core. Aggressively mediocre
It sounds like the perfect little garage rock amp. Not an everyday thing necessarily, but nice as a tonal option when you want something outside of the box. Surprisingly nice bass tones!
Yeah it's absolutely a bass amp advertised as a guitar amp!
I don't think this sounded awful, but I wonder if a speaker change would help. Although a new speaker would likely cost as much as the amp did.
If not more. I don't think a speaker change would hurt it, but you're still up against that EQ stack.
I agree that it's not awful, but it was really jarring in the room is the best way to describe it. Especially when I plugged it in and immediately set all the tone controls to their mid-point.
IMO, this should be marketed as a bass amp.
I’ve been curious about this amp. Lookswise, it looks “Fender”, and it’s orange. I want it because of the way it looks, lol. I’m relieved to find via this demo that it seems to sound pretty good. Thx for the good demo; it conveyed information at me. Greets from Texas. I’m mesmerized with your sharp Telecaster!
Glad this vid helped you in any way! I'm really into this Tele from the Player II series. I do need to set it up, but it feels great
That's a good deal. It's not a digital amp! It's got analog opamp IC's in it and the heat sinks are for the analog poweramp transistors. The Delay is probably digital though, but if it's bucket brigade ( research SAD1024) that's analog.
Nice tonal range, and at 40 Watt's I would give a $110 option for a 10" speaker. The dirty sound is just how you describe it, torn speaker. Wait...as I listen on, that distortion does have decent settings. You should state if the knobs are say, 1-9, 1-10...whatever, then say the number of the setting as you demo. ( I posted a few caveats below, I imagine it will get me disappeared into the back pages)
As an amp builder/ collector, I'd absolutely love for someone to clone/reissue the great 1976 Ampeg G110 , FET transistor guitar amp. It has foot switchable Tremolo and Reverb, a closed back, 10" speaker and a 4" single round bass port on the front. The G110 is very warm and can be clean and loud, or turning up gain gives it the perfect Keith Richards or Lynyrd Skynyrd spank distortion. FET's (Field Effect Transistors) are very warm and you can use the G110 for keyboards or vocals as well. This Ampeg was like the Gibson Lab Series FET amps of the day. BB KIng used a Lab Series.
Actually when I went to Musicians Institute in Hollywood 1984-85 it was the last year of MI (GIT,BIT,PIT) in the old actors studio (across from it's current location, upstairs from the Wax Museum. I think they wanted all new gear for the new location so we had some amps that were on their last legs. Classes before ours had the Gibson L5 combo amps with key lock on/off with the key broken off in the ON position. Knobs missing and chassis bent up. I always wonder what the brand new school got. To give a little perspective though in 1984 in Hollywood, I was able to buy a 1950's Tweed Fender Champ from a used music store for a hundred bucks. I got a Dan electro masonite electric guitar in an amplified case for $150 in great shape. Got a Vox Pathfinder (Thomas Organ, not UK, but same amp) for 100 bucks. I paid 15 for a MuTron Phase SHifter. I kick myself for not scraping 125 together for a Mutron Bi-Phase.
Finally, I wanted to start learning amp repair so I asked one store if they had any junk amps. He brought out a '64 Bassman brownface chassis, a pre-CBS '65 Blackface Bassman chassis, and a '71 Twin Reverb silverface chassis, and said, " How about 75 for all three?". I fixed them all easily except the output transformer was blown on the brownface Bassman. The best part though, was two of the amps had Bear Mods I was able to copy and use for other amp mods.
Good Toy Story, which these oddball amps are for: cheap fun. Especially for someone like you who can work on em.
I'm kinda falling in love with this company. I bought a $90 mic that sounds better than my $250 mic, the most comfortable drum throne and it was half the price of my last one, and the the bright baby blue arm I got for the mic is even as good at $18 as the ones I bought for $40 last year. If you say the amps are good too, that's where I'm going next. They are on my up and comers list with Enya and EART.
Thats pretty umm.... bad. Its bad lol The speaker itself is probably the biggest issue. There was clearly physical distortion even playing clean. Id guess the speaker isnt even a guitar or bass speaker. Probably just a cheap speaker youd find in a cheap radio. Guitar and bass speakers operate on different frequencies than what you find in a radio.
Makes me wonder what it would sound like with a decent speaker 🤔
I was thinking the very same thing. Would love to hear this with a budget minded speaker swap. I also wonder if the cabinet can accommodate a 10 inch speaker instead. An 8” is likely too small, aside from what you said about the type/quality. And if Emily is right about it being more like 6”, it would make the distortion on “clean” even worse. Usually a ten inch amp speaker is suitable as a great all-around speaker.
Would love to know if Emily would be willing to find an inexpensive but good speaker to swap and test whether it’s 8 or 10 inches.
I’d also love to know if those weird knob quirks can be easily modded so the tone, etc. don’t totally turn the guitar’s sound off as if it were a volume knob. Maybe it’s easy to tweak by moving some wires or swapping some parts?
Could be a fun mod project.
@@officialWWM Yeah that boost sounds like a bad fuzz pedal
@@Darkseidx 😂😂
Owned an OEM of this but it's 30W and $35. Died on me after like 6 months lol
It sounds like the amp is mis-labeled. The "Boost" doesn't boost the signal. It is a separate Overdrive Channel and simultaneously it's own volume knob. Probably the reason the EQ knob roll sounds down to zero is so the amp can be used as both a Bass Amp and a Guitar Amp.
It has a good clean tone, but typically of these low cost digital amps the distortion is below average. I have that type of amp ,so my best solution is to stack some overdrive pedals.
Fair enough!
I really like the distorted tone, its super nice. If it was in pedal form people would go crazy for it but it sounds nice on here, just everything else on it is so cheap it almost hurts!
Tremelo was perfect 50’s; warm was warm and who is licking about wonky bass. Listen to left channel bass on Stones early stuff, this is not bad it is classic! $90? Blackstar may have that better speaker but for old hill billy, chet adkins, perkins or buddy, this is screaming good
The bass actually sounded decent. I think there's better options for a beginner and I'm a million years older than you, but this actually sounds way better than my Gorilla amp that I got in like 1983 and paid around 90.00 for back then.
I agree-this should be advertised as a bass amp, not guitar.
Have to agree, not old but ive tried some of those old gorilla amps and they only way i liked them is with them cranked and with a fuzz in the front of them.
@@gupster24 It didn't make the noise I wanted it to make until I got a Ibanez TS-10. That got me a lot closer relatively speaking.
2:26 that’s how Fender tonestacks work tho. At least on the black and silver panel amps.
Oh yeah?
The delay gives a nice vibe to the cleans
Love the fuzz bass!
I have a Yamaha G50 112 where the eq Works exactly like this. All the way down, no volume....
I'm not sure I've ever seen that on an amp! It's so weird.
Something I forgot to mention is that this arrived at my house with the switch ON, gain channel ON, things turned up every which way. That's also very unusual.
@@GetOffset Shred town US!
It's the speaker. In almost every cheap solid state combo geared to a beginner, they just put cheap full range speaker instead of at least a midrange one.
I think it's a few things tbh
I would try something more of adding a speaker out to it because it sounds very weird and not very good.
@@gupster24 Of course, maybe the eq tone stack aren't designed for guitar amp too.
@@noisefirproduction3336 i wouldnt be suprised tbh, they cheaped out on alot of things on it but it didnt sound too bad tbh
Clean it doesn't sound bad. That's not to say it sounds all that good clean but it isn't horrible either. When you crank it up it's horrible.
It was overly muddy with a Tele. It would be useless with Humbuckers. Cheap, features sure, but it sounds bad.
How big? What size speaker? 100$ solid state?
40 watt for 100$ is a deal to me
You didn't test it as a pedal platform which is probably its best use.
I almost wanna buy one of these and plug it into my 4x12 and play a punk show with it just to see if it falls on it's face or pulls it off 😂
This Amp is NOT sold in Germany. Fender seems to block Fender copies or Fender lookalikes in Germany. There ist NO cheap amp available in our country that sounds a bit like a real amp. Making musik in Germany costs you a fortune and the chances to sell your songs are a lot less than in other nations :(
If it had a speaker out to use on a cab, it might be a better deal. As it is... I'd rather have a Sawtooth 10w amp.
This thing sounds awesome. Surprisingly decent cleans and has a broken distorted tone that I usually try to get via pedals, lol. At $90, I'm dangerously considering this. /Thanks a lot/, Emily. Lol
Glad you like it!
You have a Quilter 101 Mini on the shelf. What more could you need?
I love that tele
I'm feeling it!
You do not want bright sound but you are demoing on a telecaster, which is the brightest guitar in the market, If you do not like bright you should be playing a guitar with humbuckers. I like bright sound and that amp sounds fine, I will be looking into it.
This is not a bright Telecaster
@@GetOffset All telecasters are bright by design, that is why country players use them. If you turn the treble down you tame the twangy brightness.
@@carlosencarnacion9667 bro. What do you think makes a Telecaster inherently bright? The bridge on this Tele is way darker than a normal Tele.
@@GetOffset Any tele that uses single pickups both on the bridge and neck is bright by design, unless you have a humbucker bridge It is bright. That is what makes Strats and teles bright single pickups. There are hundreds of review vids on that. If you have a Les Paul or 335 one of the mods people use is coil tap to neutralize one side of the humbucker and get that tele voice.
@@carlosencarnacion9667 good lord
Sounded okay as a cheap beginner's amp, though for the same price you can probably get a 10 or 15 watter that's better suited to practice. I think the boost button and gain is actually just a separate dirt channel, even if it isn't louder than the clean, also because there is no master volume. I agree it was more of a ripped speaker or fuzz thing going on than distortion. Nice that delay was in there I suppose and I thought that slapback sounded decent on the Tele. Overall though I thought the bass sounded better through it than the guitar did. Cheap and cheerul I suppose, but with a little research you can probably get something more focused for your needs.
Positive grid is a way better choice
I think this amp will hit the exact market it is intended for, folks on a budget. Beginners etc.
it looks cooler than it sounds, can’t knock it though ☺️✌️
5:23 it's for Minutemen cover bands
There ya go!
"Little Man with an amp in his hands..."
Oh, wait...
I think you do good and honest reviews. I thought the amp sounded pretty lame from the start.
Hey thanks so much! I actually think it's pretty passable as a bass amp (for the price). It's kind of a farce they're also promoting it to guitarists, and that treble EQ band is criminally bad.
I'm curious how much difference it would make if one routed out the front of the amp to properly fit the speaker diameter. Probably more trouble than it's worth for an el cheapo, but it would be an interesting experiment. Have a great day Emily!
I like amp demos, but more from a build perspective and how easy they are to fix or mod. Btw youre awesome
I agree that the Gain/Drive just sounds like a busted speaker for both the guitar and the bass. Did you reach out to see if that's correct, or if something's just wrong with your particular unit?
I think it sounds similar in other videos.
@@GetOffset Then I'll definitely have to add my agreement to @johnkotchkowski's comment about the Blackstar. I will admit that in its non-fuzz form, it has a nice sound that would probably handle pedals well.
I mean, might be a deal for some people as sometimes people want that tone.
Zeroing the EQ on a vintage style fender will zero your volume too. That amp is likely a copycat of common solid state circuits.
A few years ago that amp would have had a Gorilla logo on it.
she knows the difference between 6 and 8 inches with her hand ... impressive
I know when I'm being lied to about six-to-eight inches.
@@GetOffset u shure you are measuring from the right spot --- = ]
@@tOxIc_TrEaSuRe Don't make it weird.
@@GetOffset --- i know --- sorry --- i'm in my safe space now..... = o
Old Fender amps are that way with the EQ. You don't get anything out of it until you turn up the bass control.
Tele needs intonation adjustment but sounds nice. Nice review. That active EQ section could come in handy.
I can hear it's a 70/80 speaker from here
Save/Buy a used Yamaha Thr10 or Thr10x best practice amp ever made!
Was that Polaris' 'Hey, Sandy'?
You bet!
Came looking for this comment!
5 Core Guitar Amp 40W Amplifier for Electric Bass Acoustic Practice Amp Small Portable Mini Orange Amplificador Para Bajo with Built in Effects - GA 40 ORG.
Sure it's not an Ibanez?
Ibanez would be 5CGA40WAEGBA
Delay rather than reverb: I believe I've read that Eddie Van Halen liked delay better than reverb. Maybe the maker of the amp thought that opinion popular! Who knows?
Maybe!
my first amp also had delay instead of reverb, it always was a strange case to me
@@satanism_rocks I can only imagine.😀 I think I understand the delay not reverb logic: In a large-ish club or hall of some sort, you may get a natural reverberation that will eat and hide any simulated reverb. That can't happen with discrete echoes, so delay effects don't disappear. With that in mind, I went ahead and made some delay-equipped but reverb-less patches on one of my multieffectors. Different, but not bad at all.
Thanks for the thorough review.
Thanks for watching! Hope it was helpful.
The tele starts out bright, but a humbucker is more warm so that extra treble would probably be better suited for the Gibson style guitars. But yep...the distortion is useless. 😂
Tbh this is not a very bright Tele at all.
It sounds terrible and I love it. Did you try it as a pedal platform?
I think it'd do well with modulation but I didn't try it with gain.
Awesome review Emily thanks for sharing! Quick question: what amp are you running nowadays for your gigging situations hope to hear from you take care 😀🙏
The past few gigs I've just had a Seymour Duncan PowerStage 100 Stereo running into a 1x12 cab with a Jupiter speaker in it!
@@GetOffset awesome! I was just wondering because I need a smaller/lighter rig and the Seymour Duncan power stage and the milkmen “the amp” are two options that I have been looking at lately. I’m totally going to check out the Seymour Duncan power stage I just haven’t been able to find one to try out yet! I tried a milkman the amp and I thought that one was pretty good as well! Thanks for your response! Cheers! 😀🙏
Norwegian black metal kids… I’ll take six of them. 😂
Solid state to the core
Lol I even open it up so you can see it
wonder what a RAT going through it sounds like. i'm not curious enough to got get one to find out, though. also, does it get loud enough to get through a "full" band scenario...i'm guessing no....
It gets pretty loud!
What? The Master volume isnt the master but all three of the tone controls are? The Gain channel just adds mudd. Maybe they sent you a damaged amp. Being as it is so different than any other amp I would worry that its a fire hazzard. These are not tried and true circuits. I would make sure it stays unplugged
No, main volume is still primary volume.
Not bad but is it really grounded? I'm not been paranoid here, I have seen too many cheap devices from a certain country that have a ground plug but are not actually grounded. Unplug the amp and take a multimeter in continuity mode and touch one probe to the metal chassis inside the amp and the other to the ground pin of the plug and you should heir a tone from the mutimeter and it should read 0.
Thanks for the review. You did good job on the piece. A lot of people can’t put several hundred $$ for an amp. Reviewing more affordable gear lets folks know what is available in the $100 range. Those bloated titles are search keywords. I bet they are just trying to cover all their bases.
You`re right it sounds better on bass.
Twin Peaks for the win! Great demo, not so great amp. Also, ‘tertiary’ is a good word that should be used more often.
I will say that it’s at least as good as the cheap solid state amp I had in the 90s
Welp this amp doesn't sound bad😮🤔
90$ that's impressive
Awesome amp for the price for sure. I'd buy it for a new player.
Hello,
Where did you get that purple sparkle color bronco bass from?
Bought it for like $80 on tour and had it refinished!
You need play more than one chord riffs. Play some pretty chords jazz or rb. Do something up to date
Friend, I don't NEED to do anything.
@@GetOffset
😢 Don't feel bad 😞 it's only a guitar
I think they should put that gain and boost button in a bucket of concrete and throw it in the lake.
" we'll see how long it gets" 🤣
More importantly, where can I get the blue sparkle bass????
It sounds Horribly 🎸🤘❌ thank you though some not to bad..... Maybe 🤘👍 from new Zealand 🌏🤘🎸 . The feed back mean 🤘
Better than fender 15 amp kit amps.
It sounds like you’re playing through a bass amp with a bass speaker cone.
Especially when I bust out the bass guitar, right?
This is a bass amp being sold as a guitar amp SLASH bass amp.
Macy’s? Don’t know why that struck me as funny.
LOL! I was surprised to see it there. 5% commission rate, so I'd get like...$5 if someone purchased the amp from Macy's. I think Walmart and Macy's allow marketplace sellers now, the same way Amazon does.
Too many cheap-ish amps around to think this one is any better. $90 is cool but it's not the only pony in the corral.
That Tele is a nice colour :) Sounds a little out of tune though 🤔
It could use a setup
What a fantastic video have a wonderful day Emily ❤😊
At 8:28 is that Positive Jam by The Hold Steady? 😮
😉 ♾️➕
Nice Tele.
I'm a horrible guitarist and horrible a bass player. I know I will never be a real musician, however, I play just enough, above being absolutely crappy, that I could fool non musicians into thinking, I'm an okay guitarist, playing through that amp.
It's a great purchase for a fake musician like me.
don't sell yourself short. You don't need to put "musician" on your tax return to be a musician.
@GetOffset l play instruments for fun, I appreciate music, but I don't love music.. musicians appreciate music and love music. Goofing around with a cheap amp and cheap guitar is all I'm interested in.
All the people who know me, know music isn't "my calling", and I don't pretend like it is. But thanks for the encouragement👍
Digital...? There is nothing digital about it, perhaps the delay is, but even that I do not believe! and 40W? No way this amp is 40W.....20W max perhaps!
Did you get to the part where I show the inside of the amp?
@@GetOffset Yes I did, nothing digital about it, just a cheap and simple (nasty) 2 power transistor class A-B amp design, linear power supply (transformer, bridge rectifier, 2 cheap filter caps), cheap op-amps (8pin chips) in the pre amp circuits for guitar and mic, mic input not even balanced, cheap analog delay circuit, and a cheap speaker!
The cabinet and the chassis are the 2 most expensive parts of this 20W max amplifier....! Safe your money, for a little bit more you can buy something that does not sound like a cardboard box..! And yes I am a electronic engineer for more than 40 years.
@@dirkklinkenberg8912 thanks for the info!
THIS is the exact tone people mean when they say solid state sucks
No- they don’t mean the pretty good SS amps from the 90s that everyone bags on despite *obviously* not hearing these types of amps lol
This was super common in the 70s and 80s, but it’s such a legitimately rare thing to hear this I’m confused as to why on earth the company couldn’t just pump out a modern, cheap, decent sounding SS amp instead of this bad 70s relic.
I had a Peavey mini stack that had stereo chorus-real cool with the speakers spread. It's overdrive/distortion was okay until it's almost maxxed out. But it wasn't the sound you hear here. This one has a high-end noise that sounds like the speaker is made of aluminium foil-just like the little ss Fender amps like Audition, Frontman, etc. And those Fenders get it when the od/distort is cranked. But this 5 Core has that sound almost all the time during this demo. It's because of cheap and/or/both mismatched parts.
But with these amps is it really worth it to replace those crappy green chicklet capacitors, and install metal-foil resistors (unnless the plans/schematic calls for carbon specifically).Most times it's not worth it unless you have obtained the amp and replacement parts by the cheap or free. Notwithstanding, I have come across articles that were mod's for various ss amps. Some are really worth it if you can solder with confidence and read schematics , plans, etc. What helps the most is improving the headroom on the amp- if done correctly, it tends to get rid of that "foil" crumbling sound.
@@user-hy6yq4uk8e you know what you’re talking about!
That ‘foil’ sound is something peculiar because it’s *just* a sound like any other sounds ppl hear, and ppl generally like to love all sorts of sounds that are much different and extreme, but for some reason humans just REALLY dislike that sound in general lol
You dont get volume unless you turn the volume up?😂..what can one expect for $90?
First thank you for your video number two the first comment that is on the comment is kind of what I was thinking myself it sounded like a radius really bad radio you know the feature set doesn't mean anything if it sounds like crap and yeah it sounded like crap at best that sounded best with the bass on Queen once you turn the overdrive the overdrive on it or whatever it's called on that end it sounded like that sounded horrible it wasn't usable I can't see that as being usable in many genres for anything but then again to each their own right I think our overall I didn't hear anything out of that that was actually a pleasing to my ears I own a mustang one version one with an 8 inch speaker in it and it sounds like years ahead of this and I bought it for $119 I think with new at the time so yeah this this isn't seem to be worth it to mehow anyone could get with something like that is beyond me unless of course you might that but yeah I guess that's kind of my opinion of it and you know we all have different tastes but sometimes horrible sound is this horrible sound horrible tone is this horrible tone and garbage is garbage I really don't think that this app is worth 90 bucks that's just ridiculous you can buy something different 10 reverb there would be a whole bunch of different things you can get for 100th that would blow this out of the water anyway thank you for your videos sincerely David Rafael AKA Bob the blind bedroom guitar
Walker George Lee Jose Williams Brian
Wilson Jessica Perez Steven Moore Frank
Perfect match for your $99 Amazon guitar with included strap! - Be ok for a student. No offense I can hear it from here and I'll pass. It probably starts to splatter all over around 3 with little assistance from the drive. Save your money and buy a decent amp. Not an amp it's an investment. Now shut up and play yer guitar!
6:17 pete and pete theme song lol?
YEP YEP 😉
*neanderthal spongebob* where offset?? 😅
The real offset is the friends we made along the way
"close to something that is usable" LOL
the "aggressively midwestern way" had me grinning
"Midwestern Interesting" is a real IYKYK-type deal, eh?
I remember reading a story from Quincy Jones where Prince visited with him and Michael Jackson and was calling Michael's house or animals "interesting" and Quincy clearly didn't understand what Midwesterners mean when they use that word in that way.
I think I had the same when I (I'm dutch) was in England some time ago... very interesting ;)
Those product titles bloated with keywords are so annoying 😂
They really are. And it's so dumb. This is a fine-sounding bass amp. Kinda fun and punchy. Really confusing guitar amp. Just sell it as a bass amp!!!
@@GetOffset right on! , I couldn't agree more