Played EH Freedom amp, Bought DS-1.

[Gr8Scott]

Today I saw a really neat amp at the Sam Ash in Raliegh. Neat peice of equipment. Fingerjointed Pine box with a wood and metal carry handle built to fold right out of the top of the box. Three knobs and one switch on top. Had a switch that said "charge" on one side. Asked the dude behind the counter about it and he hooked me up with a reissue strat and later hooked me to the Boss pedals to check out how it sounds with pedals up front. What an excellent idea. The amp runs on batteries and is 15 LOUD and clean watts through a custom 8" speaker. It takes pedals well and sounds very nice. It's not a tube amp and doesn't really sound like a tube amp, but it is a good clean amp overall with good tone. Running the pedals up front sounded very good also. The Boss Digital reverb wasn't a stunning pedal to me really (didn't sound like a real reverb) but it gave the little amp some roomy sounds. The DS-1 pedal sounded so good through it and had a really good range of useful dirt sounds so I picked it up for $40. Considering buying the EH Freedom as well now. It would be so neat to have an amp that doesn't need a plug in for a good long playing session. It is supposed to run for 4-6 hours between charges. Pick up a looper pedal and you could conceivably play outdoor concerts via battery power alone. The volume was loud enough to make the other salespeople in Sam Ash come over and ask me to turn the amp down so they can hear the phones. This amp doesn't really dirty itself up with the edge knob, but it does take dirt pedals nicely. The better the dirt pedal, the better the sound of course. There is a tone knob on the amp and rolling it back gave nice jazzy tones and complimented the bright nature of the strat well. It would be a perfect jazz box. The volume knob is ultra sensitive and it ramps up the volume quickly. They need to put a Log or audio taper knob on this circuit really as the volume doesn't seem to increase much after passing 1. It's loud enough on 1 to make everyone in the store mad at you (found that out the hard way).

 

[some_dude]

Re: Played EH Freedom amp, Bought DS-1.

Sounds cool.

One of the things I like about the Roland Micro Amp is that it's battery powered. I spent three months in Turkey earlier this year with it and I never changed the batteries once despite hours and hours of playing.

That said, I would love a battery powered amp with 15w of output.

 

[Gr8Scott]

Re: Played EH Freedom amp, Bought DS-1.

Sounds cool.

One of the things I like about the Roland Micro Amp is that it's battery powered. I spent three months in Turkey earlier this year with it and I never changed the batteries once despite hours and hours of playing.

That said, I would love a battery powered amp with 15w of output.

What did you think of the tone of the microcube? How did it sound overall?

 

[some_dude]

Re: Played EH Freedom amp, Bought DS-1.

What did you think of the tone of the microcube? How did it sound overall?

It's a really good sounding personal practice amp. I mean, it's a battery powered practice amp that models a couple different styles of amp and requires no pedals for verb/delay, chorus, phase, flange and tremolo. My only gripe about it is the speaker.....it can get a little farty when using the Bassman model combined with a neck humbucker.

Tonally, it sounds good for a little battery powered amp with a tiny little speaker. I wouldn't gig it, but if it was stolen I'd buy another one simply for the convenience of good tone on the road and at a volume that won't get me kicked out of a hotel.

 

[Gr8Scott]

Re: Played EH Freedom amp, Bought DS-1.

That is kinda what I'm looking for honestly though. I might have to get the Microcube even though I'm really jonesing for the Freedom. I don't know if the freedom's volume would allow it to be used in a hotel room. I think that it's way too loud for such a purpose unless you carefully tweak until nearly silent. At that volume, it's tone may be a little less than stellar. I want something that is roughly like the volume of a TV at a respectful level (ie not insanely loud).

 

[some_dude]

Re: Played EH Freedom amp, Bought DS-1.

If that's the volume you're after you'll want to check one out.