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THE GUITAR PLAYERS COMMUNITY

Roland Micro Cube

Getting started with the guitar can be quite daunting. There are thousands of different options out there to choose: guitars, amps and effects. Today we’re taking a look at the Roland Micro Cube amp, a small practice amp aimed at beginners and for home practice.

What They Say

"With the new Micro Cube, guitarists get a genuine Roland Cube amp in an ultra-compact package that even runs on batteries. Weighing in at just few pounds, the Micro Cube packs a big punch and comes with six DSP effects, COSM® Amp modelling and a new Digital Tuning Fork—giving guitarists everything they need for killer tone on the go."

"The Micro-CUBE RED also features a Recording/Headphones output and stereo Aux input for MP3/CD players, etc. Like its predecessor, the new CUBE can be powered on batteries (LR6 (AA) type x 6) or a supplied AC adapter. It also includes a carrying strap."

Features

• Ultra-compact DSP guitar amp with 5-inch/2-watt low magnetic leakage speaker
• Runs on battery or AC power (adapter supplied) and includes carry strap
• 7 COSM guitar amp models including JC-120 and a special mic preamp model
• 6 DSP effects: chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo and separate Delay/Reverb
• New Digital Tuning Fork with support for flat tunings up to 2 semitones
• Recording/Headphones output and stereo Auxiliary input for CD players, etc.

The amp has a built in touch sensitive tuning tone set to A. Sliding the key switch over can drop this to Ab and again to Abb. This reference not lets to tune to standard, or drop tuned provided you can tune by ear or harmonics. By tapping the button harder, you get a louder reference tone. Since this is a beginners amp, I would have preferred a simple led tuner setup for EADGBE - but on the other hand, it does give you the first lesson in ear training!

The amp is available in black, white and limited edition red.

How Does It Sound

I first heard this amp in my local music store when I was helping a friend get kitted out with his first guitar. I started with a 15watt Ibanez practice amp, went through a few marshalls and I’m now playing a Mesa 50 Rect-O-Verb. When you then go back to playing or listening to any small practice amp, you really don’t get your hopes up. I think because of that, I was thrown back even more by the quality of the sound.

First of all, this amp is tiny - it’s about the size of a car battery. It weighs in at just over 3KG and is fitted with a 5″ speaker. The amp features six different COSM (Composite Object Sound Modeling) amp types which are accessed from one of the dials. The first is the acoustic setting, giving you a clean sound resembling an acoustic guitar. The JC Clean setting is a recreation of the famous Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus guitar amplifier. The Black Panel replicates Fender Twin Reverb amplifier and the Brit Combo is based on the Vox AC30TB. Classic stack produces a Marshall JMP1987 classic rock tone. The position marked R-fier Stack is modelled on a MESA Boogie Rectifier. The dial also has a 7th setting which is for connecting a 1/4″ (6.5mm) microphone jack lead.

COSM is found across many of the Boss and Roland products, so the quality of the effects is very good. The amp gives you a good spread of sounds and hence can cater for several different styles of music. I was very impressed when I heard it for the first time - you don’t expect that sort of sound from this level of amp.

The inbuilt effects are equally good. The first EFX dial gives you a choice of chorus, flanger, phaser or tremolo and the second gives you delay or reverb. The effects are on a graduated scale that lets you adjust the amount of that particular effect in the signal path. It’s a basic setup, but you can fairly easily get a good sound together.

Due to the size of the amp, there’s no way you could get the normal Bass / Mid / Treble EQ dials. Instead, the Cube has a single tone control ranging from low to high. Pretty basic again, but it gives a broad response and this is enough to tweak your sound effectively. The downside of the size of the amp (and hence the speaker) is that it can’t play very loudly - or more importantly, the low end, and deeper notes are lost. Despite the really nice COSM amp and effects, the tone has suffered a lot. A larger speaker would help, but that defeats the object of having a small portable amp; for playing at home, and casual practice, it’s not really an issue.

Other Features

The amp has a 1/4″ (6.5mm) headphone / recording output. This lets you practice without disturbing anyone, or you can run it into a recording device. Also on the back panel are two input ports for plugging in other sound sources like an iPod so that you can play along to your favourite songs. The inputs are 1/4″ (6.5mm) and 1/8″ (3.5mm).

The Cube comes with a small hand carry strap. This is attached to the amp with 2 standard guitar pins, so you can always swap the hand strap for a full-sized guitar strap and sling it over your shoulder. As noted earlier, it’s only 3.3KG so nothing too heavy to carry around.

Overall

What a brilliant little amp. When you play through this, you can’t help but smile. It packs a lot of sounds into one small, and very affordable amp with a name you can trust. For anyone looking to get into playing electric guitar - you won’t go far wrong with this amp.

Roland also have a number of models up in the range, so you have a progression of amps to work up to. I wasn’t able to test the battery life myself (as I used the 9V wall adapter) but 6 AA (LR6) batteries should last up to about 20 hours tops.

This is well worth getting hold of, and worth reccomending to people that may be thinking of taking up the guitar. It gets 2 thumbs up from me.

Buy this now from: amazon.co.uk