Product: Rockman XP100
Price Paid: US $500 used
Submitted
12/08/1997
at
01:30pm
by
Brad Morrison
Ease of Use
:
10
The unit has no knobs--it's all pushbutton except for the final output Tone/Volume sliders. The buttons move LEDs through every possible setting for Compression, Pre-Dist EQ, Distortion, Chorus, Delay/Reverb, and post-Distortion EQ.
It's really easy to get a good sound, just find a MIDI preset that you like and tweak it! Still haven't figured out how to save edits, but it's no big deal.
No manual, bought it used. I've heard that Dunlop will send a Xeroxed copy of any SR&D manual.
Sound Quality
:
8
It's an effects/amp/speakers combination, that's all I've tried so far. It does have outputs for an external amp and for ext. speakers, too (100W amp).
It gets really loud all by itself!
There is some noise on the higher distortion settings, especially with high compression.
Effects quality is great, classic Rockman sound. The distortion settings leave a bit to be desired--instead of classic Rockman CLN2, CLN, EDGE, and DIST, there are seven levels from clean to DIST, with some "mixing" available. I'm used to the finer control that a Sustainor has, but for a very portable unit, this is really nice. I especially like the two "Reverb" settings, which are really just the Echo from the original Rockman X100 headphone amp, plus one with a little larger room.
Reliability
:
No Opinion
Seems solid to me--the unit I got was not in perfect shape, has obviously been banged around a little, sounds and performs just fine.
Overall Rating
:
9
This is really good for very clean sounds and for very distorted sounds. There isn't much in between, although the "mixed" sounds are interesting; it's almost as if you have two guitars going. I jumped on this as soon as I saw it advertised, and I may have paid too much in my haste, but it's worth it for the self-contained portability. It provides MIDI- controllable compression, distortion, effects and EQ, a 100-watt stereo amp, and two speakers.
