ADA Rocket 20

made in 96, brown tolex, brown grill cloth, white piping, four rubber legs, very well designed simple amp, cannot get to tubes without taking out 6 screws, then, the wiring to the speaker is short so you have to diconnect thme or turn the chassis sideways, 1 el34, and 3 preamp tubes. pc board. very simple. dont know why this company didnt make it. this is a good amp for a very good price. they put out higher wattage amps, sure would like to know where they went. this is 20 good watts. has a 50 watt naylor speaker. I think it makes a difference. It has bright switch, high gain switch and rocket boost. not heavy metal or high gain. perfect blues sound amp. I love the sound of this amp. each one may be different, but the other reviews of this amp are very correct. There should be more of these amps around.

this amp has a slight 60 cycle hum, that is not a problem. other than that, no noise at all. the reverb is adequate, the tone controls do not seem to apply, I just turn the treble, mid and bass all the way up, also the reverb and this thing sounds wonderful to my ears. I could use this amp in a small club with a pedal and a 2 twelve cab, but I stopped playin clubs 3 years ago. It is a prefect recording amp. If something happens and the hum gets worse, I would gladly pay for a new transformer or whatever is needed to get it right. This amp sounds that good. it is a very clean sounding amp, very full at low volume, with the el34 tube ( better than two el84's I have) it has a thick tone. when I mean low volume, I do not mean bad, but this is not a noisy high gain amp. three guitars I have played through so far have all sounded wonderful. this is a fine blues sounding clean amp at a low voume, but at the same time it doesnt sound realreal low volume. hard to explain. you would just have to play one. but there are few around, sadly. a bargain for the money. this one gets a big ten. I have had blues pearls, soldanos, boogies, fenders, hughes and kettner, clarkd others, but this amp just sounds different. I plan to keep it. I sold a blues pearl to buy a 68 pro reverb. and I sold a fender deluxe to get this. and I am very happy with it. it is well worth the price. I would have paid more. it is a great sounding amp. wish they had stayed in business. a ten

previous owner of this amp said he had it for a month. He has had some high end amps. glad he got rid of this one. it is a simple design amp, but a great one. it would be nice if it were about 40 watts, but you really cant complain because of how great it sounds. If you ever see one, try it. sure there are a lot of nice amps out there. but they are very overpriced. this amp just amplifies your guitar and doesnt add a whole lot of other stuff to it. a great great amp. would hate to lose it. an eleven

Around early 1998 I saw this amp at Corner Music in Nashville selling for @ $265. It was in a try-out room and I was surprised to find that it blew away almost every other amp in the room. The only other amp that could compete was a Matchless which costs thousands more, and in fact, sounded very similar to the Rocket, just bigger. It has just one channel and was meant to be a studio amp. It was favorably reviewed in Guitar shop magazine which is now defunct too. The amp disappeared from the market (and the store) shortly thereafter.

Sounds like a Matchless to me. The thing that Guitar Shop said about it that I found to be true is that it has the largest "sweet spot" of any amp ever. By this I mean, the area when distortion begins and has a warming effect, but hasn't really broken up yet.

Can't really say, since I didn't buy it. I wish now that I did.

Since they are out of business, I would have to say the support is nill.

This is an excellent amp overall, but for very specific use. I wound up buying a Peavy Classic instead because it has a loud 30 watts and can also be used live. The ADA Rocket, has a very soft 20 watts and is wonderful for studio, but don't even consider it for club work. I'd love to know where one is to buy these days.