Product: Ace Tone Mini 8
Price Paid: USD 15.00 USED
Submitted
06/09/2009
at
03:27am
by
Bear
Features
:
8
This amp was made in Japan either in the late 70's or early 80's. As the amp's name implies it is 8 watts, all tube (one 12ax7 and one EL83)with an 8 inch Ace Tone speaker. It has, hi and lo input jacks, a volume, tone, reverb and tremelo. This is a pretty versatile little amp and actually one of the best small amps I have ever played through. I play blues, blues rock, classic rock, country and sometimes hard rock and it handles it all very well. It would be nice if it had a gain and master volume, so that you wouldn't need a pedal for hard rock, but it breaks up very nicely for a good crunch without a pedal. I keep this amp in my bedroom. This amp is probably 30 years old, but it is in mint condition. I will dock it two points for not having a gain/master volume.
Sound Quality
:
10
I usually play stratocasters and telecasters through this amp. It sounds best with single coils. It suits my music style as mentioned above very well, but if you are going to play hard rock or metal, you will need a pedal. I use a big muff for an overdrive and that's just fine. Although it only has a tone knob, it is very versatile, because it acts like a contour control. It only has a clean channel since there is no gain control, but crank the volume to about 6 and it breaks up quite nicely for a good Keith Richards style crunch. This amp really reminds me of the small fender tube amps like the blues junior. I actually love this little amp.
Reliability
:
10
Well, it's been going since 1979 or 1980 and it is still mint and going strong. Japanese make good stuff.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Never dealt with them.
Overall Rating
:
9
I've been playing 45 years and have several strats, several teles and a les paul. I play Gibson and Epiphone acoustic guitars. I also have several Peavey low wattage tube amps as well as a Laney LC15R. If it were lost or stolen, I would try and find another one if I could, but these are hard to come by. Actually I love everything about it, except a gain control would be nice because I don't like using pedals. This is a really good little amp and I got it for about 15 bucks at a garage sale.
