Drive CD300-8G Combo

The amp appears , on paper , to have a great selection of features, sadly it's fallen short of my expectations. The digital effects are all fine and dandy but after about 2 minutes I think even the most gadget obsessed would find that the effect level control rarely leaves zero as the effects are very limited and (As you should expect I suppose for such a low price) rather noisy.

It's got 2 channels , there's the one where there's so much gain induced noise you can't really tell what's been played , even with the gain set reasonably low , and there's the 'clean' one where it just distorts at higher volumes to the point where you lose all clarity.

Being fair though , these guys can obviously make a great power stage, it's not the amp stage itself that makes this an annoying amp , it's that they've really tried to cram too much in there , if they'd made it simpler , possibly with NO channel switching , and NO effects , oh and NO entirely unuseable effects loop..., then perhaps they could have put a bit more thought into the cabinet design. More on that in a moment.

I really don't want to berate this company, this amp was obviously destined for a very specific market - beginner with no effects setup and limited expectations viz noise , and for that market it may be a good setup , however , for all you newbies out there here are some tips if you've got one of these and hate all the rattling:--

1. The speaker cable in mine was very poorly routed, had a massive grommet to lead it out of the amp stage and was slapping in the cone and speaker chassis - (After unplugging the amp from the outlet)take the amp apart enough so you can fit a grommet that fits the speaker wire and amplifier chassis properly at the point the speaker wire emerges into the speaker cabinet, now you should be able to push the speaker wire up so enough of it is retained in the amp section that it won't rattle on your speaker, one source of buzz gone.

2.While the back's off check to see if all the screws in the bottom of your amplifier stage are done up , the ones in mine weren't.

3.Check the bolts that hold your speaker in place , loose? Mine too, do them up nice and snug , not too tight as that could easily warp the speaker chassis.

4. Put the back on.

Given enough time and a can of contact cleaner I'd clean up the faceplate switches and controls too , mine were very crackly.

Now there's one more thing I'd do , but it's a bit drastic - the speaker cloth on mine appeared to be very dense (not acoustically transparent)and flapped around a lot , inducing a lot of noise , solid metal spaker grilles are available from pro music stores and many other places - deft application of a very sharp knife to the cloth and replacement with one of these could make this go away , although your amp will look like an extra from a bad post-apocalyptic movie.

I've been trying this with three guitars , a standard Strat , a Jerry Donahue Telecaster and a twin humbucker equipped Telecaster (Which is very thick and Gibsonesque sounding).

See above - if I could remove 90% of the circuitry in this amp and rebuild it doing all the screws up properly it might be OK as a practise amp.

I don't ever want to find out if this thing's reliable, I don't think it really stands a chance in the long run (See above comments on too many gadgets)

I really think with a good simplifying and possibly resourcing of manufacturing these guys could make a great amp. The complaints I have are all to do with manufacturing quality and overindulgence in technology. If they could make a great sounding , very basic amp with well executed manufacturing then I'll be very interested in hearing from them . As Mr Einstein said ' Everything should be as simple as possible and no simpler'. Perhaps they'd like to offer me a job as a manufacturing consultant......