Product: Hiwatt Desktop Bulldog Combo
Price Paid: 70 (Canadian)
Submitted
09/18/2005
at
01:42pm
by
DaBoo
Features
:
7
I bought my Desktop Bulldog new in 2004, I imagine it was made the same year.
This is a 1 watt mini practice amp with a 3-1/2 inch speaker. The cabinet is made of real wood and not plastic like most mini-amps. There are 3 knobs in front: Gain, Volume and Tone, plus the on/off switch. One input jack, and an output jack which can be used for headphones or to drive an external speaker, which is a nice touch.
This is the perfect little amp for taking along those long, lonely business trips - it's extremely light and compact, and the tone is waaay cool for a mini-amp.
An external power jack would have been nice, as the only way to power the amp is with a 9-volt battery. On the plus side, one 9-volt lasts a hell of along time!
Sound Quality
:
9
This is a real bitchin' mini-amp. It'll blow away any of the other mini-amps out there, such as the Danelectro Honeytone or those pathetic plastic offerings from Fender and Marshall. The tone from this combo is amazingly satisfying for such a small amp, going from decent clean-on-the-edge-of-breakup tones to insane fuzzy distortion. The clean sound in actually much better than any other of the mini-amps I tried (Mini-marshall stack, Mini-Fenders, Danelectro Honeytone). And the crunch coming from the 3-1/2 inch speaker when it starts to distort is pretty amazing. This tiny amp is LOUD too. Obviously, the bass is all muddy and there is little note definition when playing chords when the gain is all the way up, but this is just a 1 Watt mini-amp, after all.
So, as far as mini-amps go, this one merits high marks!
Reliability
:
9
Feels as solid as a tank. Has survived all of my travels with no problems, and I have logged lots of air miles with this amp. It must be noted that I travel with backsacks and duffles, and not rigid suitcases, and the amp has never had any problems up to date, so it's pretty damn tough.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Never had to deal with 'em.
Overall Rating
:
10
This is a fantastic travel amp for me; obviously, you could carry along one of those multi-effects pedals and get a ton of more sounds, effects, etc. But I love the simplicity of plugging directly into an amp, and there's not many amps that you could pack in a backsack. The desktop bulldog has by far the best tone of any amp it's size that I've seen or heard, and the price is sweet too. A definite 10 in my book.
