Ibanez Stage 15R Combo

This is an Ibanez practice amp, made probably in the late 1980's. I bought it used from another student very early 1990's.

I live in Finland, I'm not sure if this amp has been sold in the U.S. (there seem to be no previous reviews).

Stage 15R is a single-channel solid-state combo with one input, adjustments for gain, overdrive color, volume and master volume, 3-band EQ, spring reverb. Headphone jack at the back. I've later added an external speaker jack and a switch for it myself. The model number makes you assume this is a 15 watt amp, but the amp itself says 12 watts and the 8" speaker inside says it can take 10 watts. There's a single power transistor attached to a cooling plate on the top of the chassis. The box is some type of MDF material with black coating, same as everyone else.

Hey, it's not that versatile, but then, what do you expect for 50 bucks? This is great value for money, and the features are pretty good for such a tiny and cheap amp.

Mostly I use this amp at home. My other amp is currently a Fender Concert 60W tube amp (the 1983 Rivera model), and that is way too loud for home, it's even too loud when playing with the whole band, although it's of course otherwise a thousand times more valuable. (Well, at least it costs over 10 times as much as this Ibanez). The Ibanez is pretty good for training at home, but clearly underpowered for playing together with a real drummer. The good thing is that the distortion works well even at low volumes, which is not the case with most tube amps, so you can get the sound even when everyone else is sleeping, through headphones.

I even used this amp as a microphone preamp when recording with a Sound Blaster; it beat the noisy preamp in SB. Plug microphone into the input, and headphone output to Sound Blaster's line input. That tells you also that it isn't too noisy!

I'm using a Tokai Les Paul (SD pickups) and a ridiculous Charvel heavy rock guitar for backup. They both sound OK. This is more versatile than my Fender, although the clean sounds are of course nothing in comparison to Fender, nor is the power.

I once was in a jam with some 15 musicians there, and my Fender was being fixed so I had to take the Ibanez. Some guys told me I had really nice sounds. That was silly, but one explanation is that I was really able to drive the Ibanez at full power -- I had to turn gain to 11 and volume to 11 and master to 11, and it was still underpowered. But that made the overdrive sound good. And the guys who said that had some *really* expensive gear. And I'm still certain they were not joking, they were serious: this tiny thing sounded nice. Even in that environment, I wouldn't be able to drive the Fender loud enough to work well.

Still, the Ibanez is just a tiny solid state thing. Nothing that makes anyone else feel any envy.

No problem with it whatsoever. You wouldn't gig with this for other reasons (not enough power).

The construction is quite OK. The adjustment pots are on a PCB but they are screwed to the front plate and there are so many of them that it's unlikely that you would be able to damage the board even by kicking hard at the knobs. I think there are only one quick way to break it: pierce the speaker with a knife. I don't think you can drop it from high up enough to break it. Yeah, it's dependable, if a feeble amp like this is something you can depend on in the first place.

No need to deal with Ibanez.

I've been playing over 20 years, various styles from roots and hard rock, to modern pop and occasionally even something that resembles jazz.

If this Ibanez got lost, I'd get something similar, but I wouldn't spend effort to find exactly the same. I've seen some other 10-15 watt practise amps, I think this is a pretty good one but nothing extraordinary. If you hear a 15 W tube amp (I tried one Orange) you'll notice that a Class A tube amp is WAY more powerful.

All the ratings I've given in this review are taking into account the price. Don't expect this thing to match amps that cost 10 or 100 times as much. But for the price, it does a good job. If you see one for 50 bucks, grab it.