Ibanez TBX150R

See http://www.ibanez.co.jp/products/amp_page.php?area_id=3&l_id=43&year=2008&cat_id=5&series_id=91

Most knobs should be familiar to most, save for the "Hue" knob which emphasizes either a warm, mellow tone or a very bright and clear tone (and dials anything in between).
The X-mode button only creates a slightly different sound. Better than nothing.

I play a wide variety of genres, but currently enjoys playing Opeth songs, which span from mellow acoustic-sounding parts and clean solos to brutal riffs and high-gain leads. So I need an amp that does a lot :)

It sounds equally good on both low and high volumes, which means that it is useable both as a beginners gigging and, and a practice amp. I love scalability :)

I give the features 7 because this amp is quite versatile on the clean side, and relatively versatile on the distortion side. The EQ is great, and the hue button is so good for variance that I would love to have it on all amps as a standard knob.
The distortion channel will only work with heavy rock, metal, and high-gain leads, as it is far too squeky for most other genres.

I was testing it with two guitars:
* A handmade czech guitar with ebony fretboard, set neck and ash top. Big slab of wood. Uses Seymour Duncan humbucker pickups with a Little '59 in the mid, and a Dimebucker in the bridge. Nothing in the neck at the moment, it wouldn't fit. This guitar has been painted with shield painting and makes very little noise.
* A Silvertone Apocalypse with Semour Duncan humbucker pickups, Alnico Pro in the neck and Duncan Distortion in the neck.

This amp gains a lot from having two speakers. They seem like they are of a nice quality - definetly not the bottleneck for the sound quality.

The reverb is not especially good. It's better than my old practice amp, but that does not say a lot. I either keep it completely off or very low.

The noiselevel is very low. It seems like the amp was made from solid components, definetly no complaints here.

The clean channel is quite nice. It's pretty transparent and will react very differently to your guitar and pickups, just as it should (in my opinion). It is extremely clear, and not espcially warm. I didn't try it with effects, but I think that if you add the right colouring effects, it has a great potential.

The distortion channel is what let me down. It is far, far too clinical to my taste, which means that it will sound oscilated (saw or squarewave-like) on high gains because there's no color added to the sound like on tube amps. The hue button does not help a lot.
It is not the worst distortion I've ever heard, but I got tired of it very very fast, and it was impossible to dial a sweet tone.

I took it to one of the acoustically best concert halls in Denmark. The clean was allright, but there was a lot of things audible in the distortion that turned me off.

Maybe it is my guitars, but there was a very faint boxiness in the sound.

Overall, it is alright, but it lacks something that makes it feel "musical" to me. There's a long way to the top without any additional effect pedals.

As I returned the amp after a week, this section is only a sum of my impressions over time:

This amp is very well built. The knobs feel solid, it is heavy, there are no rattling parts when you move it, and the cabinet feels nice. There are big, fat rubber on all the edges, and the grill is solid.

I would bring it to a gig without being worried about breakdowns.

Did not deal with them.

I have been playing for 4 years, and I feel that I have outgrown amps of this soundquality. However, I am quite picky about my sound.
If you play loud, rough, high-gain music and need a solid amp without the biggest budget in the world, try this one out.

This is a very nice entry level amp, but after 3-4 years of playing, it's not your cup of tea.

This amp does the job, but the out-of-the-box sound really lacks aesthetics, atmosphere, and general musicality. I ended up returning it after a week because of that.

Bought this am new a couple of days ago. It is solid state, two channels with 2x12" speakers in a closed back cabinet. Has reverb only. Clean channel and hot channel with TBX extreme switch.

Fantastic tone shaping capability with 3 band active eq on each channel and a very effective parametric mid on the hot channel.

Over all, very basic features but thanks to the tone shaping controls this amp is very versatile.

150 watts output, and able to push every bit of it. Foot switchable and an effects loop.

This is where this baby really shines. The clean is great, the distortion is great. The active eq and parametric mid are very effective and allow an enormous variety of sounds. The amp has a ton of gain.

The closed back cabinet really does the job. You get a huge, chunky bottom end with lots of thump and no speaker farts!

I love the distortion on this thing. Very hot, great sustain and harmonic content. You can get any sound you can imagine from this amp. It does a tpyical Marshall sound, better than most Marshalls I have played. There are even sounds available that are completely unique, all sound great. Any way you cut or boost using the parametric mid, no matter how slight the adjustment or how radical you get a very usable, great sound.

Now the down side- the reverb is crap. It is completely useless. In fact you don't really get a reverb effect, what you get is a reverb trail/tale on the end of your notes, that's it.

The amp does have an effects loop so this is not a major issue.

The amp has a very large Toroid style transformer which means quiet operation with fast response.

The TBX extreme feature is interesting and useful.

Who knows? It is heavy and solid.

No idea about customer service but they do offer a 5 year warranty. Apparently they have faith in their product.

I have been playing for over 35 years and have used just about every amp out there. This is one of the absolute best I have ever played through. I love it, it has every sound imaginable. It sounds great with any guitar you plug into it. This has to be one the best kept secrets in the world. If the word ever gets out on these you are going to see a lot of them on stage.