Line 6 Spider II 112 Combo

I've been playing for over 20 years and have owned guitars of all types, as well as numerous tube amps. I am primarily into a Strat type of sound, but I also dig the SG sounds of AC/DC! I like an amp and guitar that can cover Eric Johnson and SRV, to Angus and Santana.

I bought this amp new this year. I was getting back into the band thing and initially I was using an old rack-mount Digitech ValveFX through a Mesa/Boogie 295 power amp. This set up always sounded nice, but I wanted something lighter and more portable. I was at the local Guitar Center buying a new Deluxe Strat (which I love), and I plugged into a few different amps to check it out. One of the salesman suggested I plug into the Line 6 since they did not sell Boogie amps, and the Spyder II was probably going to give me a decent simulation for me to check out the guitar. I ended up buying both, and selling the Boogie on Ebay. The features on this amp have been covered by other reviewers, so I won't go into that. I will say that the 75 watt solid state power is amazing. I am used to the all tube stereo Boogie putting out 95 watts per channel...this will make your ears bleed. However, the Spyder is PLENTY loud enough for decent sized venues.

I would also like to echo what a few others have said about some of the effects. They are good, but not great. I don't care for the fact that you cannot use chorus without the flange. You also cannot control effects mix...odd, in my opinion.

I noticed that one reviewer made negative comments about the reverb, but to me it sounds as good as most I have heard.

I bought the FBV Express, and that makes it very convenient to access the four presets, as well as control volume. It also features a wah pedal that sounds pretty good.

This amp is a bit of a paradox in the sound and tone department. If you get it home and mess with it you can get some very satisfactory tones. You will NEVER get it to sound exactly like a tube amp, though, so don't kid yourself. For recording purposes, you can certainly make it sound as good as any amp out there. This is where it is at its best. Live gigs are where the Marshals, Boogies, Fenders and any other tube amps are going to be superior when it comes to tone. The Spyder sounds good, but it lacks the bell like tones, and the balls of a tube amp. That being said, only a person with good ears for tube amp quality is even going to know the difference. The problem is, that person is usually the guitarist playing this amp. I have had to realize that the average drunken idiot in the bar will NEVER hear the difference...even when I am playing right along side the other guitarist in my band who plays through a JCM 800!

You can easily find four good, usable tones, but that is a problem if you play in a cover band and you need a larger variety of tones. I play in a band that does mostly originals in the classic rock style (old dudes). I get away with having one real pretty clean tone with some chorus and flange with a bit of delay and reverb, one bluesy overdriven tone, one heavier crunch tone, and one smooth lead tone with lots of delay and reverb for the Eric Johnson sort of sound.

My old rig that included a Digitech ValveFX through a Boggie power amp certainly had more "life" to the tone. But, that is because the ValveFX has a tube preamp, and it was running through a tube power amp. This little Spyder II will fool everyone in the room except the guitar players.

I've only had it 6 months, or so. It's been perfect.

Not needed yet.

Like I said, I've been playing a long time, and I have owned a lot of gear over the years. This amp serves it's purpose. It sounds very good, it's VERY easy to set up, it's very portable, and it's plenty loud. Some reviewers have suggested that this amp is suitable only for practice. I contend that unless you are playing in a metal band you could probably get enough out of this amp to play live gigs.

When I was younger and trying to "make it", I was a gear head, and a tone snob. I would only use the best gear and amps for my tone. These days I am playing more for the enjoyment of it, and I really like that I can get good tome without having to haul around 900 pounds of gear, and spend a ton of time setting up my equipment.

This amp has great features for a Combo, low-end amp. You can get classic effects for blues and so forth, and also great effects for for metal. I mostly play experimental music, The Mars Volta etc... And I think the effects on this amp could rival some of Rodriguezs fx himself. The only thing this amp could of done with is a loop, its good for getting the audience going, apparently it has one but I havnt found it yet. The tap tempo is extremely useful!

This amp has brilliant sound, playing it for two years and the sound still sounds the same as when I got it. I use an Epiphone Black Beauty 3 Pick-up. However the sound can sometimes deteriorate at high volume this amp is only made for practice. So it serves its purpose well!

Never had any problems!
HOWEVER DO NOT USE AT GIGS PRACTISE AMP ONLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Never dealt with them!

This amp gives you a bang for your buck, great effects, sounds, and realliability!
ONLY USE FOR PRACTISE!

My Spider II 112 is freekin heaven in a box. The celestion sounds amazing, and the amp models are awesome. I have left many crowds awestruck after a Red LED Insane distortion solo, it literally sounds like you are playing a freekin chainsaw.

With my '00 Deluxe Stratocaster, it sounds like heaven, but even on a less expensice guitar, you can still dominate. The only thing I regret is the Modulation effects, I can't find the right setting for Chorus Flange, Phaser, or Tremolo, they all just sound like ass. Otherwise the Models and shit are great. The tuner is sketchy, I still use my hand tuner, but with an FBV shortboard its easy.

Cranking anywhere from heavy distortion to a raunchy blues crunch, or maybe even the cleanest oldies tones you've heard, it sounds great at any volume until about 9, where I was filed with a Public Disturbance Call, because 7 of my neighbours including one on the other end of my street thought it was too loud. I had my window open.

The distortion is AMAZING, well, insane has massive feedback, but I don't use it ^_^ the cleans stay clean until you add gain, at which point, they sound good still. I don't play it past 5 on the master volume knob. I write my own shit, and usually play a Takamine 12 string G series, which is discontinued, but when I'm live I always push it through my Spider with my Strat.

OK, I was driving in the Ford, and had two things to bring home, A chair for my girlfriend, and my Spider from a gig. I hit a pothole in the road and came down hard. Both rattled against the tonneau so I pulled them out. The chair lay in four pieces, the spider had a small scratch which fixed with a sharpie marker.

It's like Twinkies -- Completely indestructible.

Haven't had to use it yet, but I'm sure its amazing.

If it were stolen, I would make it my life goal to go pound the living **** out of the prick who stole it, and would not sleep until it rested in my Recording Room once more. Once you play the Spider, you will love it beyond mortal knowledge.

I wish it could go louder, but I have pedals to control that. Anyone who looks at a CyberTwin, or any of that Fender Line, they're confusing and took me about a month to figure out. I traded it in for a Spider II & an FBV shortboard and I'll never regret it.

I don't know what year this amp was made. It is probably pretty versatile as a practice amp.

I used to be in a band with a guy that had this amp at home in his "study" and we used to jam with it. It sounded pretty good at lower volumes and seemed worthy of its price tag. However, I heard a band playing at the Masquerade, in Atlanta, the other day and the guitarist mistakenly used this amp in a big club, with horrorific results.

The band was really heavy metal and I can normally stand that sort of crap long enough to get through a set waiting for the band that I actually want to see. But in this instance, I was forced to leave the music hall of the club and sit on the stairwell. The sound of this amp at maximum volume, with maximum distortion, mic'd and running through a PA was absolute torture. It created these extra, non musical frequencies that were painful and made it impossible to try and listen to the actual riffs being played.

I am pretty open-minded and give everybody a chance. I know what it is like to be on stage and half of the audience leave during my band's set, so I try to stick around just to abstain from insulting the performers. However, I could not stay in the place, after sitting outside the music hall for about 5 minutes, I realized that even being directly outside the place, my ears were still being assaulted by this amp's secondary and unintentional frequency overload. I had to walk down the street outside of the venue in order to escape the amplifier's wrath.

I felt like telling this young guitarist that I wanted to hear his playing, but couldn't sit through their set simply because of his amp's horrible sound. They left immediately after their set, though, certainly embarrassed and upset that not even those people who came to see them could manage to endure the torture.

It seems pretty well built.

?

Young guitarists, do not use this amp live!!!!!!!!! It is made for practice. I know it might sound pretty good to you if it is on the floor and your ears are positioned 4.5 feet above it while you practice with your band. But once on stage and with a microphone feeding its direct sound into the PA, it sounds like fingernails scraping along a chalkboard.

First of all I'd like to note that all ratings in this review are based around 5 as an average- not 8 or 9 as seems common with other reviews!

Being a Line 6 amp this this thing is chock a block with features and can almost do anything (even eliminate pesky chupacabras, apparently). It has 12 amp models ranging from clean to insane, making playing in any genre easy. It's for this reson that I think this amp is great for begginer to intermediate guitar players who are intreted in different types of music and prehaps aren't in a band and so don't have to focus playing in one specific genre. Having said that this amp packs 75 watts of power so it can be used to play to anything up to 200 people in a gig.

The built in effects include flanger/chorus, phaser and tremolo on one knob and delay, tape echo and sweep echo on another, plus a master reverb knob. Note that only one effect can only be used on each knob and although there is a tap tempo function for the delay, the volume and feedback(number of repeats) are increased together. Also, having flanger and chorus combined is kind of annoying.

The amp has four channels, A, B, C, and D onto which you can save your settings - the amp model, gain, EQ, channel volume and effects. This is VERY useful and absolutely invaluble - a large part of the rating. The amp even comes with a footswitch to cycle through the channels, making everything so much easier at gigs. Nice one Line 6.

The clean sounds are decent and with some expermentation with gain levels and amp models you can get good blues/rock sounds and a cool Hives sounding overdrive. By selecting the 'green' metal setting and putting the gain to about 4, you get a great crunchy overdrive/distortion for hard rock and metal and this was the best sound i could find on the amp.

Being a solid state amp i wouldnt expect it to have great sounds but line 6 have done a decent job on this and the sounds are more than passable.

I don't think anything can really go wrong with transistor amps unless you do something really stupid so i guess its a 10.

I have never dealt with the Line 6 customer support.

I have been playing for three years and play on a Gibson SG standard. Using the bridge pickup and the aforementioned distortion setting I get great overdrive sound for playing metallica, AC/DC, Iron Maiden and bluesy lead stuff. Some of the effects could be improved like the tape echo, rather dodgy sweep echo and combined chorus flanger overall this is a great amp and I highly recommend it for beginerish guitarists. I'd likk to clarify that my ratings are based on average of 5 so 8 is a great score.

I think this amp was made in 2003. This amp is more than versatile enough for me and the styles of music that I play. I play many styles and usually I would not be satisfied by just one amp but this one's got it all and pretty good if you know how to use it. I play, classic rock, blues, metal, funk, and jazz. Of course if I only had one of these styles, for example, just blues, I would go buy me a Marshall but this one covers all and pretty damn good for a solid state modeling amp.

This thing has four programable channels that can be switched to on the amp or a pedal (sold seperatly). Not sure about effects loops. It does have a headphone jack which sound better than a lot of practice amps I've heard but still sounds like crap. Great for recording though, if you've got good equipment.

I think that the only features that I wish it had was Chorus by itself, and more programable channels but hey, who's to complain at this low price? You can't get the chorus by itself except on the clean default channel which is programmed that way. Also, there are so many sound that I find and like twitching that settings that I wish I could save them all but can't. There are obviously some amp models and effects that I do not use. However, the only one that I do not like, both channels and effects are the red LED Insane channel. It's more like an effect rather than an amp model. It's the sub-octave fuzz one. It's just stupid in my opinion. But, that doesn't mean that the amp sucks, just that there is more than enough amp models and effects that you'll be able to distinguish your favorites.

My favorite channels are, red LED clean, red LED blues, green LED Crunch, red LED Metal, and green LED Insane.

I use this amp in my room and in my band at church. I also play in small clubs with it. It's plenty loud but 100watts would have been a better choise for me just because it would sound a lot more powerfull but this one can keep up with drumbs and bass no problem.

This thing sounds LIKE and tube amp. Not exactly but I'd say more like a tube than a solid state because it sounds a lot more clear and defined than a solid state amp.

This amp sounds best if you have a guitar with single coils and another with humbuckers. The better the pickups, the better the sound obviously. If you must have one guitar I'd say a fat strat is the best pickup combo for this amp. The clean channels can go either way with humbuckers or singles but I prefer singles. The twang channel sounds best with singles but would sound good with buckers too. I prefer single coils for the blues channel too to get that stevie ray sound but buckers work good too. I think humbuckers are the best choice for the crunch channels but single coils give you that Jimi Hendrix sound. Definatly humbuckers for the Metal and insane channels.

The sound of this amp is more or less the sound I have in mind when I go to play a certail style of music. It is quiet as a butterfly and it's because it has a noise gate on on most settings which makes you loose about a second of sustain and gives your picking a lighter feel but you can turn it off if you want. And boy, talk about varitety of sounds. Anything! You name it. Metallica? red Metal. Stevie ray? Green crunch. Clapton? red blues. Pantera? green insane. Of course you can't get exact sound son this thing but you can get pretty close. For example, the closest way to get a Carlos Santana sound is with a PRS and a Mesa Boogie. But you can get it on the green metal chanel with the distortion turned down a bit, the mid turned about a fourth away from all the way to the left, a bridge humbucker, and the tone rolled about 65 percent down.

Trust me, this thing's got plenty of volume and the clean channel does not distort. There is already some distortion on the default seeting with the clean channel to give the treble strings more defenition. You might not notice it with single coil pickups. But you can take that off if you want.

Want to talk about how brutal the distortion is? This thing has as much distortion possible on an amp without it going hawire. And yes, you will get feed back with the noise gate turned off but you still get a shit load of sustain.

I'm giving it a ten for sound because what solid state modeling amp sounds better without some Flextone III settings? (which cost more actually.

this thing is very reliable. especailly the bigger ones. I would use at a gig without a backup. The only problem is, the knobs are so sensitive that if you don't tape them down, durring a gig, they will move and it might be catastrofic. So tape them down once you find all your settings and save them. So I'm giving it an eight for the knobs.

Never dealt with customer support. Have had it for a few months of consant tortural use and still sound just as good if not better than when I got it. Don't know how long is the warranty.

I've been playing for a year but I practice at least five hours a day (no bullshit) and 350 days a year. the other 15 days are for less and five hours. I know, I have no life but I'm going to be playing for the rest of my life so why not? And I got better than all my friends. Just graduated Highschool. I'm in the advanced level already. I don't just think I am, I know. I took lessons for a couple months and I've just been teacing myself after. And yes, if I were rich, I would have a Marshall JCM of some sort, a Fender Twin Reverb etc. I know what these amps sound like. I play through them at guitar center all the time so I not just liking this amp just because I have not heard better. I know. Same thing with guitars. I know what's good cuz I play hundreds of different ones and not just at guitar center. many other places.

This is a list of all the gear I own:

Ibanez Prestigue RG1570MRB
Fender Delux Player's Stratocaster
Yamaha F-335 BL
FBV Express
Boss MT-2 Metal Zone
Boss OS-2 Overdrive/Distortion (by the way this amp loves pedals but not like a Marshall solid state)
Morely Bad Horsie 2 Wah Pedal (Best wah pedal in the world IMO)

If stolen, I would definatly buy it agian. Easily too because of the low price!!

I love the sounds but I hate how it doesn't have chorus by itself.
I compared it to the Flextone III series which is better but it depends what you want. The Flextone's high gain chanels aren't as good as the spider II's and it cost about 200bucks more for the same wattage I think. A lot more amp models and better ones on the Flextone but I chose this one just because the distortion was better and the price was lower.

The reason I don't give it a 10 in this category is that, while there are plenty of features, I agree with what many other people are saying - there is no subtle setting for the chorus/flange/phaser effects and, yes, you can't control the number/amount of the delay feedback signal - only the delay time.
The headphone jack is handy, and you can use it as a line out to your recording rig. I have done that into a Griffin iMic into my computer's USB port and got some great recordings with it.
I am gigging with it for the first time this weekend - I have no doubt it is plenty loud enough - I haven't wound it all the way out yet.

I have an MIJ Fender Telecaster with three single coils. I play some originals, which sound sort of like classic rock and new wave.
I really didn't like this amp at first, in fact I was gonna bring it back. It is true it has around 28 sounds, but to me- most of them sounded like ass. Thin, weak cleans, artifical, computerized sounding distortion, the reverb's kind of weird, and if you strum a chord with very little attack in certain settings, it fades out really unevenly. And the "insane" setting is a bit too much. But I totally changed my opinion once I first plugged my guitar into a 19.99 Danelectro fab tone overdrive. That seemed to provide the right amount of pre-ampage to bring out the best in this amp. Now it sounds great! 2 points off for having to add an overdrive. Why can't they just include this in there? It is true you can hit the tap button while turning the drive past 6:00, which is supposed to accomplish this, but that really doesn't do the job.

I've had it a couple of weeks with no problems so far. There's a pronounced "click" when you change between the effects, which would probably sound nasty if mic'ed through a PA.

N/A - too new to have problems. I bought this at Adirondack Guitar in Hudson Falls, NY. I've heard good things about Line 6 from the guys in the store. The owner let me take home and try out one of the Line 6 POD's once, but I decided to get the modeling amp instead.

I've been playing for 35 years. I traded in a 1985 Fender Studio lead for it. It's much better than that - but that amp kind of sucked. If it were stolen or lost I would - collect the insurance money and use it towards another one, I guess.
I love that it is loud, and versatile once you get the hang of it. You need to learn how to get turn off the preloaded effects on the presets (you power it up with the "D' button pressed) and you need to realize that as soon as you mess with the knobs, the sound will change in somewhat unpredictable ways if you have been using one of the presets. Many of the sounds are unusable to me, but there are enough ones that I like to make it worthwhile. I would give it a 10 if it sounded the way it does when I add the overdrive to it right out of the box.

Hi high/mid/low adjust, 12 amp models, basic effects, a "tap tempo" feature, headphone/direct out jack, channel volume, master volume, 4 preset channels, and so on. There is no effects loop, not that I use them anyway. This amp is 75W and is louder than I will ever need for screwing around in my apartment and playing with friends.

For the price, this is an incredible set of features.

Supposedly the 12" speaker was custom made for Line 6 by Celestion. I assume that the Celestion sticker has more to do with marketing than anything else but the speaker sounds pretty good to me.

I play a Les Paul with a Duncan SH-4 Jeff Beck pickup in the bridge and an SH-2 Jazz model in the neck. I really like the effects. I use the chorus flange a lot - very creamy. I use reverb a lot too. However the amp models leave something to be desired. I just can't seem to find the type of drive that I want and find myself using my Boss OS-2 Overdrive/Distortion pedal (which I would recommend to anyway by the way) or DOD GS-30 multi-effects pedal which also does amp modelling. To my ears, there just doesn't seem to be enough variety in the Spider II's models. But I will say that the "insane" model with the sub-octive fuzz is really neat.

When playing aloud, through the speaker, I have never noticed any excessive noise but it seems pretty noisy if you play though headphones/direct out, which is pretty disappointing if you plan on recording directly from the amp.

I really like this amp (especially for the price) and its effects but the lack of variety in the models and the noisy output jack hurts its rating a bit.

I'm not sure that I would rely on this amp. It's a great design but it does seem a little cheap. It was made in China, has plastic knobs, and the drive pot on my amp seems to a have a little sticking point. Hopefully that last one will work its way out with a little use. Other than that, this amps seem as solid as any other.

So far, I haven't had to deal with them.

Originally I was looking at the Marshall MG50DFX because of its power and effects and somehow ran accross the Spider II. I am glad I did. For less money, you get more power, a Celestion speaker, (more?) effects, and a litle more variety even though the modelling isn't quite what I was hoping for.

Despite its few shortcomings, it is a great amp and well worth the relatively small price tag.

I thought I'd post a follow-up review, now that I've owned this amp for about two and a half years. It's your basic digital modeling amp; if you need the features check the reviews below or the company's website. It's pretty versatile and packs a lot of stuff into a 1 x 12 75 watt combo amp. It's extremely loud - you could probably play a small venue with 80-100 people easily without any miking. And I don't really think that it peters out as you crank the volume, like others have said. IMO it holds up pretty well.

Once again, keep in mind that this is NOT a tube amp. If you play mostly blues, jazz, classic rock, etc. then go buy yourself a Vox or Marshall or Fender tube amp because you probably won't be satisfied with this thing. That being said, this is the best amp that I've owned. Prior to this thing I used Peavey, Fender and Vox amps and this one easily trumps them all. I was skeptical at first because I don't really like the shrill, harsh digital sound of the earlier PODs and I thought the Spider might sound the same. But IMO that's not the case at all. The Spider II is the warmest sounding digital amp that I've ever played through. I've played Vox's Valvetronix series and several Behringer digital modeling amps. Both sounded overly harsh and trebley (and I suppose some people like that ear-piercing treble, but not for me). The Spider is warm and smooth. The factory presets aren't the greatest, but if you monkey around with this thing you can produce stunningly deep clean sounds and rich, thick, grinding distortion. And unlike a tube amp, when you stop playing this thing goes completely silent. You can't even tell that it's turned on.

Granted, my style is a little more in the direction of modern rock and metal, so I might be a bit more predispositioned towards this type of sound. The Spider (and for that matter, most of Line6's products) is geared towards the new wave of modern rockers and metal guys. But it does pretty nicely with some other sounds. I can pull off a pretty convincing vintage Fender imitation loaded with reverb and echo, and if you spend a lot of time with the EQ you can do a very nice 70's era Marshall. Needless to say, the high-gain emulations are superb and very convincing. The green Metal channel is extremely dynamic and can produce a number of high-gain sounds, from an old fuzz-box to a modern Recto-type sound. The green Insane channel is absoutely brutal - I never need to push the gain past about 1 or 2 o'clock. The effects are pretty good, although they're somewhat limited. Delays, echos and reverbs are all quite good.

The bottom line is that this amp is geared towards modern alternative/nu-metal. If you play that sort of music you'll be very pleased with this thing. If you play classic rock/blues, then go spend your thousands of dollars on botique tube amps. And don't put this thing down just because you can't play the vintage blues on it. That doesn't mean it's not a good amplifier. That's like saying a '59 Bassman sucks because it won't growl like a Bogner. Keep in mind what these amps are intended for (and how much they cost).

This amp has endured numerous trunk rides and flights of stairs, and I haven't had a single problem with it. Like anything else, take good care of it and you'll be fine.

I've never dealt with Line6.

I've been playing for a little over 7 years. I'm not what you would call a gigging professional, although at one time I played with a band pretty regularly. I'm in college now and this thing mainly serves as a practice/bedroom amp but I wouldn't hesitate to gig with it if I were given the opportunity. It's plenty loud enough. This is a steal of an amp for $299, IMO. You won't find a better, more versatile amp for that price. But like I said, this is mostly for modern rockers, so if you've been playing classic rock or the delta blues for 35 years then you won't like this thing. I'm sure 30 years from now most of us alternative rockers will be bashing whatever is out on the market at that point, talking about how it sure doesn't compare to our old digital modeling amps (wink).

You've seen the other reviews....I'm sure you know the features by now. 4 channels....lots of effects.....

When my 5150 Combo crapped out on me two day before a gig.....I was forced to buy an amp that would pump out some great metal tones like my 5150....but I was on a limited budget....I couldn't spend more than $350.

I went to the local music store and played on some Peavey, Crate, Randall, Crate, and Line6 amps. Out of all of the amps, the one with the most brutal bone crushing tone was the Randall RG75....but a close second was the Spider II 112 combo. The reason I picked the Line6 Spider II over the Randall was the fact that the Spider was much more versitile of an amp. With 4 channesl and several effects, I thought the Spider II was a better deal.

I got the Spider II home 4 hours before the gig that night. I spent about 1 hour playing through it and setting up the 4 channels that I needed......needless to say, I was really nervous going into a big show with a small like like this that I really didn't have any experiance with.

Well my nerves were calmed after the show when I had 4 people (one was the sound man) come up to me and comment on the tone of the amp. I'm not going to lie to you, it didn't put out the wall of sound like the 5150 did....but with the amp being mic'd into a PA system...it didn't have to be. It was plenty loud for me on stage, and it put out a brutal metal tone that everyone loved! I was very surprised at the tone of this amp. I'm actually considering selling my 5150 and getting a Spider head/cab half-stack...thats how much it impressed me.

I've only had the amp for 24 hours now....but it worked flawlessly at the show...and I've never heard of to many problems with Line6 gear.

I was extremely impressed with this amp, and after all of the people that commented on the sound after the show....I will definitly keep it around. When my 5150 get back from the repair shop...I'm going to set it up side-by-side with the Spider II....not for volume, but for overall bone crushing metal tone. If the Spider II sounds better....I'm going to sell the 5150 and take the money and get a Spider II Half-Stack.

Great job line6....I thought I was going to be in big trouble when my 5150 die before the show.....I didn't have much cash and I needed something that would rock.....the Spider II saved my butt. Thanks Line6. For a 112 combo....this thing is the Shit!