Music Man RP-65 112

Has everything I need. The switchable reverb is nice. Never use the phasor--a little too 70's sounding for me.

I love the sound of this amp. I play a standard strat, and this thing kicks ass with a tube screamer. I usually set the gain around 4 and the master around 7 and it kills. It is not as loud as a twin, so it breaks up more naturally at lower volumues, making it perfect for clubs. I play blues, reggae, and zydeco, so versatility is at a premium. If its not loud enough then you play WAY too loud. This amp is clean enough for reggae "chinging" and also capable of nice WARM distorted sounds with a tube screamer. Metal players will hate this amp.

I've had it two years, broke once, but that's to be expected with as much as I use it. It gets beat up and thrown around when I go on the road, and has only failed once.

I love this amp. I have been playing professionally for ten years, and have never had an amp I like more. It is very lightweight and portable for the sound. When I play larger stages, a louder amp is not necessary because it's miced. In clubs it shines..giving a nice warm tone. All in all, I suggest this amp for anyone looking for a good sounding workhorse. It would be perfect for almost all styles, although it does not handle heavy distortion well.

Made in about 1978, 65 watts, 2 x 6CA7 power tubes, LM 1458 ops amps for pre-amp, reverb, PI, etc., hi/low effects in/out on the face, reverb, a phasor, hi/low switch, foot switch.

I play guitars with humbuckers. This amps has depth and firm bottom. Not a thin amp at all. Very full and rich sounding. Those who criticize hybrid amps have not heard Music Man amps!

Never a problem since 1988 when I bought it used and the previous owner painted a skull and crossbones on it.

Well, Music Man only existed from 1974 - 1984, but Ernie Ball has posted all their schematics and even issued a technical notice, so that's pretty good. However, I bought the amp used from the String Shoppe in Columbus, Ohio. The salesman at that time was a typical salesman dick, but he's probably not there anymore.

Excellent amp, can't believe that more people are grabbing these amps while they are still affordable. The list of who's playing Music Man is very impressive.

This review is for a circa 1981 RP-65. Features are:
- Phasor
- Reverb
- Master Volume
- Three band eq
- Bright and Deep switchs
- Hi / Low power switch
- High and low level effects loops (pretty advanced for 1981!)

This is the last version of this amp which uses 6L6CC output tubes - two Sylvania STR's as a matter of fact.

Clean Sound:
- crisp and articulate with a single coil
- clean even when cranked
- warm with a good neck humbucker
- not especially touch sensitive, though...

Overdrive Sound:
- Surprisingly good crunch
- A little muddy with few harmonics
- Would benefit from a better speaker.

- The Reverb is too bright at extreme settings.

- Take me back to 1975 with that Phasor, man!

- The clean, phased sound was nice, but not as inviting as a Roland Jazz Chorus.

- The stock, Eminence speaker sounds muddy and is inefficient. Plugging the amp into a 2X12 cab loaded with a couple Celesion Vintage 30's made an tremendous improvement to the overdrive sound.

- It didn't take distortion pedals very well. I tried a Fulltone '69, an MXR Distortion + and a Sobbat Drivebreaker 2 with grainy results.

-I was able to nail the opening of U2's, 'Mysterious Ways', using Strat, a deep, medium speed phasor setting, a little reverb with the master volume cranked.

- Overall, its sound is good but not inspirational.

Reeks of over-engineering! Built for World War 4!

The PC board is thick and held is down by 5 screws.

The chassis is heavy steel and all hardware is chassis mounted.

Even the tube heat sheild (which doubles as a heatsink for the power transistors) is super thick, coated steel.

Give it a cap job, set the bias and wail away for another 25 years.

Overall, this puppy's clean sounds are its strength making it a good candidate for blues, country, jazz. It's overdrive sounds are limited, though. However, if you appreciate something that's extremely well built, consider it.

The RP112 is a very versatile amp with lots of features including reverb, built-in-phaser, deep and bright switches ? but the basic sound already convinces as it sounds very musical and full. No wonder EC played MM amps exclusively for some time.

The power tubes (6CA7/EL34) provide a warm and sweet basic tube sound. The controls allow a wide range of different styles from clean tele twang to full shred (for the latter a stompbox is needed, though). With my strat and a chorus, it absolutely shines and I can perfectly nail sounds ranging from RHCP to Nirvana ? although most of the time I play different styles from jazz to rock.

Through many years, this amp has never let me down ? except that the foot switch crapped out one day. It is a basic design which was easy to fix, though.

Never dealt with them but never needed to either.

This amp is a gem and I will keep it! Due to its compact style and versatile sounds, it?s the perfect musician?s working horse. Once in a while a pair of EL34s is all this baby ever demands.

Read other reviews.

The other reviews describe the tone as being "fender"; I think of it as being a cross between a fender princeton and a Roland JC-120 (both amps that I've owned and used). The clean tone is amazing, and the sweet phaser is quite a bonus. The overdrive tone (gain 3-6 w/humbuckers) is also amazing (sounds like turning a princeton all the way up, but with more definition). The distortion sound (gain above 6, generally speaking) is, umm, unique. Definately some solid state fuzziness in there, but still controllable via volume knob or playing. Dynamics don't squash. Good for chords but useless for modern lead styles- not enough compression or increase in sustain. Overdrive pedals don't change the response- they just make the amp louder (it's just like turning the gain up). I tried several distortion pedals that work with my all-tube amps and they all sounded nasty with this amp. A tube-based preamp (like a Tube works) may change matters but I don't have one to try.

I haven't had it long enough to know, but mine seems to still have the original tubes in it (or the previous owner was a NOS freak). Seems as well built as a vintage fender amp.

This is a sweet rhythm amp but shredders/tappers should look elsewhere.

65 watt Hybrid Combo, solid state pre-amp with tube output stage, single 12 inch speaker, overdrive, reverb and Phaser. Usual tone controls and standby switch, also a half power switch.

Do you like the Fender sound? If so you will enjoy this amp, it sounds very much like an early princston combo, nice warm amp, very good clean sound, good reverb and the phaser is a very cool option, now the weak points, just like a fender the distortion is a little loose, pretty good for blues but for anything heavy you will have to use a pedal, pretty loud but just about right for a 65 watt tube combo.

for a 25 year old amp I never had a problem, just the usual dirty pots which cleaned right up.

out of buisness.

For the price this amp was a steal, unfortunatly I have never really been a fender lover, not that they are bad, just not really the sound I look for in amps, I give this a 10 for its value and reliablity, if i was looking for a fender i would try and find one of these older musicman models first!!...btw, eric clapton use to use these exclusively, so that should tell you something about their sound!

This amp is described below a lot better than what I could do, as far as specs are concerned, but basically, it's a combo amp, one 12 inch speaker, one channel, reverb, phas0r, bright and deep switches, and your basic array of treble, middle, bass knobs. Volume's the knob on the right, gain's the knob on the left. It's hybrid amp, like mentioned below.
When I bought this amp, there were actually a lot of prblems I didn't know about at the time. Whoever had last replaced the tubes had put 6v6's in instead of 6l6's, and someone had gone in and replaced a few diodes and not put in the correct replacements. Also, it was operating at the wrong voltage, which was something that was due to a part being installed incorrectly at the factory. I learned all this when I changed the tubes to a new shiny set of the wrong tubes (I just brought in the ones that were in it, and he gave me the same ones), and promptly cooked it from stem to stern. Even so, prior to all this, I played it for about 3 1/2 years, and the only real problem I ever had was that it wasn't quite loud enough to cut through against drums. I believe that has changed. It's a much louder amp now, almost too loud for what I use it for, which tends to be playing by myself late at night in the basement. My footswitch for the reverb and phas0r was cut out by some idiot long ago, and I sort of miss it, but I use the Phas0r rarely enough and the reverb often enough that it's not too big an issue. If I played guitar in a band, I think it would be loud enough to play live, at least in venues the size I usually play in, but I'm not positive, and it might be a really harsh experience for the audience (more to follow). You know what would be a cool feature though, and this isn't a fault of the MM, but how come bright and deep switches are never available on a foot pod? I feel like I'd use THAT all the time.

I use this amp with my trusty Hag III, or occasionally with a little piece of junk Silvertone. I almost never play it without having an MXR Distortion + involved, and on top of that there's Big Muff, a Blue Box, and very rarely, a Walco Sound-Go-Round involved in the equation. On even more special occasions, the Acetone Fuzzmaster makes a welcome appearance. Before I had it fixed, I was a Neck & Bridge pickup man almost exclusively, but since it's come back, I've been warming up to the Neck & Middle setting as well. The amp is 10 times brighter since it came back, and the Hag is not the beefiest guitar in the world. I play a lot of dissonant/atonal jangle type stuff, or when I'm of the mind, just plain old incoherent noise, and I like my tone more on the ugly side if possible, and the amp delivers, though it has a pretty nice clean tone too. It's very very bright - almost piercingly so, so you almost have to tame it with distortion. It's kind of hard to get the settings just right on it to get rid of the shrillness without losing clarity, but it can be done if you play around with the tone knobs and the bright switch. The deep switch stays on most of the time, and even with it, it's not a bassy amp. there are nice lows to it, but nothing that's going to shake you. Not much noise, at least with my guitar in my basement. Occasionally it picks up radio stations like anyone elses, but not very often.
When I bought that amp, they went on and on at the music store about how sweet the clean tone was, and how it really had a crappy overdrive sound, and I sort of nodded my head along with them, but the truth is, I was in love with the overdrive from the first second I heard it. Don't get me wrong, the clean tone is really clear and bright, especially with a tiny touch of Phase, but when you turn the gain up past 6 or so, you get a really beautiful break up when you attack the strings, and it fades to a barely discernable crackling sound when you back off. It doesn't sound distorted so much as slightly damaged or fragile, but in a really cool way. there's no chunk at all, no matter how high you crank it, and I hate to use a word with so many bad connotations, but it's sort of mushy sounding at high volumes. At least the bottom end is. The low notes have this tendency to sing in this really weird way where the harmonics sort of shift against each other, and you get this really wearly protesting sound, while the highs are very shrieky and hissy and aggresive. it's really easy to make this amp sound like you're destroying it, and then snap back to the clear tone again. Since it came back, it takes a lot of volume to make it start to break up - almost more than I would like.
With the MXR, you get a lot warmer sound out of it, even a sort of old heavy metal type thing, if you turn it up. The strings really sing in that searing sort of way, which is really nice. Mixing the distortion and the gain doesn't so much except give the distortion pedal a boost, but it's nice to be able to switch between two types of overdriven sound. For the first three or four years I've owned this amp, it hasn't really had a clean tone to speak of, so it may take some getting used to now that it does. I'm not much a clean tone person.
the Phas0r is neat and fun, but not very useful. It reallyt only works at the highest and the lowest speeds, and it mostly adds sweeping hiss to your sound, so you sound like your trying to play in outer space but not quite pulling it off. Kind of a cheap effect that I never found much use for, especially since I can't turn it off without walking over to the amp and twisting a knob. The reverb is really dirty and harsh sounding, but again, in the cool way. I t mostly seems to add over-noise to what you play - I woulnd't count on getting any surf sounds out of it or anything, especially since it seems to take quite a bit of gain before it kicks in. You have a dial to control it from one to ten,

The way I see it, if I played this amp for four years with the wrong tubes and some wrong diodes, and it's been operating at the wrong voltage since the mid 70's, and I've only had to fix it once, there can't be much that I could do to it on any stage I'm likely to stand on that would have any major or permanent effect. Giggin is more a question of whether it's loud enough, and as soon as I round up a drummer, I'll put that to the test.

not applicable, but the guy I took it to is absolutely awesome. he fixed the bass amp when it was blowing fuses, and it came back sounding better than it did new.

I've been playing guitar for maybe five years, and this is one of the big reasons why. I would definitely look for another if I lost this one - it's not the same sort of love as the Hag, but close. A little more bottom end would be nice, but I honestly woulnd't want to lose the high end it has now in the bargain, so I can't complain. It's harsh and nasty pretty much all the time, and I love that about it. Comparisons to Fender are inevitable and warranted, and it's not like this amp has so much more than they do or anything, but it's a good little amp, and I like the smaller amount of headroom before it starts getting disagreeable, and to be honest I like the acres of brightness. It kind of makes you sound a little amatuerish somehow, because it's so willing to amplify over-ring and incidental string noise and stuff - I can't imagine it sounding quite as cool in the hands of someone who plays really carefully. It's sort of like it understands that "better" musicians will be playing on "better" amps, so it's top of the line for the second stringers, which is really endearing. You have to really rock to make it sound really good, but when you do, it will.

The RP-65 is a small, single-channel combo, about the same size as a Deluxe Reverb, with a single 12" (haven't checked the EIA code, so i'll go with "unknown origin," but it does have the MM label). As you probably know if you're reading this, it's a hybrid amp, with SS pre and tube (2x6L6) power, and at present it's the only remotely solid-state amp I own. I'd guess this amp was built in the late 70's.
Knobs from left: Gain, T/M/B, Reverb, Phas0r (how el33t!), Rate, Volume. Bright and Deep(!) switches are also provided, and two different levels of line in/outs can be found to the right of the volume knob (100mv and 3v-- these appear to be insert-style stereo setups, since the jacks are supposed to act as both ins and outs, but I ain't tried it). Back panel has a three-prong cheater outlet and a polarity switch, and speaker impedance is switchable 4/8 with jacks provided for two speakers.
Two-button footswitch controls phaser and reverb, and is hardwired (stock-- when you think about it, and all the amps in the world missing their footswitches, it's a kind of neat idea!) with ~20 feet of cable.
This amp is, like all the MMs i've seen, very Fenderish in vibe, tone and functionality. It's got a very no-nonsense look to it that is more attractive than the SF Fenders of its time, and the feature set is similar-- although I do wish it had trem too!

I've always kind of thought of Music Man amps as yet another "poor man's Fender," and I've had ethical problems with solid state (still do!), but when I checked this thing out i was highly impressed with its versatility and tonality.
The first thing the "modern amp" player notices is that the gain knob behaves entirely differently from an MV Marshall, or even an MV SF Fender for that matter. With gain set at 0, the tone is not absent-- it's perfectly clean and plenty loud. And the clean is very sweet, lively-- almost tube, and certainly in the Fender class.
Push the gain up to 2-3, and you start getting a nice overdrive that is much more reminiscent of an actual cranked amp than the average MV screech beast-- very pleasing with either single coils or humbuckers. But metal sounds are not this amp's forte, as you might have guessed, and while the knob on 4-10 might be fun for some (and I'll probably use it eventually in the studio for effect), the sound is way too mushy and harsh to really be useable as a "metal tone." The low end up goes up dramatically as you crank this knob.
The bright and deep switches are great, too. I've tried to convince myself to go flat as much as possible in everything I do, but the deep switch makes this thing sound enormous and warm-- it's hard to resist. In general the tone controls are more flexible than my SF Bandmaster or the SFDR I used to own.
I am not a fan of spring reverb; this one sounds about average, which means I won't be using it. The phaser is really great, though. I'm not a big fan of phased sounds, but it's really neat to have it in an amp-- and it sounds fantastic. The rate is pretty widely variable. Unfortunately, the depth is set up conservatively so you can't get totally wacky (guess that's why I have a boss pedal). But the actual phaser itself is very rich. Every time I switch it on, my cats start looking around to see where the sound is coming from. :)
I will say that it may be difficult to use this amp in a louder-rock kind of context (although make no mistake, it's not at all short on actual output capability-- 65 watts from two 6L6s is pretty heavy). Just like my SF Fenders, this amp tends not to like most modern metal distortion pedals. My secret weapon of late, the el cheapo Soundtank Powerlead, sounded great through my '64 Princeton, but not so through my '69 Bandmaster Reverb-- and not with this amp either. In both cases it seems the sweet-sounding clean is produced through a pretty wacky EQ curve which causes the pedal to sound either too middy and dull with bright disengaged, or too harsh and transistory with it engaged. I've had really good results in the past with my Rats or my MXR Distortion II through my Bandmaster, but this is not quite the sound I'm looking for with my current projects. If I want to gig this, I'm going to have to keep twiddling knobs with the Soundtank, I guess, until I find a happy medium between the clean and the massive, inimitable CHUNG of Mr. Plastic Pedal.
If it tells you anything, I committed the heresy of all heresies: traded my '64 Princeton for this amp and a bit of pocket change. I guess what it came down to was the following: a) Side by side, the Princeton sounded a bit more lifelike, purty and detailed, but the Music Man came awfully close, and sounded bigger. b) I was too lazy to install a 3-prong in the Princeton, and was sick of getting shocked whenever I veered too close to the mic stand in the studio. c) The crunch of the Music Man is unlike anything I own at present, and it's a very cool tone, much like the Princeton cranked-- only I don't have to piss the neighbors off across our thin walls to get the sound. d) This amp is ultra-reliable and quite common (ain't no one referring to Music Mans as "vintage" on eBay, thank god), and I wouldn't feel weird gigging it... Whereas, after the "beer incident" that I encountered in a club courtesy of some rather drunken and overenthusiastic fans not long ago, the Princeton wasn't going ou

Runs perfectly after being around just about as long as me. Word of mouth tells me that this is not an unusual thing, either.

I don't know that I'd "pay" this much again for this amp, but I'm certainly pretty happy. I'd been looking for a smaller combo to lug to practices, and while I'd probably be happier with a channel switcher like a VHT 50/12 (to match my 50/ST) or a Yamaha T-series combo (to go with my T100), this will do the trick for a while... once I get it to like my Powerlead. For me, this is like having a Princeton or Deluxe (both of which I've owned), only with more power, more flexibility, and no worries about screwing the thing up and losing my "investment." I'll be looking for more of these in the future.
Anybody got a good MM amp website? :)

This 65 watt combo amp features one clean channel, solid-state preamp, 3 band EQ, bright switch, deep switch, reverb, phasor, twin power tubes (EL34's ?) and a single 12" speaker. There is a footswitch for the reverb and phasor. On the bottom of the amp are holes for casters which I do not have. There are two 1/4" jacks on the front labeled "100 millivolt lo-level line-in and line-out" and "3 volt hi-level line in and line-out" if you plug in a preamp into either, it will go through the volume control. If you plug in headphones, you get the preamp output, but there is no way to use this as an effect loop. I rate this a 6 because there is only one channel and distortion is limited to turning up the gain control.

The sound quality is excellent. Clean tones sound great. The "Bright" and "Deep" switches have a large impact on the sound. The bass response is excellent. I play blues and classic rock with a Strat and a Les Paul and this amp is ideal for blues licks and rhythm. For distortion, I use a Boss BD-2 Blues Driverpedal which gives a good "crunch" to power chords and sustain to leads. After playing solid-state amps, I would never give up the warm sound of tubes. With 65 watts, this amp is very loud. The phasor effect is very weak on my amp and I am not sure that it works propery, also the reverb is not working, but I use a delay pedal instead. The overall sound quality is great if you play clean blues or mild crunchy distortion. Players needing high gain may not like the sound as much.

Aside from the reverb and possible phasor problems, I have had no problems with this particular amp, and my friend owned it before me and had no problems either. But, because of the age of the amp, and tubes seem more fragile than all solid-state parts, I won't risk too much abuse.

I have never dealt with this manufacturer and I don't think that they are still in business anyway.

Tube amps have a sound that is often imitated but I don't think that it will ever be duplicated. I love the sounds this amp can make and I wish it never got stolen or broken because I have seen the kind of prices guitar stores charge for old tube amps and I could never get the kind of deal I got for this one (the other guitarist in my band upgraded to a Marshall head). I would recommend that anyone shopping for this kind of amp, play it with your guitar and effects set-up, because different guitars have a large impact on the way it sounds. The humbuckers of the Les Paul produce very high gain compared to the Strat, and I must adjust many of the control settings to equalize the output.