Roland AC-90

The amp I bought was made in 2007. First I had a Fishman Loudbox. But that's an amp with a heavy weight and only 'loud'. All the features of the AC90 are described below. The tiltstand is really cool, but the I prefer a more wide angle. I love the 'widechorus'; sounds real stereo. It's a perfect amp in a band (you can even use it as a monitor), and also to perform with only the AC90 for singer-songwriters (in a small caf??).

My Martin with also an Highlander piezo sounds great. Because the guitar has only a straight, clean sound (no eq., vol. or other effects), it all has to come from the amp. So, all the features on the amp are much pretty and you can finetune the equalisation. Even if I play with the piezo of my Godin GLX, the sound is rich, clear, crisp, natural sounding, deep and warm with body. The reverb/delay has it limits, but is useful enough to add some more spatial effect.

I own the amp sinds december 2007 and it never broke down so far. But maybe the time is too short to tell something abouth it.

I played over 30 years now and have had many amps. I play also a Gibson ES 333 on a Fender Deluxe amp (a golden combination!). The AC90 is a complete and portable amp, with a amazing sound. I use it in an band but also as duo with a female singer-songwriter. First I'd like to buy the AER compact 60, but the AC90 has more body and a beautiful chorus.

The AC-90 has the same features as the smaller AC-60 (you may want to also check those reviews) with the exception of 2x45W (rather than 2x30W) power and that the speakers are different. The AC-60 has two 6.5" speackers and the AC-90 has 4 speakers (two 8" and two small tweeters). The main features are 2 channels (one instrument, one instrument/mic). Each channel has volume, bass, middle, and treble. Of course there is also a master volume. Then you can run up to two types of effects at any given time. Specifically, you can select to have reverb or delay (but not both), meaning there is one knob which selects the intensity of the reverb on half the sweep and the duration of the delay on the other half. The delay intensity cannot be changed! Then there is chorus, which comes in three flavors, again, only one dial to control chorus. Unfortunately, with the exception of reverb, you are stuck with the intensity of the other two effects and can only control the "personality" of the effect. One interesting feature is an anti-feedback feature, which acts like a notch filter, and can be used in a manual or automatic mode. Other useful features include: phantom power on the mic channel, some special buttons (magnetic/piezo pickup, shape, mute), and a headphone jack. There are tons of connectors on the rear, e.g. XLR and 1/4 jacks (left and right) for output, aux input (e.g. to play with iPod), tuner out, sub woofer out, and some foot switch jacks. All in all, other than the limited control over the effects and no effect loop, this amp has just about any feature you can possibly think of. With 25 pounds weight it quite nice to carry in the case that comes with it. But the AC-60 is much lighter! A cool reature is a tilt stand and it has the mounting to put it on a speaker stand.

Before buying the AC-90 I played around with the AC-60 in the store (again same controls). In my opinion the AC-90 sounds much better, probably not due to the extra power (2x45W versus 2x30W for the AC-60) but due to the larger speakers (8" vs. 6.5") and the two extra tweeters. I play though a Martin guitars with Highlander pickup/mic combination and Highlander Pro Acoutic Mix DI (PAMDI) preamp. The sound of the AC-90 is nice and very clear. The clarity becomes very evident when you hook up an iPod to the aux in input. It sounds just like a clean PA. With the guitar is sounds very much like plugging in the PAMDI directly into the board. Will the sound make you fall out of the chair? Not sure, but it is the cleanest sound I have heard in an amp. Just to compare I plugged the PAMDI into my Matchless DC-30, Boogie Mark IV, Boogie Triaxis with Simu 2:90 and cabs, and there is no comparison. The AC-90 sounds so much more like the real acoustic guitar. Of course, the other amps are not designed for acoustic guitars. (So please do comments like: how can you compare the AC-90 with a DC-30 :-)

I was disappointed by the reverb, which only sounds ok. I tried a Lexicon MPX 100 and a T-Rex room-mate in the signal path, which sound much better than the buit-in reverb. I would have gladly paid an extra $50-100 to get a killer built-in reverb. The delay is pretty much useless, since you can *not* change intensity nor repeat rate, but only the delay duration. The three chorus flavors are pretty decent.

For the clean sound without effects I would have given the amp a 10. No reduction for a bit of a booming sound at higher volume. This is the price to pay for small size and low weight of the cabinet. A reduction of 1 point for weak reverb/delay.

Time will show.

Hope I will not have to find out!

The amp sound great and I like it a lot. Perfect for any gig. For the size and weight, a good natural sound and plenty of power. The built-in tilt stand and mountings for speaker stand are great! The effects are ok, relatively decent chorus, but weak reverb/delay.

My suggestions to Roland
1) use a higher quality reverb
2) more control over the delay, at least add intensity
3) put a stronger cloth material over the speakers as the thin cloth cannot take any abuse. (This will not add much weight:-)

Otherwise, the unit is worth the hefty price.