Roland Cube-60 (70s-80s Era) 112 Combo

all the functions of a digital recording studio on an analog transistor amplifier

separate overdrive input.

it's from the 70s or 80s and still works.

Early 80's pumpkin orange made in japan cube 60 with a 12" speaker. Strait forward single channel solid state amp with a normal and overdrive input. It has an overdrive knob then a volume(push pull for brite) then your bass midrange and treble controls,then a master volume with reverb. Fairly basic and simple to use. Pre out and In on the back with headphone jack on the back. I nice tight little package.

I used a G&L S500 with probably the hottest pickup they make and it was a very crisp sound. Relatively quiet being a solid state format. Good clean sound and a decent overdrive but I always went thru the normal input and used a fulltone fulldrive 2 which made it like it had 2 channels. If you go into the overdrive input you have a couple options where if you run the overdrive all the way and the volume all the way with your guitar volume all the way THEN you just crack the master volume to 1 and youve got screaming distortion at bedroom levels...2 or 3 for practice with a band. The other option would be to lessen the overdrive to 12oclock and volume the same and work the master up to around the same and you have crunch...clean can be achieved by running the master at 8 or 9 and bringing up the first volume with no distortion and it has a nice clean tone. The reverb is nice but compared to the benchmark of the big F then it is a little lacking. Its decent but nobody will be bringing their surfboards. Overall its a decent clean tone that the number doesnt clearly represent. A clean 60 watt tube amp will blow you away. A 60 watt solid state clean tone will actually have you wishing for more in the band mix.Its more like a 20 watt clean sound of a tube amp.

I bought one of these amps brand new when they first came around back in the late 70's and had it for 5 or so years with zero problems...I bought another cause I liked the one I had and it has given me nothing but dependable service. IF you gigged with this amp you would most likely not need a back up. solid state has problems but nothing like tube amps... when I was a kid in the 60's we had tube amps that were always in the shop. When solid state came around it was a blessing. Tube amps nowadays are much more dependable but solid state is still an economical way to play. Tube amps are expensive,sort of high maintenence if you play regularly and somewhat heavy to carry around.Soild state is virtually maintainence free and lightweight. you get the idea I didnt mean to turn it into a tube vs solid state forum...sorry.

Never needed it

I started playing in 1968 and have had many different pieces of equipment over the years. Ive settled on G&L for my strats after owning 5 different G&L's and 6 different strats before getting a 91 G&L Leo Fender Signature S500. Ive been thru many amps. Im not going to immortalize a little roland cube 60 by saying its the best thing thats ever hit the music scene but or the money they have alot to offer...key term is money. They can usually be had for less than $150 so they offer great value. If you are looking for something for practice to lug up and down stairs then this little guy fits the bill to a Tee. I have owned one for several years and wanted to try other amps so if it were stolen the wife couldnt ***** about me buying a tech 21 tm60 that has interested me of late now could she? and the thief would have a great little amp.
They are what they are...a simple basic amp that sounds decent.

You all know the features.
I traded in a Fender Acoustasonic Jr plus some cash out of pocket for a Cube 60. I play both acoustic and electric in the same gig. When you plug a Strat into the Acoustasonic, it's really clean, too clean!!
I wanted an amp that would handle both clean and provide some electric effects. I thougth the Cube 60 could do it, wrong.
Acoustic wise, the amp was "OK", not as good as the Fender, but I knew it wouldn't be. You'll get a better acoustic sound using the JC setting with higher presense settings. To my surprise, most of the the different amp sounds for the electric sound the same??? This is not my experience with the Microcube?? Yes I adjusted all the settings!

Micro Cube is great, I use two of them... which is why I bought the Cube 60. The cube 60 however did not have the different Amp sounds like the Microcube does, the all sounded the same??? Yes, I tried adjusting the gain, presense, everything I could think of.

N/A

I have other Roland/Boss products and have been very happy with them.
Same Ash is another story!!!!!
2 Weeks after I swapped my amp for the Roland, and I wanted to return the Roland and get my money back. Sam Ash wanted to charge me about $90 to get my original Fendoer back. I talked them down to $30 but swore I would never buy another thing from them. I have my Acoustasonic Jr back, a great acoustic amp, and Sam Ash made $30 on me, but it's the last time I buy anything from them.
Moral of the story... if you trade equipment in, get a 30 day return policy in writting that includes not paying additiona money to get your gear back!!!!!!!!

I've been playing for 30 years.
I own acoustics - Taylor 310Ce, Ibenez AW100, Ovation Balladeer 12 string, Yamaha FG335 from 1976!
Electric - Fender Strat - American
Boss BR532 4 track recorder
Roland Microcube
Fender Acoustasonie Jr (again!)

The features are allright. Nothing remarkable.
Two channels that can be used at the same time, overdrive an normal.
My Cube is the luxury model Cube-60 chorus with a pretty basic chorus sound. There's also reverb.
If I had the original footswitch I think I could get more out of this amp. Now I use it to play punk and metal with Boss MT-2.

Turning all the knobs, except for the master volume, all the way up will result in an okay overdrive.
The normal channel is okay. It's okay. You know OKAY!!! I get no wibes from it, good or bad.
I used to have a Marshall Valvestate II amp and I think it gave more versatile sounds with less effort.
The good thing with the amp is that it doesn't hum at all with clean sounds and the noice level stays quite low with distortion too.
Changing pickups doesn't change the sounds. My guitar is an Ibanez RG prestige with DiMarzio/Ibanez pickups and I think I could get a little more out of them with a different amp.

Very reliable.
I've had it for a couple of years and t has never been serviced because there has been no need for it.

I bought it used so I didn't get the owner's manual.
E-mailed the Finnish customer support who e-mailed me the owner's manual as pdf file.
I was also promised a paper version but it never got to me. That's why I rated this 8 instead of 10.

I've played guitar for at least 10 years and there have been a lot of amps tested by me.
This amp doesn't stand out of the crowd in any way. If my Roland got stolen or broke down I'd propably forget I had it in the first place.
I wish that my Cube turns out to be a collector's piece of some kind and I'll be able to buy a new amp.

I really don't know when this one was made but it is quite old. Propably from 80's. I bought it six or seven years ago. It has two channels, bright and overdrive. Spring reverb is also included.

I have played my Cube with Jackson Pro with Jacksons pickups. Not very good combination. There is no way to get good sound out of this amp. The overdrive fits only in certain kind of rock and the clean sound is quite flat and boring and so on. Definitely this amp is not for heavy music.

This is the best part of the amp. The potentiometers needed some oiling due to aging but that's all. I do believe that you would need an axe to break this one.

Never dealed with them

Very reliable not so good sounding orange hunk.

I think my amp was made in 1983. Not totally sure about the serial numbers etc. Not an overly versatile amp as it lacks quite a lot of presence but if I could find out what sort of JBL speaker the guy below used I'd make that change to it. Solid state, has 2 Channels, Normal and Overdrive, Send and Return, External Speaker out, and a Headphone jack also. I'm yet to have tried it through a mixer via the send and return and am hoping this will be good as my other amp has too much presence through one.. This is mainly just a practise amp at the moment.

Best suits a strat or tele with single coils. Humbuckers just flatten out as it lacks presence and overall punch. I play blues and rock so it will be ok for this, may be great for this if I can get a JBL speaker in there (again)..
Clean channel is really wuite nice, overdrive channel is pretty ordinary. Sounds like it was wanting to be a valve amp sound but didnt cut it.

Given its over 20 years old and all still original I'd say its a great reliable little amp!

Never dealt with them.

Great little amp for blasting away in the bedroom. I think it needs a decent distortion pedal to have a good distortion sound and again, if the guy who said he put a JBL in it can email me (axl@exemail.com.au) and tell me what sort of speaker he put in I think the extra presence would make this s fantastic little amp!

Like other reviewers I find this amp to have no personality, however this can be to your advantage, especially if you use a preamp into the Main In jack on back of amp. I have a Yamaha DG Stomp and it was designed to be used this way. Only the master volume on the Cube is in play in this config. I have a JBL speaker replacing the Roland speaker which added tremendous amount of presence/projection. Highly recommended. I play hard core country to pop to raunchy garage type stuff. Sun Records meets the Beach Boys, drops acid and gets into an onstage brawl with the Brian Jonestown Massacre then joins (in drag) the Donnas.

I use a Tokai Tele, Harmony Rocket, Gretsch Syncromatic Baritone, acoustic 6 and 12 strings through a Boss CE-3 stereo chorus pedal whichs sends Ch.1 to a 1962 Fender Deluxe and Ch.2 through the DG Stomp (mono) to the Main In of Cube 60. I blend the two amps according to what I'm playing, the Chorus (on very low) is used for a fat spacious sound, occasionally I go for more chorus effect with the 12 string and Tele. The great amp emulations from the DG Stomp are beautifully voiced through the Cube 60 w/ JBL. This setup is vitually unlimited. If I want more tube tone, I inch up the volume on the Deluxe. If I want Live at Leeds I phase in the sampled Marshall stack. The Cube 60 is the perfect type of amp for this. In my opinion the Yamaha DG Stomp, now selling for under $100 on eBay, is the most amazing, versatile tone machine of all time, with individual KNOBS, beautiful chicken-head knobs for every parameter, every effect. From Dick Dale tremoloed Twin Reverb to nasty, down in the gutter Sex Pistols fuzz. All barking out of that little orange Cube.

Bought it new 20 years ago. Always works. Had an orange Cube 20 before that was also totally reliable.

Solid

I know the amp was made in the 70's era...but thats all i know about the date. Its a farley versatile amp, but i know its more of a "jazzy"
sorta amp, And Jazz isn't what i play. They effects are ok but the "Chorus" seems to stand out the most in this particular amp. The "Reverb" is pretty decent to but not the greatest. Now what really bothers me is how the Designers, Technitions and engineers of this amp probley ignord the whole "Distortion" part of the amp. I always use my pedal for the real crunch and fuzz that I expected of it. (Because it really sucks) It's pretty much just a louder clean with a bit of fuzz!!! The good part is the "Clean" is great! sounds untill about 7 then starts to fuzz a little bit.

Ive used a Duel hummbucker equipped explorer, and that sounded great, but then i used my strat copy with single coils and that dosn't sound the greatest, but dont get me wrong its does sound good.
In smaller rooms this baby gets a ton of feedback,eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!! I hate that!

Its very reliable! very tough!!! i fell on it, jumped off it and knocked it over by an accident and it works just the same!!! Im still not sure if id use it in a gig? i would probely just rent a stack.

I got the Grind pedal at a music store in welland ontario called Central Music and there was a big box of second hand pedals and so i grabbed the one in best condition and traded it for a crappy guitar. I mostly play punk and metal, but there is the odd time i'll play a diffrent genra. Im goin on almost my 3rd year playen and i own A Strat-copy-,a truetone 12 watt and of course that Roland Cube. Soon im buying a epiphone G-400 or a Gibson Les paul. also i will be buying a Marshall stack when the money comes in but the marshall will be a while.lol.

roland cube 60..solid state...price if i can remember...20 years ago...about 350 canadian...plus tax...(no gst back then)...two channel amp...clean is clean..over drive...always did sound like my dog barfing on the rug..the reverb isnt really that good..basic effects loop that doesnt work that great...good eq though..didnt come supplied with the footswitch...which i feel is pretty crappy on roland's part

this is a very generic sounding amp..the over drive channel is really crappy...thin and shallow sounding..totally semiconducter triac diode electrode stuff...basically sounds artificial..However..the clean channel is quite good at about 5 or 6...after that is gets a bit muddy...i always used the clean channel with various effects to get distortion..delay,.. pedal distortion and phaser usually..basically they never should have made this a two channel amp...because the overdrive really does suck...however lets not forget mr.clean..and the eq adjustments are ok...good mids...i used mainly a kramer pacer series 2 guitar...which on its own had great sounding pickups...i always had fun with this amp...just dont use the overdrive channel and you can get an ok sound depending on your guitar and stomp box set up...

here is where this amps really shines...it is indestructable..even after 20 years of hard core abuse..i jammed with this amp regularily in various beer bands through the years..its been fogotten in the car at -40 C weather..i even pulled it on a sled through a snow storm just to get to the jam..dropped down stairs..beer spilled on it..used for vocals at times...even low volume bass..(against my will and over my drunken body)..its never let me down...the reverb did crap out recently..but no biggie...it really never was that good..but happy birthday to my cube which is now 20 years old...and has been handed down to my 16 year old son...who will now put it through its paces...if i were to gig with this amp...i know i could depend on it..

never had to deal with them..

over all this amp gets a rating of hhhmm lets say 6...only because of its incredible toughness and its ability to with stand years of abuse..i never did like the overdrive but i do like the cleans..its plenty loud enough for jamming....they should have included the foot switch just as a matter of principle...i would not however buy another one...

Late 70's model. Good for easily portable gigging. Open-mike and sit in with the house band stuff, mainly blues. Two channel (clean & distortion), but no pedal to switch. It could be A/B'd, but that detracts from the portability (more crap to carry). Powerful enough. The big drawback: SOLID STATE.

Play it with original 64 Gibson Firebird III, not a reissue, the real deal. It works for blues, classic rock, older stuff. It's pretty noisy because the previous owner cut off the 3rd (ground) leg of the plug. Since there is no polarity switch, it will pick up AM radio at high volumes. Clean channel is OK. Distortion channel is mediocre at best, a hallmark for Roland. They just don't know how to do crunch.

Never serviced. Reliable as all get out. That is standard for Roland SS stuff.

NA

I've been playing nearly 40 years, since the early 60's. I own a lot of other stuff: Music Man 100 RD head and 2X12 130 watt reflex cabinet. Original 70's Morley PWF, Zoom 505 II, Boss SD-1 and DS-1. If it were lost or stolen I wouldn't bother replacing it since I don't gig very much at all any longer. It's an OK amp, but nothing special. Solid state amps just don't cut it for me. Tube tone is the way to go.

Roland introduced this amp in 1979. It was most likely intended to be a "Polytone Mini-Brute" killer, as one amp salesman told me. My Cube-60's serial number has the numbers 7 and 9 in it, so I'm guessing it might be from the model's debut year.
The amp is built like a tank; I took it apart to see what's inside of it and to get a handle on its design. Basically, it's a 2-channel solid-state affair, witt a 12" speaker and 60 watts of output power. It's finished in a distinctive pumpkin-orange shade of tolex, with black plastic corner-protectors. The speaker's aluminum dust cap peaks through the white-and-black grillcloth, completing the Cube-60's late-'70s hi-fi look. The control panel has normal and over drive(yep, overdrive is spelled as two words on the control panel)inputs, and over drive, volume, treble, middle, bass, reverb, and master volume knobs. The volume knob pulls up to add brightness to the tone. The power switch is a sturdy bat-handle thing located on the back of the unit. Also here are a row of 1/4" input jacks: footswitches for over drive and reverb, pre-amp out, main(power)amp in, headphones, and extension speaker output, plus a socket for the 3-amp fuse. All in all, a pretty full-featured amp, even by today's standards.

Sonically, the Cube 60 is best used as a jazz guitar amp. Plugging into the normal input delivers a decent, if slightly dark, clean sound. Even activiting the volume knob's pull-bright function and maxing out the treble knob doesn't make the amp sound very sparkly, with single-coils or humbuckers. Yet there is a hint of warmth in that clean tone, no mean feat for a 1970s solid-state guitar amp. Cranking the volume control adds just a hint of breakup to the tone, but it's not tube-amp overdrive by any means. The reverb , courtesy of a teensy two-spring mechanism, isn't bad, but the reverb knob must be turned up to "5" before it truly colors the tone.
The over drive channel is a different story. The amount of distortion is controlled by both the overdive and volume knobs(and overall output governed by the master volume). Unfortunately, none of the Cube-60's overdriven tones are very appealing, no matter where you set the knobs. The overall sound is brackish and fuzzy. If one good thing can be said about the over drive channel, it's that it's louder than the normal channel--loud enough to play in clubs or jams with.

It seems to be a very dependable amp. The few times I've played out with it, I didn't have one problem with it. Again, it's built like a tank, very solidly designed and put together. I'm keeping my Cube-60 as an "absolute emergency" amp

Overall, the Cube-60's is a charmingly kooky and compact piece of late-1970s amplification. It could definitely be used for amplifying other things, not just electric guitar.

This amp was made in the early 80s and I have owned it since 1986. It has two channels, clean and overdrive. The channels are not switchable, it depends what you plug into at the start. One of the features I like about the combo is that all the controls are at the top and back of the amp. For small gigs this means you can point it out towards an audience and adjust without having to move equipment around. It has an FX loop that really takes the noise out of some older effects (EH Electric Mistress....y'get sea sick at stage volume). The reverb fitted was a cheap tinny thing with no real depth. I replaced it with a spring reverb unit from an old Peavey...much deeper and clearer. The 12" speaker was a pressed tin thing as well. Fortunately it didn't last long at loud volumes, well it did tend to distort even on clean. In conclusion for this section, this amp is good for live gigs in pubs/small clubs if you want clean sounds or you use fx units to get your sound. As a stand alone it has its faults but it certainly has charachter for a trannie (lovely shade of tangerine!!!)

Three very different guitars are used through this. An Ovation electroacoustic first. Nice clean sound with a surprising amount of 'warmth'(but nowhere near valves). There is a 'bright' pull switch but this breaks beer glasses and attracts small dogs and insects so I don't bother with it. Twin humbuckers....does nothing for either. Even with a Black Widow 12" replacement speaker the sound is a little too flat unless your using some fx unit. Single coils...now here is something else. Again a surprising amount of life and warmth. Very bright without being 'sharp'. Even using the 'overdrive' channel you can get useful bluesy sounds out of the thing. Clean all the way up the dials but a little bit of unwanted distortion on the bottom stirngs with everything wanged up to 10. Needs some top and middle taking off to correct it.

As you would expect from a trannie amp...velly reliable. Speaker went dead on me after 8 years but I think that was to be expected. I now tend to use this as a backup to my valve combo but it was only ever called into service once.

Never had to deal with them. Sent me some leaflets for a couple of years but then must have got bored 'cos I didn't buy anything!

I thought people had forgotten about these things til I read a review from Guitarist. They interviewed Steve Hackett. He mentioned that the use of amps was like a quest for a perfect sound so he constantly changed amp set ups. But he did say that when he played blues gigs down his local he would grab his Roland Cube! I have loaned this amp out a few times and had a few offers for it. As you would guess, it is not exactly a collectable, nor an amp noted for its tonal qualities through the years. But it has character in its appearance and sound and it dared to be a little different (I think you could get them in purple and even silver!!) and for that it deserves a little place in the guitarists hall of fame

This is a solid state 60W combo often referred to as a a jazz amplifier. It has two channels; clean and overdrive, EQ and reverb. Reverb and overdrive can be controlled by a fottswitch that goes in on the back. Also on the back you a headphone jack and outputs for external speakers. No effects loop.

I don't know when this one was built but I'm guessing sometime in the seventies or eighties.

With these features in mind one must say that this is surely an amplifier best suited for clean sounds. The overdrive isn't really a overdrive. The sound gets a little bit blurry and somewhat louder when you put on the overdrive channel, but that's it. No heavy distortion.

For me, this is all I need in an amplifier. But I have to admit it feels quite "poor" considering the digital-amp-revolution that's going on nowadays. So it's not that I'm not happy with this amp, for the right purposes it's GREAT, but in competition with other 60W amplifiers the features seem a little bit few.

I use a Danelectro DC-3 through some pedals( Nobels chorus, danelectro Tuna Melt, Ibanez metal charger) and a Microverb. It is kind of noisy in our rehearsal room (don't know if this is the right term for the place that you rehearse, but I hope so...). And I think it is everywhere. But I'm not sure it is more than the usual amplifier. I've had this for such a long time. Before that I couldn't really decide whether an amp was noisy or not.

My last band was an instrumental one; we played both slow and almost psychedelic pop and surf tunes. I can surely say that you should NOT use this amplifier for surfmusic. But for the other stuff we played; kinda like Red House Painters playing instrumental surf, it was superb. It gives me a harsh, metallic and distinct tone. I play with heavy strings and tune my guitar down a whole step, which should affect my tone very much indeed. But the fact is that when I plugged in my guitar in my friends budget and new Hughes & Kettner 60W combo it sounded crap! A weak, thin and soft tone that I do not want.

This amp handles high volumes really well. I haven't once heard any distortion on the clean channel, yet I feel I have pushed it quite hard. But you really don't have to; this amp is POWERFUL. When I first tried it in our last rehearsal room I got the impression that it was much more powerful than the 100W Marshall combos that we had there.

Of course you can't do so much with this amplifier, but one the other hand it is an amp that can "concentrate" on being just one thing: an amp for guitarists that just want an amp that brings you a very clear and good clean sound, magnificent for solo playing.

I'd say it's reliable. It's quite small, yet very, very heavy. The only thing I feel can brake are the input jack, which often is the case with amps that are regularly used and old (am I not right?). I had some problem with it about six months after I bought it. It made some buzzes. Easily fixed though.

And as mentioned you can crank the volume up all the way and it doesn't distort a bit. Seems reliable to me.

I'd defintitely use it without backup, I already have.

Bought it used...

This is my first "big" amplifier and I didn'really try any other amps at that time when I bought it. But I've been playing for some six or seven years and I know now what sound I like and don't. I'm a student with not so much money so when I found an amp for about 130$, of course I had to buy it. I knew the chance wouldn't come along again soon. But then my interest for instrumental surf music was much bigger than now. My musical goal now is to play slow and relaxed music, kinda like Low. So now my Cube-60 is PERFECT! I really love how it thickens my sound and make my guitar sound heavy and hard. I've played on/tried some of the most popular amps available here in Sweden; Marshall combos, Hughes & Kettner combos, Peavey etc. But none of them have given me the special sound that the Roland Cube-60 does.

If it where stolen or I was to buy a new amp I would most definetely refer to the sound of my Roland Cube-60. My next amp just has to have the ability to sound like this.

For me, that like a metallic, hard and distinct tone, this amp is the best. Are you looking for an amp for punk, metal, or any other hard or fast rock, this is probably nothing for you. As I said earlier, this is an amp for those of us that likes to play with a clean guitar sound most of the time.