Roland Cube-60 112 Combo

I bought two of these solid state amps in 2005. One I use in the studio because I can get a variety of very nice sounds at a low volume and one for playing live. The amp is compact and easily portable. As others have mentioned, it would have been a bonus if channel one had more selections than just the clean jazz chorus. Channel two has several usable models to choose from. An effects loop would have also been a bonus. The onboard effects are OK, I only use the chorus occasionally. An effects master knob would have been another nice feature. At 60watts the amp has plenty of power for small to medium gigs. Having a built-in noise-gate is a very helpful. The amp requires a non-latching momentary switch to change channels and turn on/off effects. Best bet is to get one from Boss.

The guitars that I use with this amp are Hamers, a PRS, an Ibanez and a Schecter with a wide variety of pick-ups. All work well with this amp. I enjoy the clean jazz chorus sound for most of the rhythm work. I orginally bought this amp after watching the Roland video demo and hearing the dyna-comp model. I liked the way that you could control the clean/distorted sound of the amp with your guitar volume. In practice I found that when soloing even with alot of gain that the notes would just drop off and not sustain. I now only use the Marshall model with the gain at 3 to get those nice crunchy Marshall chords and lead lines. I use a Tech21 DD-1 pedal for soloing with the gains setup about halfway. This gives me four distinct sounds out of the amp:

1) Channel One - Jazz Chorus - Clean Rhythm
2) Channel One - Jazz Chorus w/DD-1 - Jazz solo(ala Larry Carlton)
3) Channel Two - Marshall - Crunchy Rhythm/Lead lines
4) Channel Two - Marshall w/DD-1 - Heavy Rock/Metal Distortion

I did make a few mods on my Roland amp for live performance. With the amp up about halfway(which is pretty loud) I noticed that there were dead spots in the sound at different locations in front of the amp. I suspected that the metal grill was too close to the speaker and was "choking" it. I added a 1/2" molding along the inside of the front face of the cabinet and remounted the grill on the molding. The 1/2" of extra room between the speaker and the grill eliminated the dead spots. I also took the painstaking time to cut 4mm off around the circumference of the speaker hole and mounted a Celestion GT12T-75 to replace the bland Roland speaker and that really added the tone I was looking for in each of the four sounds from the amp.

I have owned Roland products for several decades and never had a problem with any of them. I suspect this amp will carry on that tradition.

See above. I have never had to contact them.

I have been playing guitar pro and semi-pro for over thirty years. All styles of music: Rock, country, pop, funk, folk, progressive, jazz, etc. I have owned at one time or another almost every major brand of guitar and amp that was on the market. For ~$350 you cannot go wrong with this amp. It will work for the pro as well as the bedroom jammer. The other two solid state amps that I bought to compare to the Roland were the Tech21 Trademark 60 and the Randall RG75G2 which were both more expensive. I choose the Roland. It is not like playing a real tube amp, but it is pretty close.

Made in 2005 I guess. Very versatile for jazz, rock, soft stuff. I use the external speaker jack to hook up my 80 watt tweeter/crossover and use it with the acoustic setting and presence all the way up. I wish they would stop trying to squeeze chorus/flange/phaser/tremelo all on one knob and just have chorus depth and speed. Same for the reverb, just a depth knob will do. I use the bright switch with the JC clean a lot. Plenty of power. I can play with the band at half volume. Huge transformer and heat sink inside. 12" Chinese speaker with weird size frame. More on that later.

I use an LP and Tele, and the Tele really sings with the JC clean and acoustic settings. The LP is best with the Blackface and stack settings. I don't expect this to emulate a $2000 Mesa or even a Fender Twin, but it does sound good on it's own. I also own a Dleuxe reverb (1972) but it needs a rest, and I get tired of lugging it around. The cube 60 is light (32 lbs) vs 65 lbs for my DR. I like the Marshall stack setting the best of the mondo-gain models. I also use this top play bass once in a while. Clean stays clean uo to 8 or 9 on mine. You will not be able to switch spaekers easily. You will need to cut the opening in the cab which is 1/2" particle board. I tried several of my Celestions, an EV, and an Eminence, none would fit the opening. The back is glued on, so you cannot place it from the back.
Dispite having two tuned bass ports, and insulation in the cab, it is in serious need of bass response.

I would use it without a backup. Chinses made, but excellent construction.

I can never get a hold of them, but their website is nice.

Been playing 30 years. Modeling amps come and go. Don't buy it for the effects, but take a little time to tweek them. They are hyper-sensitive to adjustment, which is good. A lot of research went into this model. Aside from the crappy generic=sounding speaker, it's a great amp to play with. Enough sounds to please all your friends and piss off all your neighbors.

Bought it new in Dec 2004. All the basic effects, EZ to use in a live show. Absolutely no noise when you aren't playing which makes it terrific to mic for the house. Small, light, and loud. The only addition I could ask for is a depth control for the effects, but that would add cost.

Excellent amp emulations that are EZ to dial in and EZ to change on the fly.

My second Roland amp, never any problems.

This amp will easily do any range from brilliant JC clean to full squeal OD at a click. Should note that footswitches are sold seperately and use a 9v battery and standard guitar cable. No cover available from Roland, but Lecover.com sells one to fit. I've been playing for 38 years and this amp made me put away my beloved tube Marshall DSL-401, and cost half as much. I mostly use a Carvin DC-135T. The Cube 60 is very good amp for small gigs or recording. I am setup and be ready to play live in just a couple mins. Don't dismiss it because of the low cost.

You know the features already!!!

Never Use any of the Effects on this amp!!! I am re-submitting a review from a previous review. When dialed in right this amp can sound very nice. I actually got a compliment from a fellow guitarist at a gig the other night. I guess like all amps you gotta fiddle with it to find some kind of tone. When i use this amp i don't use any effects, don't use any of the amp models. I just use the JC clean. Thats all you need. For size and price this amp is not bad. Use a good od pedal with this amp and you've got a winning combo. I actually let the other guitarist that gave me a compliment use my rig, because they played after us, and the amp to my ears sounded pretty damn good. How can something non-tube sound so good? I was dumb founded. In my first review i flogged the cube 60. Good amp Good price.

2005 Model - See the other reviews or the Roland web site for the specs. My guitar instructor bought one and recommended it - I checked out the competition, and I'm very happy.

I've played my 50th Ani. American Deluxe Strat and Les Paul classic through it and it sounds fine. The distortion has good density and doesn't break up on decaying notes - pretty darn smooth. It is not noisy at all, and I find I can get quite a lot of different sounds out of it. The clean channel is very clean, and if I were ever to play live or jam with someone I might take my POD PRO XT to run on the front end with the pedal board, but I don't play live any more and I just wanted a versatile practice amp that had some portability just in case. I also thought I might try miking it and recording it even though I have the POD.

The effects are okay and I'm glad they exist, but they're limited. I find that the chorus is often more than I want even at the lowest setting, but it's not really a big deal.

Seems very solid. It has a metal grill over the speaker. I'm also a keyboard player and this would work for keyboards too. Knobs have a good solid feel and are of a fairly large diameter. Personally, I hate knobs that are the diameter of a pencil, so it's cool that these knobs are bottle cap size and great.

I've owned at least 20 pieces of Roland gear in my lifetime and I have 7 pieces right now and they're all working. The Juno 106 has the chip problem but as a whole Roland gear has a great reliability and durability record.

Great once you get them, and they've sent me parts for free in the past. I believe the warranty is 3 years, but if it lasts 3 days it'll last 30 years.

Just what I needed. Top of the line practice/jamming amp or middle of the road gigging amp. That's my take. You can't expect programmable effects on an amp of this quality in this price range. I looked at the Line 6, Marshall, and Pevey eqivalents, but the cube had all the ingredients I wanted: Quality sound, Small size (fits in my car), Solid/durable construction, Amp modeling, effects, ability to be somewhat loud (I've never had it past 2, but I hear from the other reviews it can boom).

BOTTOM LINE: A great little amp for the price.

2 channels: clean channel is a JC Chorus emulation which is very good but I don't really use it because I think it's too "sparkly" and "beautiful", just not my cup of tea, and besides it really sucks for distortion pedals. Lead has 8 emulation modes (including Acoustic...God knows why).

====>NO EFX LOOP, which really pisses me off beacause I love the 5150 emulation ("Metal") and my Boss DD-6...and I can't use them together. (delay sounds like crap before the distortion).

Incorporated EFX are good, but they are just useless beacause you have very little control over them, pretty much just an "on/off" option.

Great emulation of distorted amps for the money, a lot of variety.
I really hate the classic (way too much "twang", sounds artificial), R-FIER (pretty much the definition of "muddy" and "unarticulate") and Dyna-Amp (neat concept, but the distortion sucks in this mode).
Love the Brit Combo and Metal settings though.
All the other modes are OK.
Again, great value for the money paid.

Don't use it that much, but it has never failed.

Never dealt with them, but it pisses me off that I can't find in their website any way to give the company some feedback about their products.

I just wanted to write this to vent out the design flaws that I think are preventing this amp to be an excelent amp instead of just a very good amp.
This is supposed to be a perfect amp for small gigs, but I can't really grant this amp that status without an EFX loop.
I mean, come on!...how many "pro" amps come without an EFX loop these days???

Incorporated EFX:
Well, if you can't put enough knobs in the amp to offer proper configuration for them...then just don't put them and save us the "this is amp is very versatile because it has tons of EFX incorporated" crap.

Clean Channel:
I know that the guys in Roland think that they JC sound is best clean channel ever, and I agree that is sounds absolutely beatiful, but that doesn't mean that everyone likes to use it. I would really prefer using the Black Panel mode for the clean channel for instance.
I think it would make much more sense having two "twin" channels, each one with the 9 modes available in this amp (JC Clean, Acoustic, Black Panel, Brit Combo, Tweed, Classic, Metal, R-Fier and Dyna Amp). That way you could have a "crunch" and a "lead" channel, or a "clean with a little distortion" and a "lead" channel, or whatever you want to do with both of your channels.

Incorporated EFX:
The incorporated EFX are very good in sound quality, but the they are so uneditable that they are pretty much useless (except for the reverb and the delay in an specific situation maybe).

Despite all these problems, this is a great amp for home practice and for small gigs. It sounds really good in some modes and it is very LOUD.

Plenty of features. 4 band EQ, lots of effects. Only two channels, no headphone jack. I use this amp in my room and to jam with my drummer, I havent gigged with it yet but I plan to soon. I had to to give it an 8 for features because theres no channel saving seen on most digital amps and all the features it does have are next to useless unless you go out and buy a pedal.

I'm using it with an Agile-AL 2500 Les Paul right now but I've also used it with an Ibanez RG170 many times and a Squire Strat. It suite's my style of music which is metal decently, I honestly think the Spider II's have a better metal tone but what you get from the cube isnt bad at all. It's not noisey at all and it's extremley versitle. The distortion gets fairly brutal although theres room for more. The clean channel is buetiful, you can get an early Metallica clean thats dead on, sparkling and clear with almost no warmth.

It seems to be built solid, I've had it for about two or three months and haven't had any problems.

N/A

It's a nice amp with tons of sounds. What I don't like about it is it the speaker is way too small for its wattage, the amp itself is much too thin, it looks a bit dull, and it doesnt come with a channel or effects switch. Many of the distortion channels seem muffled unless you crank the treble and presence. Other than that its a fine amp considering its solid state.

I've owned a number of small modeling amps until I aquired the Cube 60. I've been interested in a modeler for the versitility (as opposed to a one trick pony tube amp) but they never seemed to measure up tone wise. I owned the Cube 60 for some months now and am very satisified...and I'm a fussy person. It has ample power for moderate band situations and built in switchable effects. I made my own foot switches (two) which plug into the back. The foot switch uses a simple momentary switch so those DIY'rs among you can easily construct a pedal if you're creative. A simple touch to "ground" and the thing switches. A really great feature of this amp is the Extension Speaker Output (8 ohms). This is the only lower end modeler that I am aware of that does not turn off the main speaker when you plug in an extension cabinet. The amp is light weight and easy to set up. There is also a Line Output which I have found to be better for direct recording than the headphone output. As for the effects there is no depth control, its either on or off. I would have preferred to be able to control the depth. I gave the amp a rating of 9 for its power, light weight AND the Extension Speaker Output.

I've got a totally reworked ES335 copy with guts I've installed. The guitar is capable of a jangle clean or classic rock tones. Using the Cube 60 I have this available to me. Unlike the lower end Vox's I've owned this amp is quite (no hiss). It works for when I want sqeaky clean jangle or classic rock grit and various shades in between. I gave the amp a 7 for sound because of the stock speaker.

So far, my Cube has worked without a hitch.

Have not had to deal with customer support so far.

I've been a player for 35 years now and as I have said I am fussy. I want my gear to sound good and I want the modeler to sound reasonably authentic. I am also a big DIY'er. I've read the previous ratings and yeah, stock this a good, versatile, easy on the back and wallet amp. Probably the best in its price range. But I will tell you what I've discovered that really makes this puppy sing...replace the speaker with a Jensen MOD 12-70-8 speaker. In addition, I added an extension cab that I made with a Carvin Vintage VL10 speaker. The tone change was VERY pleasing to my ears. If you like the Cube 60 with its stock speaker, you will stun your band mates with the sound of the Jensen. The Jensen simply works supurb in this amp. For you jazzers do yourself a favor, put this Jensen in. The downside of installing the Jensen is that its not a drop in replacement. I had to file the inside dimension of the speaker hole using a rough round file and I had to construct a special adapter for the negative side of the speaker connector. Roland uses a small size connector for the negative terminal. Roland adds a speaker frame connector too. Its not needed for the Jensen though but it does need to be tie wrapped back, don't let it dangle. So yeah, there is a small amount of work to do get the speaker to mount properly...but its sure worth the effort. Be warned, if your a cluts with tools you may not want to do this mod as the guts are exposed when you're filing. I placed a cloth inside to catch the wood filings. The Jensens are not expensive either. I'm now getting a dynamic, sharp, clean Jazz Chorus jangle and a sweet smooth tube distortion simulation thats sounds unaturally good for a modeling amp. I gave this section a 10 because I felt these low cost speaker mods really worked magic. I will add one more note here, I tried no other speaker brands. Its the combo of the Cube 60 and the Jensen MOD (and VL10) I've rated. I choose the Jensen because it's NOT a heavy colorizing speaker as the Celestion is. Modelers require a more neutral speaker. The Jensen MOD 12-70-8 is rated on this site.

Oh my God! I mail-ordered this thing on a lark. I usually play one of two hand-wired tube amps that I designed and built. One is basically a silicon-rectified 50s AC-15 on steroids (as an aside: the original AC-15 circuit is almost straight out of the Mullard handbook), and the other is an AC-30TB on mega steroids (more gain, more tone, more range). I recently started playing with a group on a regular basis and needed an amp that sounded good at low volumes in order to be able to practice at home without irritating my wife. Both of my tube amps sound great and have that cathode-biased breathiness at high volumes (the EF86-based AC-15 derivative sounds and feels amazing cranked), but this little bugger is truly amazing. I literally played through this thing until my fingers bled last night--something that I have not done for almost thirty years! I just kept my pushing myself to see what it was capable of producing. Like most, I really like the JC setting for clean sounds. However, unlike other posters, I really like the Dyna-Amp setting. In fact, anyone who has played a cranked, short-signal-path, EF86-based amp will love this model. It is almost like an idealized version of the original AC-15. Because the original AC-15 used the premium EF86 pentode tube instead of a garden variety triode, such as the 12AX7A, it has a lot more gain on tap in the first stage of the amp, which makes it incredibly touch-sensitive. Additionally, because original AC-15 circuit has an incredibly short signal path (EF86 small signal amp->12AX7A phase inverter->2xEL84 push-pull power amp), the amp topology, as a whole, has incredible dynamics. The Dyna-Amp tops the EF86-based AC-15 circuit when it comes to touch sensitive dynamics.

This amp was purchased over Memorial Day Weekend so it is a 2005. The amp is very versatile with different effects and amp modelings. However, I think I will rarely use them except for chorus and reverb. I primarily bought it for Jazz to be used with my hollow bodies. I use this amp for practice, small gigs, and playing with my jazz group. At 60 watts it has the power for those small venues. The big 12" speaker is great and I put it up on an amp stand. I like the outputs and the place for a footswitch which I will use soon. This amp is simple and I like it that way. Last week, I played at a club and I can set it up, turn it on and play. I dislike fiddling with amps and effects. The simpler the better.

This amp is as clean as Chlorox. That is why I bought it. Roland has a great reputation for that clean sound. I have played through the Roland JC 120 (too big) the Roland JC90 (then why not get the JC 120) the Roland Cube 30 (too small). When I played the Cube 30 about a year and a half ago I was REALLY IMPRESSED! The sound was amazing with my hollow bodies but not enough power for a small gig or practice. The new Cube 60 just gave me the power I needed.

We did an outdoor gig and I could not have sounded better. I have tried the distortion channels and they are fun but the clean is what I needed. I play only my hollow bodies through this amp (Gibson ES 175 and an ES 137). I usually do not take the volume past the 12:00 point (halfway) because I really get distortion and feedback with the jazz box guitars. This amp, as stated in previous posts is perfect for jazz.

This amp seems to be built like a brick outhouse. Solid. I like the metal grille in the front and the covered back. I have not have any trouble yet and from what I gather about Roland Products, I probably will have little trouble. Their website is good and would definitely help if there were a problem. However, I do not have faith in any technology and I always have a back up amp. You never know when that amp will fall out of the back of my truck.

I have not dealt with them and probably will not because they make good products. The warranty is done on their website. By doing the warranty you also get on their junk mail list which ain't bad. I like that type of junk mail.

I have been playing for over thirty years and I still feel like a beginner sometimes. I play jazz and blues. All my amps have been by Fender. I have had the Champ (when I started in 1972) and a Princeton Reverb (1976 Silver Face). I wish I still had them. Now, I have, including the Roland, the Fender Deluxe 90 (sans effects) and the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe 112. Both are great amps but they did not have the cleanest sound for my two Gibsons. I play my Strat through the Hot Rod Deluxe with all sorts of effects for blues/rock/r and b gigs. The Fender Deluxe 90 is now a guest/back up amp. I will probably never use the Hot Rod Deluxe for the hollow bodies again since I purchased the Cube 60. The former just was not clean enough past 3 on the volume.

This amp came at the right time for me. Unless, you are a pro, this amp is perfect. It is not a Polytone, Raezer's Edge, or an Acoustic Image, which is what the pro jazz guitarists are leaning towards. I saw Pat Martino live and he was playing through a Roland JC 120 but now he is using Acoustic Image. So, if you are using hollow bodied guitars and playing mostly jazz I strongly recommend this amplifier.