Roland MicroCube Combo

For a very small portable amp it has all the features I need.
I use it with my very tiny 'The Bone' Travel guitar (www.soundside.de), with my Strat, a Line6 Variax - all sounds very nice.
I addition to this amp I use tube amps, a Vetta II and Yamaha DG-Stomp.

I compared it to all the amps in this size and none has so much features.

It's unbeliveable - this tiny 2 Watt amp makes a lot of noise - and gives you a sweet tone - both clean and distorted.
I used it yesterday together with another guitar player and an normal amp - this small amp can be very loud - I give a 10 because I can't give a 20.

Don't no yet - but it looks and feels very stable.

Don't know.

This small amp sounds nice - has an inbuild effect and reverb/delay.
All I need.

If I compare it to my Vetta II (20 times more expensive) even than I like the sound of the MicroCube.

Don't expect to much bass - but the mid's and treble are nice.
If you play with low volume than the bass seams to increase.

I did not like the sound of the recording out - but maybe I have to do some EQ'ing on my mixer.

If it would be stolen I would try to get a new one - it was not easy to get one here in Germany.

Tiny little black box with lots of different noises for hardly any money: battery option, several amp models and a range of effects with limited but quite ingenious controlability. Better described by others.

I wanted a small amp purely for practicing on my own at home. My Fender Blues Deluxe is a fine amplifier, but too noisy for home use, plus you'd never get the valves warm enough to get a nice range of tones at low volumes.
The key here is the range of sounds available for the asking price, and given the tiny costs and tiny dimensions, this amplifier is a 10 all the way. The overdriven sounds are terrific with either my SG Standard or my American series Strat, particularly with a doubling delay effect. The acoustic modeling feature is unusable with the SG, but quite effective with the strat. The effects are limited, but for a cheap practice amp I haven't heard anything else that gets even close.

Only had it a coupla weeks, but I've been using roland synths and boss pedals for years without stress.......
It's by no means a gigging amp, but I do travel a lot for work, staying in hotels. This amp and a set of headphones in a rucksack mean I can get plenty of practice in while I'm away, and I'd be surprised if it ever went wrong.

No dealings

If you're thinking of buying this amp, don't disappoint yourself thinking it'll ever keep up with a drummer. It won't. Quiet practice, in the car, on the street, easy carriage, good value and great range of sounds for the money are all the right reasons to buy it. So buy it!!

Mine was ex-demo, and came with the power supply and instructions but without a box, which saved me #9 off the UK list price of #79.

Been playing drums, guitars, basses and keyboards for 23 years, but I'm really trying to concentrate on six strings these days. I have a Gibson SG Standard, American Series Stratocaster, Fender Blues Deluxe, Fender M80 combo, Boss ME 50 and Marshall Bluesbreaker pedals. Mostly playing blues and rock stuff and trying to write and record at home using a Boss DR5 rhythm thingy and a Boss 1180CD. Haven't tried recording the Micro Cube yet, but I'm expecting it to be noiseless if I bypass the speaker. A fabulous and unbelievably inexpensive little toy!

The flanger, phaser and tremolo are too "whooshy" for me to use them on more than a riff or two. The chorus is probably the best of the effects but I always prefer a basic crunch with some reverb and nothing more. The distortion is extremely musical and, with the reverb, is the only effect I need. If you never played with the other effects before, you will have some fun making funny noises for a while.

This amp has a variety of amp sims and effects, but I simply dialed in the tastiest tone for my playing style and then welded the knobs in place. OK, I didn't actually weld them, but please don't twiddle with them when I'm not looking because I have them set just right!
I play solid body guitars with humbuckers in a melodic metal/hard rock/neoclassical/death/thrash style and this amp sounds just perfect to my ears at comfortable volumes. It gets as loud as I like (if I need more volume I can use a bigger amp). I can also turn it down so low that I can barely hear it and practice without disturbing my husband in the next room with no door between us.
The harmonics/overtones are delicious and inspire my best playing. The amp is very responsive to my touch on the strings, and has brought new joy to my practice and jamming hours!

I have only had it for about a week.

I have no experience, good or bad, with Roland support.

I just love little amps and have many. My main little practice amp before this was the Marshall MG15DFX. I also have the Marshall MG10CD, which would be more useful with a reverb in it. For its portablity, versatility, solid construction, and price, I give the Micro Cube a BIG thumbs-up!

Portable battery powered and ac powered amp. It has amp presets and effect like phaser, chorus, flanger , tremelo, delay and reverb. The distortion is contraled by the gain and the presets you choose like british combo, stacks, blackface, you get the idea. It has a headphone jack and a cd input.

I use Fender stratocasters with texas specials, a guild/DeArmond starfire special, and starfire custom. I play mostly british rock and blues. This amp kicks butt! It really caters to every style out there....metal to soft music. It has amp modeling that hits each amp on target. Whether you want a Fender Black face , a Vox ac30, a marshall, or a mesa-boogie, it's a simple twist of a knob. The reverb is awsome!!! I like reverb!!! It's amazing how such a small amp can have as many effects and lush reverb with kick ass amp selections in one package. I have to say,, I have been playing for over 16 years and this is one of the best products for guitarists out there. It's portable, battery powered ac optional, with everything under the hood. I agree with thearlier reviews in saying that a guitarsit definitely designed this amp. It is the perfect portable amp.

I've had it a week. It looks pretty tough. Hope it has the reputation of the JC 120 in this department.

If you are looking for a portable amp with a lot of options...get this amp. It's better than most practice amps. I owned a Tech 21 and it cost me $300. This amp blows it out of the water in both portable size, power, overall sound quality, effects(which you don't get on most practice amps....Boss effects remember...and great sounding reverb. I wish it came out a long time ago....I could of saved a lot of money. Well, I'm glad I have it now.

Features have been covered in detail already. I agree with the comment that said "seems like it was designed by a guitar player." There is nothing like it out there, and Roland should be given credit for designing such a unique, high quality, compact portable compact amp. Some people complain about the tuning fork, but having it saves space and weight for those musicians that truly desire portablility and do not want to carry an extra tuner around.

I have tried a number of portable amps (Pignose, EH Freedom, etc.) but I like the sound--and volume level--of the MicroCube best. The small speaker does an excellent job of keeping the music under control as the volume is increased. My favorite setup is the Flange-Marshall-Delay combo: spacy and brutal! I have found that putting the Tone, Volume, and Gain knobs at the 12 o'clock provides an ideal The amp seems to have the best I have found the ideal settings for volume versus clarity and compression. I was gonna give the MicroCube a 9 here, but considering the price, and the fact that Roland is the first company to put out a portable amp like this, I have to give it a 10!

I really like the modeled sounds, and think that Roland did a decent job on the preset ranges.

I will not rate here because I have only had the amp a few weeks. It looks and feels very sturdy. Time will tell...

Again, I will not rate here because I have no experience with Roland support.

A smash product. To Roland from all of us who like to play guitar in the car, on the sidewalk, in the woods, under the stars, and anywhere else the power company does not provide a power outlet: THANK YOU!!

I use this little guy mainly in my car. I drive in early to beat traffic,( Los Angeles, Cal ) park near work, get a cup o' joe and sit in the car and I can get 3-4 hours of uninterrupted practice before work, at lunch, and after work. ( I practice in the car until after rush hour, then smooth-sailing for the drive home.) I use a Steinberger Spirit guitar, which is very compact, has a full-scale 24 fret neck, but it's headless, and has a small body, just enough to mount the pickups (HSS), bridge and controls. GREAT for travel. The whole guitar-amp rig takes up little room in the car. The CD player is right there in the car for backing & jamming tracks. Crank up the CD player and the Micro Cube, and you're ROCKIN! I attach tab / sheet music to the sun visor - handy! My car's a "rolling woodshed", and this amp is perfect for this.

I agree with all the good reviews. Best quality to me is how responsive to touch and pick attack this little amp is: In less than full tilt overdrive mode, you can play a quiet phrase, and the tone mellows out, and you can hear subtle vibrato and micro bends and pick percussion or palm-muted notes very clearly. Dig in harder, and the sounds jump out and break up nicely. There is a nice "presence" and dynamic with this amp, unheard of and amazing for something this small and this inexpensive. Given the right note, volume and tone, some notes will sustain and even "bloom" like the big-guys! Most tiny amps I've used don't have the gain and tone to make finger-tapping sound right. This does. The reverb is amazing: Very spacious and airy and analog sounding. I like this reverb better than the reverb on my Mesa Boogie F-30. However, the low-end gets a little loose and flubby and the speaker can't handle it sometimes. The bass notes fart out and overpower the higher frequencies. I may lower the bass-side of the neck and middle pickups, and see if this helps, since you can't dial-out the bass.

Minor complaints: The chorus sounds odd to me ( another reviewer noticed this, too ) it doesn't seem very "rich", or something. I've never heard an acoustic simulator that sounded good, this one sucks less than most: It's got that "twangy" acoustic-simulator edge I don't particularly like, and I can't get rid of it without making the acoustic sound dull. Dump the tuning fork and replace it with an optional boss-type vusual tuner, would add about $10 to the price.

New

The best amp for it's size and price, period.

When I don't have or I am in between gigs, I always make it a habbit to play street music in whatever city I am in on any given day, weather permitting, of course. I play all original street music & I play mostly improvised pop, rock, jazz, blues and ambient ebowed-soundscapes ( I use a line 6 DL/4 in long loop mode in conjunction with a Marshall Blues pedal-distortion box ) and I improvise either 30 second riffs or drones that ideally loop evenly so it serves as a seemless song/ballad &/or blues/jazz progression/ambience. & depending upon the intention behind the loop, I will play either slow or fast/finger picked/picked, etc, & vamp over the top of the loop and solo until there is nothing else to say. These quasi-songs I write on the spot will at times usually last for 15-minutes or 45 minutes depending upon the level of foot traffic where I am playing and what passers-by sentiments reflect at that moment and what I have to offer them: i usually will work from 2pm-230am - long stretchh, but it's worth it and very lucrative if you know how to pace yourself & have a set of tunes already written that you know will generate a certain response. To note: I work as a street musician mainly in my hometown, Downtown Philadelphia ( Old City Section on weekends and wednesday nights ) and also in NYC and or other highly populated urban cities around the world if I am on tour there as just myself or with other acts. & Street Music is BTW, a great way to get direct & immediate feedback on how well you can reach people as well as how good yuu are @ reaching the music that is inside you. Plus, in addition to being excellent practice of your instrument Street Music is also great & excellent practice of performing in front of what is really the largest audience you can ever imagine in many cases. Street Music requires that you are prepared, always thinking ahead and also demands that you are able to shift gears quickly ( stylistically and emotionally - as people no matter how good you are will say stupid things or ask you to play something else other than what you are playing at the moment and people can often be clueless to what you are doing and want to have a conversation with you while you are in the middle of playing a song. But to be able to take the compliments, the insults, the indifference and to be able to read people in the sense of knowing intuitively as to what will connect with them or not and make Money for you while constantly adapting-re-adapting your musicial intuitiveness as a performer, is a thrill ride and not an easy task to pull off in any city. I had previusly been using a 10 watt peavey battery operated amp but didnt like the weight of it ( loved its clear and warm tone - especially for my big archtop...the wes montgomery tone was everywhere using the peavey portable, but it still was not quite a sound floating my boat for a number of reasons mainly being the amount of batteries it needed ( 8 D-Cell Batteries, which really weighed down the total bulk of what i was walking around with in the city ) and also the fact that it didnt have a reverb or chorus setting; that meant I would have had to buy an addition chorus or Multi FX pedal and the cost would have been equal to or in execess of what the micro-cube cost me. & for my inside-indoor gigs, I use a GT3 and a Roland GR-30, in addition to 4 Line 6 DL/4's through a Fender Ultimate Chorus Amp and a New LOGO Peavey Bandit set up left & right running in stereo; when recording I usually run my guitar directly into the board and use FX plugings or I may use a clean setting I made on the GT3 and edit in a sound or amp I want. But with all that I am saying here nuances matter and I knew that a cosm reverb was the best and I also knew that cosm chorus/mods were going to be tremendous and I like the size and smaller batter requirements of the microcube. I do not like other users find I really need a bass setting as that my guitars are all

See above

Has been tripped over by stumbling drunks @ 2am has been knocked over by druken college woemen and has fallen down 2 flights of stairs due to my carelessness in having only owned it 1 week and one day thus far. And it still works like a champ.

Have never dealt with Roland for Support Issues

I have been playing for almost 30 years ( i started young - I am 34 ); I would buy another microcube if this unit were stolen and I saw this product as the only one witht he features and price i needed as well as being portable enough and powerful enough to project my sound as it needed to be heard on the street.

Here are my two cents...
The amp works perfectly with rechargeable batteries(NiMh, 2000ma, lasts twenty hours).
The speaker(4ohm)is quite good, has twin magnets and is especially designed for the microcube:tight bass, clear mids, good highs and efficient. No better small speaker for this amp, I tried some I have at hand just out of curiosity...
This amp has a noise-gate! I can hear my p-u's hum when I play very softly but when I stop then hum disappears, well done Roland! And when playing normally it masks the hum of course.
The volume knob reaches its full power at noon, after that it rolls off the bass frequencies to push mids and highs further. Interesting for projection...

The amp reacts very good to the guitar's volume pot, so you can do it all with your fingers. I find this feature very pleasing. Dancers and soccers plays with their feet, uh?
I found out that about guitar's vol pot it is better if there is no capacitor(as with a marshall I have) otherwise sound becomes harsh when rolling off (I tried with a PRS H/H and 270pF cap).
The phone jack has just enough power to drive my AKG 240DF 600ohms(!)cans: I mean it's powerful! With 32ohm cans you becomes deaf...
No bass eq is a blessing, for what is not in the models also lacks with more bass added. No to mention I want to play with my GUITAR.
"JC clean"wonderful with humbuckers, cleans them up. "Blackface"wonderful with singles... "Acoustic"far better than expected:useful when strummin'n'singin', guitar is then laid back in the vocal range but present otherwise.Nice.
I also tried the cube with a small e-a guitar(Ibanez talman tcm50), nice reverb and just enough volume to finger pick clearly.
In fact I am fond of this amp...

It couldn't be better made, and I know what I'm talking about. Alps potentiometers, very clever electronic design, proprietary boss chips,and so on. Very impressive, and not only for the price asked.
9 because only time'n'abuse will tell...

Run, don't walk, run to get one! You can't be wrong, I think it is the biggest evolution in amplifiers those last years.
The price is a full mystery,china or not(ss peaveys also come from there and they are not cheap nor that well done).
And I'm sure it sounds good as hell on a bigger 4ohm speaker...
HATS OFF, ROLAND!!!

All you need for a small practice amp that sounds very good and last quite long on set of batteries. As for all the eq I don?t think you need it because of small speaker size.

Outstanding very good if you can?t find a usable tone here you are in trouble. Speaker farts a little on high volume but not to bad depending on settings and how you are playing. Played outside camping and volume was ok. Pinched harmonics were easy to play. Favorite 2 models are fender sim and brit combos. Brit combo sounds great with all gain setting and sounds pretty sweet maxed out. Effects are very good not too much delay though but enough to shape sound a little. Even though reverb is not a spring sim I like it. Chorus does not sound right to my ears. Phasor and tremolo are two favs of modulation.

No problems but you can trip power switch when transporting. Roland should have put a better quality switch (different type) that is not prone accidentally tripping it on.

Ok it find right number they know their stuff. But you pay for call. Also not being
Able download manuals in PDF form is a big downer.

Price sound & performance this thing is great. Who has something that competes with this no one that?s who. Small amps RULE

As said by other reviewers the features for the price are outstanding. However, there are a few caveats. The tone knob should be a 3 band eq. The acoustic modelling selection is weak in my opinion. I will never use it. The tuning fork takes up valuable real estate that could be used for other features. I also don't like how you can't use the effects simultaneously. Its one or the other. Those are my only complaints. This amps' features are well worth the $. I have a POD and I will probably sell it now as the modelling of the Microcube covers everything I need. The size is perfect for moving around. At seven pounds its very practical. I plan to put it into my backpack when I cycle to a friend's house for a jam.

This amp is super quiet; no background noise. I love the Jazz Chorus model. The distortion models are also ticky-poo. Basically, all the models are top notch except for the acoustic model. The acoustic model is meant to make an electric sound acoustic. I don't think it does. I was hoping it would be dedicated to acoustic guitar use. This amp sounds excellent. Its definitely loud enough for a living room jam. However, I dont think it could compete that well with a drum kit. with my Alhambra classical

This amp is built like a brick. Very solid. I have only had it for a week, but I can't see any problems that could be the fault of the amp. Its built that well.

n/a

Though I have been playing for about 14 years, this is my first amp that I have actually bought. I primarily play acoustic. I have an Alhambra solid wood classical (this guitar sounds beautiful... it cost over $2500 Canadian) and a Godin nylon-electric.

I made an amp using a 5 inch speaker and components from a pair of computer speakers. Actually, that amp works quite well. Once I saw this little dealy I knew it was time to break down and shell out the bread.
I have been looking for the perfect amp for my needs for a long time and when I came across the Microcube I knew I found the amp I will own for many, many years. I have tried the Mountain amp (but at $400 it is too much $ with few features) and many of the mini amps like the fender and marshall variants. I also seriously considered the Fender Amp Can, but the features, sound, weight, and style of the Microcube are far better and it costs way less.

The Roland Microcube is extremely versatile. I can use it busking, camping or jamming with friends or I can just leave it plugged into the wall sitting on my coffee table.

The features offered, for the most part, are fantastic.

At two watts, the sound is really good and it is loud for its size.

The price is very reasonable for what you get.

I am very happy with this purchase and I would definately buy another Microcube if something were to happen to it.

If you dont need a super loud amp and you like portability, versatility and great sound from a small size this is your best choice hands down.