Yamaha AA5

I ordered this small battery-powered monitor from Musicians Friend last month after seeing it priced at $50. Since receiving it, I?ve noticed that it?s no longer available through any of the on-line retailers, and the Yamaha website no longer mentions it. So I assume it?s discontinued, but I?ll submit a review anyway since these will eventually float around in the ?used? market.

Considering what I paid, I feel I will get my money?s worth out of this. It?s just a very small, lightweight practice amp that I keep at the office and could take on a business trip (or vacation) since it fits in a carry-on bag. A useful feature for me is the ability to connect a 1/4th inch instrument cable and a 1/8th inch stereo CD-player cable at the same time.

The downside is the sound: there just isn?t very much. Note that Yamaha did not market this as guitar amp but instead as a monitor for their silent guitar or for a keyboard. If you plug a solid-body electric into it, there really is not enough volume for even a casual jam much less a performance. Using an outboard preamp would no doubt warm up the tone and bring up the volume, but carrying around another gadget defeats the purposes of convenience and simplicity.

It has a line-out jack but I don?t foresee using this in conjunction with a recorder or mixer: plenty of other things on the market do a better job at that.

If all you?re looking for is a flat, dry tone for practicing arpeggios alone, it?s much better than the toy 9V belt-clip mini-amps. If you want anyone to hear you, the Crate Taxi and Pignose amps would be better choices (they?re also bigger, heavier and more expensive).

Oh, for what it?s worth, mine came with a rubber handle instead of a leather handle (as advertised). But otherwise the overall design of this thing is very cool and perhaps Yamaha will revamp and re-introduce it. I like it well enough as it is, but I?m glad I didn?t pay $80 for it and I couldn?t see paying more than $30 for a used one.

WARNING...

The quality of the amp and price is very good.

You need use "total smooth plugs" with this amp. No ord wires where the "insulator" between the "tip" of the plug and the ground portion has "sunk in". The "ground" contact on the is very thin on the amp jack. I had a 10 yr old cord get "caught and stuck" in the amp jack. I had to pry it out with a screw driver, leaving the "plug tip" inside fo the amp, as it pulled off of the guitar cord plug. This required opening the unit. The jacks are sealed in plastic. To disassemble the jack inside the amp, I had to desolder a capacitor, and remove it from the board. That allowed me to open the jack, and get at the "plug tip" that pulled off. So, look at your plug before you put it in the amplifier. If it has any "air gap" between the "plug tip", and the "ground" portion of the 1/4" plug, find another wire.

Battery 2w+2w amp with a digital power stage. I've been using this in unreinforced acoustic traditional singers sessions for just under a year and I'm well chuffed with it.

It sits on the floor under my table in the pub and brings my monophonic acoustic lead guitar picking up to the same volume as my pal's mandolin.

That's the job I bought it for, and that's the job it does well.

Battery life of 60 hours. Fits in a bag with my music, concertina and harps, it's much lighter than any other battery amp I've tried outside of those toy Marshall stack things, and it doesn't attract too many disapproving glances from the traddies.

Can't ask for more

It sounds clean. What goes in is more or less what comes out bearing in mind the size of the enclosure which won't give you a lot of bottom end.

I'm using it with a Simon and Patrick SP6 with a soundhole-mounted Dean Markley Promag magnetic pickup, (no matter what you do, a promag's going to sound "electric", but I like it), through an old Yamaha compressor stompbox to even out the promag's unique take on bronze wound strings.

If I give it too much input the AA5'll cut out. Once I learned about that, I didn't let it happen again.

It has a tone control which makes the promag vary from jazzy-thick to near-acoustic bright, which is ok for picking melody in an ensemble of acoustic guitars, madolins and whistles.

No complaints here

Never a bit of a problem.

I've been playing guitars for 35 years, electric and acoustic, gigging and recording. I also play Anglo concertina, chromatic harmonica, button accordion, keyboards, fiddle, mandolin, melodica, autoharp, and I sing. I also do some re3cording and PA engineering.

This box performs a specific purpose in part of my work and I can't fault it. Having used for a year I would miss it and would certainly get another one if it was damaged or lost.

It was up against the Peavey Solo busker's amp - too heavy, and the Pignose - not clean enough.
The new Roland micro cube looks like a contender with its built in effects but I suspect the AA5 would still win on weight and battery efficiency. - I've got effects boxes if I need them.

This is a spledid buy if you just need to make an acoustic instrument slightly louder. Don't expect rock'n'roll from it!

This review should be read subject to the caveat that Yamaha intended it to be used with the "Silent Guitar". This is in contradiction to the blurb on the back page of the 2003 Guitars and Amps" brochure.
It was made this year. It has next to no features other than an auxiliary input. Only one normal channel witj only one tone control. Headphone out. Mains adapter (don't buy it from a country with different supply voltage!)

The main objection thatI have with this amp is it's singular lack of volume when used on it's own. I can cough louder than it. I can't hear it above the Takamine F360s that I connected to it. Perhaps if I had a Yamaha "Silent Guitar" to try through it I might form a different opinion but I can't imagine that the "Silent Guitar" has a greater output level than just about any humbucker or even single coil for that matter.. I'm sure that our discerning readership will be only too quick to correct me on this one. I use a Pacifica 904, I have many others but the Pacifica craps all over them all. The Pacifica gave up with this paperweight. This does not suit my musical style but since it is a purely clean amp, that is to be expected. It makes more interesting sounds with a preamp or effects unit attached (I.E. Yamaha DG Stomp or Sans Amp Triac, but doesn't that defeat the purpose. There is no distortion unless you take into account the loudspeakers giving up at anything over 12 on the dial in a wonderful display of flapping and buzzing, so restraint is neccesary here. I have rated it as high as five because it performs well as a purely clean amp at medium to low volume dial settings but is still too weak to be of any practical use. It is supposed to be 5 watts output. Perhaps Yamaha ought to see what a Smokey Amp does with half a watt. If anyone thinks that I have been unduly critical of this amp then go audition it and make sure that you have a Roland Microcube along side and query the sales assistant as to how Roland do what they do with only two watts in comparison, and for only #4 more. It's all down to loudspeaker efficiency I suspect.

Built like a tank, just like all my Yamaha gear dating back to a G100 112 from the late seventies. I expect that I could rely on it but I can't envisage a scenario where anyone would have to rely on it.

Yamaha customer support has been OK for me, always helpful but a little disorganised at times. They're not alone. Haven't had to call on them very much. Perhaps I'll try them out and claim that the product is faulty, I suppose it could be.

Playing for 34 years. I would never replace this product-period, I think that Yamaha ought to reward anyone daft enough to purchase one (Yep, that category includes me!) with a voucher for a free one to go with it so that you could get good spacial stereo out of your "Walkman". Surely even Yamaha would not expect an old dog to fall for the same junk twice.

The Yamaha AA5 was bought new late in 2003 to serve as a travel amp for my Yamaha SLG100S Silent Guitar. This is a simple amp - two 5" speakers on two different sides of a 7"x7" cube. Power comes from either a 9 volt wall wart or 4 AA batteries that are rated to run for 60 hours. The AA5 has no effects, but then you would expect that given it's small size and price, plus the fact that it is supposed to support the SLG series that come with on-board reverb. There is a tone dial that leans the output toward bass or treble. The AA5 is somewhat versatile in terms of input/output. Input is 1/4" mono from the guitar or 1/8" stereo from another source. Note that the AA5's gain dial doesn't affect volume from the 1/8" input jack. There is a 1/4" output jack as well. I suppose that the AA5's features are pretty good considering its size and price. I'm only giving it an "8" though, because it could really use separate bass & treble controls, 3 band EQ, a shape filter, or some other way to unflatten its sound.

This amp has only been used with my Yamaha SLG100S Silent Guitar. I play a mix of pop music, improvisational finger picked jazz, and sometimes church/scout group backup. The SLG is a very good guitar. I have gotten great acoustic guitar sound through a Fender Acoustasonic 30, Fishman Loudbox, and the earbuds that came with the guitar. Decent results come out of a friend's Fender JC-55 too. I get surprisingly good, though not loud without distortion, sound by cabling the 1/8" stereo headphone jack to the 1/8" auxiliary input on my Kloss PAL. Sadly, the Yamaha AA5 can't keep up with these other amp options. Low tones distort annoyingly when the volume is turned up beyond the level of my unamplified Guild D25SB. The two 5" speakers do fine on midrange but can't accurately reproduce the volume or tone of acoustic guitar harmonics and overtones. The AA5 sounds really flat. I've worked hard with the AA5 and output options from my SLG. The situation is improved somewhat by running the SLG at full output volume (while reducing the AA5's gain), increasing the SLG's treble substantially, and tweaking the AA5's tone control. Still, after hours of tweaking, the AA5 still doesn't sound as full as my Kloss PAL, which is a smaller travel companion anyway. This may be a good travel amp for electric guitars, but it sound is pretty thin and disappointing for acoustic guitar work.

Seems reasonably tough. The battery compartment doesn't impress me; I could imagine problems there.

Haven't tried.

I've been playing for 30 years; mostly casual home guitar, but with occasional wedding/church/scout work thrown in. I'm not an expert, but I know good acoustic guitar sound when I hear it, and this amp doesn't make the grade. On the other hand, it is small, tough, light, and runs a long time on cheap batteries. I bought the amp for travel with my SLG100S, but I will probably use my Kloss PAL for that instead. The Kloss isn't loud, but it's output is surprisingly full and transparent after I turn the bass down on my SLG to compensate for the radio's bass-heavy tone. As for more powerful amplification, I have an Ultrasound AG-30 on order and will post my impressions of that amp soon.

It's a 2x12(cms!) combo, very handy and light. Oh, and the first of its kind,go see yamaha's page... It has volume and tone controls for jack mono input, and a minijack stereo input too(you control then tone and volume on the connected multi-fx,discman, minidisc and so on. Note you adjust the mono input independently, very convenient!). It has a line out jack to chain other amps. Silent power switching,works with yamaha-incompatible-with-boss-standard(grr!)adapter OR 4 batteries. Since it is a digital amplifier you can run 50-60 hours with a set of alcalines!!! I tried rechargeable nimh batteries and it don't work(4,8volts not enough), but ray-o-vac rechargeable alcalines do. I just tried because I already have the stuff, so don't bother...
You can screw the device to any photo stand, very convenient to have the sound right in your ears when playing on the couch.

Good honest sound, even frequencies, no harshness but good highs. Don't expect much basses cause the box is so little... Clarity is the word here, and the cubic shape let you improve the sound depending on where you put the amp( on the floor in corners are great for bass freqencies).
With a takamine nylon eg 522sc it's just loud enough in a big room and it showed very well the bad quality of its piezo system. A yamaha aex1500 piezo archtop was very better here!
I had the va10 and it was quite louder but not better than this AA5.
Remarkable clarity of the amp, put a good sound in it and it's perfectly reproduced. I tried it with an electric(Paul copy named orville...)that was in the shop, via digitech's hot rod and digiverb(with speaker simulation on) and everybody in the shop couldn't believe how good the cube sounded! Without any equalizing, with unknown to me instrument and effects... It's far louder than in acoustic mode! Please note that you must have speaker simulation 'cause it sounds harsh without, like any pa...
My girl-friend uses it with her discman and once again you don't believe how good it sounds! No matter if Paolo Conte or ZZtop is played, clarity and wideness are the words here while you put some bass(megabass to name sony's one) on the discman to make it groove.

Too soon,son,too soon... It's very well built,it's a yamaha and those people are crazy about making undestroyable devices(unkapputbar,in german). I've owned a lot of their stuff to state that. No worry, It is a 9 because it's too soon

It is perfect if you don't misunderstand it. Was designed with their silent guitars in mind, my nylon solidbody sounds great through it(I lack the reverb but that's another story).
With a zoom ps02 and the electric it's lot of fun, especially when activating the zoom's "wide"effect(makes sort of wall-of-sound)! Most compact tandem on the market, battery-powered.
One of these days I'll connect full-size speakers, for information(I'm soo curious!). I did just that with my Honeytone and a 12"peavey cab and the sound was hallucinatingly soud for one watt! AA5 is rated at 2x2watts... Guitarists are a bit insane I think
So for the price go get one.
One thing: an acoustic player on the street won't be happy with it, the va10 is far better for this very use(more volume and bass, chorus for wideness, reverb and to hell with consumption!)