Yamaha DG-130H

As far as features goes there are plenty. This is after all a digital amp with midi capability multi FX and amp modelling. Also DI out recording patch down and upload and DG to DG amp connection.

It also allows for externals with a useful Send return loop. So it pretty much covers all bases. Its only fault is the requirement for a change of battery every 3 yrs or so to keep the memory backed up (unless you update the internal firmware).
Overal features are a def 9 as nothing is ever a 10 -there will always be something else!!

THE SOUND QUALITY IS PHENOMENAL. To clarify I have 23 yrs of playing and am a bit specific on my guitars and amps (it took me 6 years to find the "right" telecaster 18 yrs to find the right strat and 2 years to find my beloved Les Paul. I play rock, blues, Jazz, fusion, Heavy metal (though not thrash or NU) and I enjoy rich deep but penetrating tone. I can't stand fizzy tranny amps (or tubes) and love a bit of glassy action with a strat and the neck PU's. My ideal tone would be Bogner Shiva esque which eventually I will justify to my wife and buy as my first amp. Until then this runs a very close second -and no tubes! It really can cover any sound but haS its own nuance too. I especially like the "marshall" type sounds that you can get as they are richer and less fizzy than the original. Cleans are great and with plenty of headroom and his amp can rock very well - The sound is a definate 8. Why only 8? Mainly because this amp is so close to the tube sound but does not quite hit it. It is extremely versatile but is master of none. It gets close to what your after -and in a band mix will always be good enough but if you know the tube amp you want - I would buy that for the "yes" tone and dump the versatility. Let me put it this way -this amp will always be in my lineup as a backup to my boutique amp (when I can eventually afford it) but until I get "that" amp this will be my number one. FYI I sold my Boogie F-50 as soon as I got this!! Can get a little muddy with Humuckers though.

I have had this amp two months now and grabbed it 2nd class from Shebay. All I can state on reliability is that when I dropped it from 5ft accidentally off of my 4x12 and the mdf chassis broke I was amazed that the amp survived.

Any tube amp would have been in bits. I picked the DG up plugged it back in and it sang for me as if nothing had happened. That is japanese technology in action folks!!

Had no dealings but have to say that support for the product has nearly disappeared as this is a discontinued line. I have my own fears about a sudden death with no-one to care but this shouldn't colour my opinion of the amp :)

I play a variety of guitars and tend to think that this favours my strats. I am looking for another cheap backup now as I would like a replacement. This is mainly as my band plays a lot of covers and with my midi footswitch I can go from tweed to Marshall to High gain American with a push of my pinkie. Nice. If I were still writing original stuff and had thoughts about me being the next guitar god (which long ago I did -there was always someone better!) I would find "my sound" and not need the versatility. As it happens my sound lies in a high end botique amp that would in essence create problems for me and my band. This amp is perfect therefore for me and would definately be replaced without a second thought.

130 watts into 4 ohms, 100 watts into 8 ohms, and 80 watts into 16 ohms (or something around there). Very powerful with amazing tone. God-like cleans, searing crunch, soaring distortion, and some of the warmest, sweetest "in-between" tones you can imagine. 8 independently assignable preamps (channels), 4 digital effects (reverb, delay, chorus, tremolo). The delay uses a high-pass filter to mimic the sound of an old tape delay. It doesn't sound like a tape delay to me, but rolling off the highs on the repeats warms up the tone nicely. The DG130 also has motorized knobs that move when you change between presets. The motorized knobs intitially turned me off, I thought they were a gimmick, but they are actually quite useful as you can see your settings in a familiar layout, and it makes tweaking your sound on the fly very intuitive. Onstage, the DG130 acts like a real guitar amp -- just twist a knob and go. No hunting through annoying "parameter banks" like so many other digital amps... It also has a whole range of MIDI features that I have just begun to explore. I'm currently using an ART X11 footswitch to change between patches, but I'm looking into getting a Control One or possibly the original Yamaha MIDI pedal. BTW, Correct use of the input trim knob is essential with the DG130. Different guitars or pickups will all react differently to the trim adjustment, so if you use more than one guitar or an effects chain in front of the amp, make sure you adjust your levels appropriately. Unlike some older analog devices that you can crank everything to 10 (or 11) and get a semi-decent sound, you will want to adjust the trim level somewhere in the middle to get the best possible tone for a specific guitar, which means you need to LISTEN... As long as you adjust it correctly, no worries, you'll find sonic bliss in one form or another. It's a bit more complicated than an old 60's tube amp, but not much more. Made in Japan.

If you can't get a good sound out of this thing, I humbly submit that it's not the amp's fault! I like to play fusion, with a tonal palette similar to Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani, Larry Carlton, George Benson,Phil Keaggy, Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, Steve Tibbetts, etc. In other words, I use a lot of different sounds. Most of the aforementioned players use multi-amp setups, but that's not practical for me live. I use Teles, Strats, Les Pauls, and 335s, with both passive and active pickup combinations. The DG130 also works well for acoustic-electric guitar. As I said in the features section of the review, it is crucial that you adjust the input trim when switching between guitars, that is the single most important thing I can tell you about these amps. Another big factor for tone here is, no surpise, speakers. The original cabs that Yamaha made for these came equipped with Celestion Vintage 30s, in a 4x12 cab wired at 8 ohms mono. When you use a full stack, the speakers load in parallel, giving you a 4 ohm load, thus allowing the amp to run at full power. That means that traditional cabs wired at 16 ohms ARE NOT the best choice for the DG130. Currently I'm using a Peavey MS412 cab with stock Peavey Sheffields. The Sheffields sounds good, but the Vintage 30's sound better, IMO. I compared them side-by-side, but I couldn't afford the V30 cab at the time... C'est la vie. One nice feature of the Peavey MS412 is that you can run it mono at 16 ohms, or stereo at 8 ohms per side. This means you can run both speaker outputs from the DG130 into the stereo inputs on the cab, and while the DG130 is not a stereo head, using both speaker outs to two spearate 8 ohm loads in parallel will put a 4ohm load on the DG130, again allowing it to run at full power, but in this case, into a single 4x12 cab. The DG130 sounds great, just be prepared to think a little bit outside the box, and LISTEN to it.

've gigged without a backup and never had problems, but I recently picked up another one just in case. I've always had good luck with Yamaha's high end stuff, and while the motorized knobs give me the jitters, so far I haven't had any problems (knock on wood). My folks have an electric fan from the 1930's that still works, so the motorized knobs probably aren't anything to worry about. I was told that there is an internal lithium battery, and when that dies, you need to re-initialize the algorhythms. That's kind of a pain, especially as technology changes. For now, I can do it from my PC through the MIDI port. In ten years, I don't know if my PC will still have a MIDI port, but I suspect it won't be a big deal.

Bleh... Yamaha discontinued these amps a few years ago. Too bad. Some people say that Yamaha customer support is great, I've yet to see why. I also like Peavey gear, so I might be spoiled. Peavey supports their stuff even after it's been out of warranty for 20 years... lol Yamaha stuff generally lasts just as long as Peavey's, but the product knowledge isn't always passed down to new employees... An alternate resource for the DG130 is here:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/yamaha_dg_user_group/

I've been playing forever and have tons of gear. It's an addiction, but there are worse ways to spend money... lol I stumbled on Yamaha's DG amps by accident. A Fender Deluxe I had purchased kept dying on me, and the store where I got it took pity on me and gave me a brand new DG80 at store cost while I was waiting for the Fender to get repaired. The more I played the DG80, the more I liked it, and when I saw a DG130 on eBay for $375, I grabbed it. When the Deluxe finally came back from the repairman, I played it a couple of times, and then sold it... lol While shopping for speakers, I compared the DG130 to the Line6 Vetta and the Fender Cyber Twin. The DG130 puts the Vetta to shame, and in my opinion, the DG130 sounds as good or better than the Cyber Twin. I came across another DG130 a year later and snagged that one too. I am very pleased with my DG amps. I'm tempted to get a DG100-212, but that's basically a DG80 with an extra speaker, and the 212 version is ridiculously heavy. The DG130 has a bigger power transformer than the DG80 or DG100, so I think the DG130 is the right amp for my needs. If I had to pay $1200 for a DG130, I don't know if I would buy more than one, but I would still rant and rave about the tone. Would've been nice list: tuner, compressor, phaser, headphone jack. Once you understand how the DG130 works, you won't find anything that can compare for under $700.

The Yamaha DG-130H is Yamaha?s foray into the world of digital tube amp emulation. The DG-130H is a 130 watt head with eight different amp voicings (Clean 1&2, Crunch 1&2, Drive 1&2, and Lead 1&2), coupled with four effects--reverb?spring, hall and plate, tape echo, chorus, and tremolo. Also, the amp has an effects loop with blend control, a line out, midi, and a speaker simulator. The amp contains 128 presets, with motorized knobs (Gain, Master, Bass, Lo Mid, High Mid, Treble, Presence, Reverb) that change positions as you change presets. A Trim Level (used to accommodate different output levels of pickups) and an Output knob round out the controls.

I play a Fender Yngwie Malmsteen Signature Stratocaster, and I run the DG-130H through a Mesa/Boogie Rectifier Cabinet with Celestion Vintage 30?s. I play music ranging from instrumental metal (Yngwie, Satriani), to U2/Radiohead stuff, to fingerstyle jazz and blues. I?ve played/owned a huge amount of tube amps over the years (Laney?s, Egnater?s Holland?s, Peavey?s, etc.), and the sound of this amp is nothing short of PHENOMENAL. It sounds?and more importantly?feels like a real tube amp. From shimmering cleans to massively overdriven metal, this amp performs. I like the fact that the amp models aren?t specifically patterned after certain amps (although I?m sure Yamaha used several different amps for reference.) The presets?for the most part?are exceptionally good, and ones that weren?t were brought to life by a mere eq tweak. The effects section provides guitarists with the effects they use most (reverb, delay, chorus, and tremolo.) The effects are of an excellent quality, and can be as transparent or as apparent as you?d like. A huge amount of flexibility exists with this amp, and for the money, it?s a great buy. This amp is also extremely powerful for a solid state amp.

I really can't speak for the reliability as I've only had it for a short time. If Yamaha's reputation holds true, then I'm in for years of problem free enjoyment.

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For the price, you can't beat it. Great amp models, fantastic effects, and very powerful. What more do you need?