Update:
I've further downgraded my opinion of this
unit. It's not worth the money, and it ceased working
a long time ago. |
Like
most, the thought of being able to play my guitar, anywhere
without bothering anyone really intrigued me. But it was not
until we got ready to go on another cruise, and Musicians
Friend dropped the price to $29.00
that I decided to bite.
The
price was really the clincher, but I really did read the specs
on a lot of units and this one seemed to have the most features,
namely, distortion, and a “metal” distort, echo,
and chorus.
Turning
it on:
When I received the unit, I assembled the little headphones,
hooked everything in and turned it on. The first thought through
my mind was “Where’s the bass?”. I then
tested every setting and found it just did not sound very
good.
I
then posted a forum message asking if all of these headphone
amps sounded as bad. I got a variety of different answers,
but the underlying answer was “yes, basically they all
are like this”. So now I knew this unit was not defective,
and that I would have to work with it.
The
first thing I did to try to get the thing to sound better
was to switch to better headphones.
I plugged in my Audio Technica studio reference headphones
and it sounded even worse. After testing several different
sets, it seems that the better the headphones, the worst it
sounded. I finally settled on a cheap set of headphones that
came with a Lennox-Sound CD player that broke less than a
month after I bought it.
With
these headphones, and the tone turned down to about 4, the
unit became bearable. So, the key? Don’t
use good headphones, and try a bunch of cheap headphones until
you find ones that sound the best.
The controls on the hot Watt-II
The
Tone:
With the right headphones, without any features activated,
it does not sound half bad. This is, of course, dependant
on your pickups. The unit also has low/high switch; high is
a treble boost. Why they put a treble boost is beyond me.
It has way too much treble to begin with. It would have been
much better with a bass boost, or put a bass circuit in to
start with.
It
also has a tape/CD input that bypasses the internal effects
so you can play along, and an output so you can use it as
an effects processor. If you want…
As
far as the distortion, it has two modes, regular and metal.
The regular mode sounds ok, but not great. It does have a
distortion level control, but it does not really improve it
a whole lot. The distort reminds me of a poor imitation of
a Marshall type metal distort.
The
metal mode distortion puts a smooth curve on it and, it sounds
somewhere between ok and good, but not quite good.
The
echo sound is more like reverb.
It’s not too bad, but it has almost no decay. If you
keep playing, it has a nice expansive sound. I think it may
be doing some sort of phase thing in stereo that gives it
that sound. It’s just when you stop playing you notice
how abruptly it drops off.
The
chorus?
Well it sounds like chorus. But have you ever tried to play
with chorus where it was set at the wrong rate? That’s
what you have here. The rate can’t be adjusted, and
it seems to be set just wrong enough to be irritating. Basically,
it’s not really useable.
Conclusion:
If you find the right headphones, it's actually
usable. If you have to use a headphone amp, it will get you
by.
My
recommendation is that if you need battery-operated portability,
it's not a bad choice. If you plan to do a lot of practicing
with headphones at home, you would be better off using a J-Station,
or a Pod XT.
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