Music >> Micro Cube test-drive
The songs on this page
are just brief recordings made after I bought a new Roland Micro Cube amp. For such a small and
cheap amp, it can put out a good deal of sound and comes with lots of built-in effects. The
recording quality, however, leaves much to be desired.. You can read more about this
on my blog.
Acoustic Simulation
It’s amazing that it was able to get such a bright sound out of my Stratocaster. Usually without distortion an electric guitar just sounds so flat. I recorded two samples, both are also using a little bit of the Chorus effect... I mean, why would you not use that effect with an acoustic-like sound?
Galapogos
This song shows off the acoustic simulator with a song that picks one string at a time, rather than chords.
Shine On
This song uses the acoustic simulation with chords. Ain’t it purdy?
JC Clean
This is supposed to sound like the Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amplifier. I’m not sure how successful it is, but it does sound very nice with certain sounds (although obviously not as bright as the acoustic simulation).
Shine On
I played the same song on the clean channel so that the difference would be quite obvious. This one sounds much flatter to me, which is not my personal preference.
Hummer
This song will show off an example of when the clean channel would be much better than the acoustic channel. I’m also using the delay effect on this song.
Black Panel
This is supposed to simulate the Fender Twin Reverb sound. I don’t like it very much, because all it seems to do is overdrive the low end and make it sound like my speaker cone is torn.
Zero
You can hear how only the low-end is distorted. I’m not too very fond of this setting.
Brit Combo
According to the manual, “this is modeled on the Vox AC-30TB, the rock amplifier that created the Liverpool sound of the '60s.” I don’t particularly care for this sound, it’s kind of like the “fuzz” distortion that Jimi Hendrix used a lot. Just sounds to me like the clean signal mixed with a lot of static.
Welcome To Paradise
This is a rather long clip. I guess it kinda speaks for itself. I boosted the low-end on the recording because my microphone didn’t pick it up very well..
Rectifier
This is really the only distorted channel I use on this thing. It is modeled after the Mesa/Boogie Rectifier. Much closer to the sounds of the mid-to-late nineties that I liked so much. Unfortunately, the sound recorded does not match what was actually played very well at all. In fact, the sound that was recorded is extremely obnoxious—I don’t know where the low end went! In reality, the distortion is much creamier (that’s the best word I could think of to describe it).
Welcome To Paradise
Once again, I’ll present the same song on two different channels for you to compare and contrast. But really, I like the recording of this much less, but in person I liked it much more. Stupid cheap microphone.
I Caught Fire (In Your Eyes)
I wanted something that used the flanger/phaser (I can’t remember which I’m using in this song). This was as close as I could come to the sound in the actual song, but I definitely fell short of what The Used recorded.
