Review
Hi Watt G200R head and M412 cab.
A heavy weight sound from a heavy weight amp.
Right, lets get one thing straight, this is
a rock guitarists amp and it doesn't pretend to be anything
else.
The 200 Watt head is a brute of a thing, very solidly
constructed and finished in a retro 70's style with block
lettering and white piping. It is a single input amp featuring
three channels, one clean and two distortion channels, with
volume and a three band EQ per channel, reverb, and master
volume to control the whole lot. The channel selection and
reverb can all be controlled via a hefty two lead, three button
footswitch. The footswitch inputs are on the rear of the head,
along side an effects loop send and return. The send and return
have their own level controls which I think is a nice touch.
There is also a line out and a headphone socket.
The cab is equally hefty, and despite being on castors,
still take two people to get it out of the van. There are
handle holes in the side of the casing to help with moving it
about.
The four 12" speakers can be switched between 4 and 16 ohm
mono, and 8 + 8 stereo.
So, how does it sound? Well, apart from the obvious f****ng
loud, it can be twiddled and tweaked to produce a very deep,
clean sound, and with the reverb almost on full, an echo.
Certainly not as warm as a valve amp, but tepid. Switch to
either of the overdrive channels and it comes into its own. The
overdrives can be best described as heavy and lighter. Each
overdrive has its own gain control. The amp sounds angry, but
controlable, as if it is going to give you a punch in the gob
if you don't treat it nicely. In the recent battle of the bands
venue, we could not get the master volume above three without
it drowning out everything else. It could go all the way to
ten, but I seriously think your ear drums would fall out.
I can vouch for the reliability of the amp and cab following
its twelve week road test in a local battle of the bands
contest. Most of the bands quickly worked out the controls on
first seeing it, making it user friendly. Most were impressed
with the sound of it. It has been used in the smokey, sweaty
environment that most gigging bands have to put up with. It
only blew one fuse in the mains lead (for some reason). That
was replaced, and we had no further problems.
Now where did I put the number of my Chiropractor?
Article reproduced by kind permission of Acomb Music
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