Hi everyone,

Several students have asked recently for a recommendation on a small practice amp. I looked around and found one that looked interesting, the Roland AC-60.

It's very small, and I mean very small. Designed for acoustic guitar. Not super loud but loud enough. Doesn't have a booming bass end (it's adequate), but the basic tone is comparable to the Fishman Loudbox (the Loudbox is louder). It has a really nice reverb, though it is applied equally to both channels. and a switchable chorus on each channel.

If you have a Railboard, you can run it in active mode in mono, but the passive mode also sounds pretty good with the Railboard.

The rear panel has balanced outs (left and right), mono 1/4" out, and a subwoofer out, stereo aux ins, and footswich jacks for the effects, and it's got a headphone amp as well. Two channels with three band eq for each. one is only 1/4" instrument, and the other is XLR (with 48volt phantom) and 1/4" line in in a combo jack. The line in sounded okay with the Railboard in passive mode, but not as clear as the instrument in jack.

It's available in two versions, one with the typical black plastic coating, and the other win a rosewood cabinet.

Anyway, if you are in the market for a practice amp, go check it out:

http://www.rolandus.com/products/ac-60/

Hi Greg,do you have any thoughts about the Supro amps?

Roland AC-60 looks like a snotty little amp Hmm.

Around 22 lbs (10 kg).
$500 on Amazon.
Thanks for the suggestion Greg.

I use the AC-33 but with the headphones. It's too small to play it live. On the other side, with the headphone I use it like a preamp. This way I have access to a nice reverb and the chorus is really fun to play with.

Stay away from any kind of chorus when you begin to learn playing the stick. You'll think you've got a fat sound and you'll like it but you'll never acquire a proper touch.

There's also the AC-90 which takes things up a notch. A while back I spent some years being fascinated by and attempting to master the 4 octave chromatic harmonica a la Stevie Wonder and a lot of heavyweight players of that clean style jazz harp find this Roland AC series the ideal gigging amp. I bet it would be pretty great on just about anything. A tad on the expensive side though.

Would someone please explain the appeal of practice amps to me? Given the ubiquity of powerful computers, I cannot understand why someone would buy a practice amp rather than an audio interface—for 20–40% of the price—given that neither are likely to form a long-term foundation for gigging with the Stick's five octave range.

there are a couple of advantages with a practice amp:

1. no latency
2. portability, can actually be used for some smaller solo gigs. also can be used as a front end for a louder system just by adding a powered speaker.
3. no computer

This last one appeals to me on a basic level. I spend enough time with my computer, so maybe having it be a central part of my practice routine turns me off.

Some of us are old school, not wise in the ways of tech and choose to remain that way. I will prolly never use a computer as an interface, but that's just me.

cheers,
k