I bought the Behringer LX112 v-ampire a few years ago to have a solid state combo kickin around the house. If you’re not familiar with this amp it’s a modeling amp that is essentially the v-amp in a “120-Watt” 12″ combo package.

To be honest I never really used this amp much. I usually just run my v-amp through a keyboard amp or play my princeton reverb or micro-cube.

I recently bought a Metal Muff and I wanted to see how well it worked with a solid state amp. Much to my surprise I was able to get the LX112 to sound pretty good !

First of all it’s fairly well known that the LX112 is shipped in L1 mode which means that cabinet/speaker simulation turned on. It doesn’t make sense to run a guitar speaker sim into a guitar speaker does it ? Switch the mode to L2 (speaker sim off) by To do this press the D and E buttons to go into config mode. Use tha arrow keys (bank up/down) to change the mode to L2. Also while in config mode the live 3 band eq can be changed by the tone controls. I set my bass and highs= 1 o’clock and the mids to 10 o’clock

Now that the amp is properly set up just accept the fact that the rectifier model is NOT going to sound like a rectifier being pushed through a 12″ open back cabinet. You can get some really great tones out of this amp but it ain’t no 5150.

Third - user your ears and not your eyes to dial in some tones. I was looking for some clean amp settings so I rotated the amp selector to “clean v-amp”. However I still had the gain cranked so the signal was distorted. It caught my ear though because although it sucked as a clean tone it had some pretty nice sounding crunch.

According to the manual the “clean v-amp” is a combination of a JC-120 and a Marshall plexi. As you crank the gain the Marshall tone kind of takes over.

Here’s a quick video I did of the “clean v-amp” setting. It’s not exactly AC/DC but it does have some nice crunch to it. The amp was mic’d with a Giant Squid mic. The guitar was a piece of snot with the GFS Crunchy Rails. I like this pickup a lot.

The Ampeg vh-140c is a solid state amp with a reputation of having a pretty decent distortion. Apparently Ampeg owns Crate or vice versa and the sister amp to the Ampeg is the Crate gx-130c. These models are from the early 90’s.

I went to Guitar Center to see if they had any Squire ’51’s in stock that I could try. I also wanted to try out the Roland Micro-Cube. I tried out a few other cool amps including the Vox DA5 and Vox Valvetronix AD15VT, The Epiphone Valve Junior and a few others.

I was totally impressed by the Microcube and scored a mint condition used one for $69.

This little amp totally rocks. Everyone that hears it is impressed. It’s tiny but rugged.

The Micro-cube is a solid state amp modelerwith 7 amp simulations. The models include an Acoustic Sim, a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus, Fender Blackface, Vox AC30, A Marshall Stack JMP1987, Mesa Rectifier and a setting for a microphone input.

There are also 7 built in effects including chorus, flanger, phaser, tremelo, delay and reverb. The modulation effects and the ambient effects are on separate knobs as seen below.

The amp is 2watts with a 5 inch speaker. It looks like cabinet has a tuned port to enhance bass response. The amp is powerful enough to drown out a conversation with other people in the room.

My favorite amp sim is the Marshall Stack. The JC-120 is also very good.

The effects are designed in a smart way. For example as you increase the setting of the delay multiple parameters in the delay precessing are also changef. For example instead of just increasing the delay time it also increase the feedback rate as you rotate the dial. This is pretty much how I would adjust a normal delay. For shorter delay times I really don’t want multiple echos. For longer delays I like to have about 4 echos.

There is also a Jack for plugging in a MP3 player for practicing along to songs and a headphone jack. The headphone jack also doubles as an output jack for recording. The direct sound out of course sounds better that the amp.

No other amp in the sub $200 price range I tried was as versatile or better sounding. It really is an amazing amp that is in the same price range as some single effect pedals.

The hype is real. Look no further for a beginner or a practice amp.

Here is a video of me playing through some of the presets. The amp sounds better in real life with more bass and body.

Rocktron Chameleon

The Rocktron Chameleon is a single space guitar pre-amp that was released in the mid to late 80’s during the heyday of the rack era. At the time it was often overlooked in favor of the ADA MP-1 or units by Digitech. However the Chameleon is an excellent guitar pre-amp that can still be purchased for a pretty good price on the secondary market. You can build pro quality guitar rack system around the Rocktron Chameleon for a fraction of what it would have cost 15 years ago.

The Chameleon was one of the first units to offer amp modeling with speaker emulation built in. The unit also featured built in guitar effects. In one of the early ads Rocktron would show a comparison of an output waveform of the Chameleon compared to the output waveform of a Marshall amp.

Although the Chameleon included speaker emulation most people ran the unit into a power amp which then was usually plugged into a 4×12 guitar cabinet.

The unit featured pre and post distortion EQ’s. The pre distortion EQ is especially critical for shaping the fundamental tone of the distortion. On board “Hush” noise reduction rounds out the features and eliminates excess noise caused by high gain.

There were 127 factory presets which were repeated with speaker emulation turned on. There was a knob on the front of the unit to cycle through the presets for instant gratification. Like many rack units of the time it took a little effort to scroll through the various parameters to customize the presets.

There are other versions of the Chameleon, The Chameleon On-line and the Chameleon 2000.

The Chameleon On-line is pretty much the same unit as the original except it comes loaded with user created presets trhat can be updated for the Rocktron web site. You will need to install the Rocktron sysex editor to load the presets onto your Chameleon

There was a later version of the unit called the Chameleon 2000. Many people feel it is a different unit rather than an upgrade to the original series. Some people like it better and some don’t. The 2000 unit simplified the EQ and some users feel this took away some flexibility. Some people consider the Chameleon 2000 a stripped down version of the Rocktron Prophesy.

Personally I would try to find a Chameleon On-line before the other versions. I think being able to share presets is a cool idea.

I bought this 1974 50W Marshall head for $350 in the late 80’s. I bought it thinking it was a 73, which was the last of the hand wired Marshalls. I later found out it was a 74 due to a date code of “F” on the serial number.

The problem with a master volume amp is that you really need to crank it to really get the tone it was built for. I bought a Rockman Power Soak so I could crank the amp with waking the neighbors. A the time the SR&D Power Soak was the only attenuator available. The Marshall Power brake may have been out but it was expensive.

The Marshall only had one tone in it but it it was perfect. My Marshall had plenty of grind to it but I liked to place my Ibanez TS10 tube screamer in front of it for lead tones.

I eventually sold the amp. It was way more amp than I needed and it was not that versatile for my particular needs.

This a a short clip of me and my 1964 Fender Princeton Reverb. I bought this amp in the late 80’s for $350 or so. At the time the vintage amp market was exploding and Deluxe Reverbs were really going up in price. This amp is very similar to the Deluxe Reverb only it has a 10 inch speaker. It’s almost in mint condition except for the fact that one of the previous owners decided to install tilt back legs on it. It is actually nice to have the tilt back legs but it wasn’t a factory option for this model.

The purpose of this video was to demo how much distortion this amp can push on 10. The video really doesn’t do it justice. It sounds great in person and is almost better with a tube screamer in front of it.

I buy and sell a lot of gear but when I bought this amp I swore I would never sell it. It’s pretty much the same story for my Les Paul, Strat and Tele.