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MichaelHorowitz

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Phil Jones CUB AG-100 with Gig Bag











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Phil Jones Breifcase PJB-100







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Phil Jones Flightcase BG-150









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Phil Jones Suitecase PJB-350

MichaelHorowitz

For guitar players, the Cub is of the most interest. It's a cool design concept....absolute no frills portable amp that's only 11lbs! Yes, you heard that right, only 11lbs!

I've tried it a bit around the house and will be gigging with it next week to see what it'll do. So far, my first impressions are:

1) The sound quality is very good...actually sounds better then an AER in most respects. the two 5" speakers seem to do a better job of reproducing a real low end then the AER's 8" does. The AER sounds very midrangey by comparison.

2) It can get decently loud as long as you're running a hot signal into it. I tried a Stimer and a archtop with a humbucker. I was able to get enough volume for small to medium size gigs. I'm sure you'd need something more powerful for a noisy bar. But for smaller stuff this amp is great. The AER's 60 watts results in twice the volume of the CUBs 100 watts. You just can't beat the AER compact 60 for volume, that's for sure.

I think is amp might be especially good for rhythm players. You don't need as much juice anyway. And the sound quality is pretty crisp.

3) There's no on board effects but there is an effect loop. So if you like reverb or any other effect you'll need to plug in a separate effects unit.

4) This amp comes with a great gig bag and is so easy to carry. It's like a purse! A true micro amp. Not bad for $500!

5) one channel, treble, bass, mid eq. That's it for controls.

My bass players got the flight case which has more power and the two up firing speakers. I tried it for guitar and it works great. Very nice, clean tone, and those up firing speakers really work like a monitor on stage. Everyone noticed how much more you can hear on stage with that amp.

The Super Cub will be out in July or so. It'll be a much more powerful version of the cub. 250 watts, 6 speakers, effects, etc. But will be over double the weight: 26 lbs.

I'll write more after I've used this on the gig.

Stackabones

Very interesting! I've been thinking about a super portable bass rig ... :idea:

Will the Super Cub have more inputs?

MichaelHorowitz

not sure how many inputs it will have.

MichaelHorowitz

Here's an up date on the CUB AG-100...

I did a gig on it last night with a Favino rigged with a Stimer ST51

I'll have to say I was very, very impressed with this little amp. It's very hard to find fault with the tonal qualities of it. It's really warm, even, with a full spectrum of response from deep lows to sparkly highs. It sounded fantastic with the Stimer....much, much better then an AER compact 60 which is a bit harsh and mid rangey by comparison. Often with the AER I'm constantly tweaking the controls to just get a tone that I can live with. However, with the CUB it sounded great no matter what I did with the tone controls. You could really use the tone controls to taylor the sound rather then just find something that's passable.

The biggest issue with the amp is volume. If you're not using a high output pickup then you probably won't get enough volume. The Stimer through the CUB produced more then enough output for a pretty loud restaurant gig. I just had to be conservative with the tone controls....if you cut too much mids or bass you'll loose a lot of volume. But since the amp sounds great with a totally flat setting it wasn't a problem.

The violinist I play with took one listen to the CUB and bought one the next day. We found the CUB also sounded great with a lavaliere mic on the violin. He's also really lazy and loved the fact that it's only 11Lbs. If he's impressed that's a good thing, because he's an engineer who usually builds all his own equipment from scratch. He admitted there was no way he could make something this small and this good.

I also have been messing around with the amp at home with an archtop w/humbucker. I can get even louder with that and will try it on some gigs soon. Still haven't tried a bigtone but will soon.

I still think there are some really loud bar type gigs that this amp might struggle with. But for most of the gigs I do it seems fine and you can't beat the portability!

'm

Stackabones

Awesome review. Thanks for the update!!!

Johan

How well would you think this amp woud sound with a bigtone pickup?

MichaelHorowitz

Johan wrote:

How well would you think this amp woud sound with a bigtone pickup?

As long as it's a high gain bigtone it should do a better job than an AER. A low outut bigtone will have a hard time getting loud enough. I will try a bigtone soon and let you know.

'm

MichaelHorowitz

I brought the CUB to our regular jam session here in Seattle...special night since both Neil Andersson (of Pearl Django) and Kevin Nolan (who now lives around here) sat in.

Everyone was impressed with the sound of the CUB. We tried Neil's 1946 Selmer w/bigtone and a 40s Busato w/bigtone into the CUB and both sounded great!

I used an archtop with a humbucker for most of the gig and also was very happy with the sound. This gig is a good test since it's a very noisy bar with horrible acoustics. When the noise was at it's worst I did find that I wished I was a bit louder. But that's not totally the amps fault. The humbucker in the archtop doesn't produce a really hot signal. What I'll probably do next time is bring my volume pedal which can boost the signal and give me a lot more volume.

I also noticed that I had to be very conservative with the EQ. Any cut in the mids and you loose half the volume. Too bad because I usually like to cut a lot of mids. But even though I couldn't dial the exact sound I wanted, it still sounded really nice. It's actually pretty hard to make this amp sound bad...even the weirdest tone settings still sound pretty good.

All in all...I'm really impressed with this amp. It may not be for everyone...but if all you need is a good sounding, no frills, light weight, one channel amp then this is hard to beat.

I still can't get over how small and light this thing is. I have laptops that weigh more then this amp. You just sling it over your shoulder like a hand bag and off you go.

Also, I heard that John Jorgenson is now using the CUB for all his gigs....

'm

Jared Burrows

I have been using a CUB for a little over a week now and have nothing but good things to report. I was surprised to find a small local dealer. (sorry Michael....)

With my hand made selmac (K&K pickup under soundboard) it sounds much better than the AER Compact 60 and AI Corus I used to have. Totally transparent.

It also sounds great with my semi-hollow archtop, thought not as good as my Evans RE 150 for the classic jazz archtop sound. That said, I think the portability factor os so great I would take this to duo gigs rather than the Evans.

I've played the CUB on 5 gigs so far in venues of various sizes and shapes and it is very consistent from room to room. The portability is just ridiculous. It is really great to carry around to the various schools and colleges where I teach.

No, it is not loud enough to play with a very boisterous drummer or in very large rooms, but this is probably of little concern to most gypsy jazzers. This is a lot of bang for the buck.

gitpicker

I have used mine on a couple gigs recently as well and it's been just awesome. When I go abroad later this year taking it on the plane will be a snap too! I'm very happy with mine.

Doug