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Bye Bye Blues Cube Blues

// September 4th, 2008 // Guitar

There comes a time in every person’s life where they must say farewell to some prized posession and today I said goodbye to my classic Roland Blues Cube 30. The BC-30 is an older, discontinued Roland amplifier that has exceptional, tube-like tone in a solid state amplifier. I bought the amp back in the late ’90s to replace my old Fender 15w Champ. Shortly after purchasing this new amp, I moved in to an apartment and its lack of a 1/4″ out meant I couldn’t play it very often at all. Unfortunately, it sat idle in the corner for years only getting juiced up a couple of times a year. I found myself playing on that old Champ more and more as it was the only thing I had at the time that was neighbor friendly.

After nearly a decade of neglect I finally brought the amp down to Guitar Center and inquired about trading it in. The BC-30 originally retailed for around $280.00 back in 1998, but I purchased mine on sale for $159. I fully expected to receive a weak offer of $75 and had resigned myself to the fact that I would have to deal with the hassle of putting it on Craigslist. I was a little shocked when the guy told me that they would give me $115 for it. I jumped at the offer and traded in my old BC-30 for a Line 6 Spider III 15 and a new capo.

Whereas the BC-30 was loaded with tone and weak on features (not even reverb), the Spider III is loaded with features and OK on tone. At first listen, I was very disappointed with the amp’s clean tone, tickled with the crunch, and found the metal and insane settings a fun novelty, but not where I’ll be spending much time. After a few seconds with the manual, I quickly had the default clean tone replaced with my own, significantly drier, clean tone. The discovery of the hidden ‘noise gate’ feature was nice as it really cut down on the hiss from my fairly noisy strat.

I needed a real ‘practice’ amp and the Spider III 15 delivers in a number of other areas as well. First and foremost is the 1/4″ out for headphones, but right next to that jack is an 1/8″ in. I quickly found the utility of that feature by plugging in the iPod and attempting to jam along to a few tunes. Once that wore off I actually connected the iMac headphone jack to the input and fired up ThreeChordGuitar.com and found the perfect way to practice and learn new tunes late at night. Overall, I think I gave up an amazing, fairly one dimensional amp I had no business owning for an amp that might not sound as great, but gives me exactly what I really need.

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