Post by vonFrenchie on Mar 18, 2014 18:35:05 GMT -5
Hey everyone, I'm back.
Today I have a lovely Yamaha THR5 come in the mail. I did some searching (on here) and noticed that no one has been talking about them (at least lately) so I was going to offer my two cents. From here on out I won't be saying IMHO or in my opinion or by my opinion, it is your job to just assume that it is my opinion and not fact.
First off, this amp is two very different beasts wrapped in one beige package. First off you have the hardware itself, which is the best practice amp I have ever seen. With the proper guitar bag you can bring along everything you need to practice. It is a little over a foot wide and about 9 inches deep and tall. It weighs just over 7 pounds with the power adapter included. The five amp modes, (clean, crunch, lead, brit hi, and modern) and only 4 of them are really unique. Lead sounds like crunch with the presence turned up a bit. The Clean channel is just that, clean. If you refrain from diming it you'll most likely be able to get the tone you want (as the tone knob is a little strange, more on that later). If you go past 8 on both the Gain and Master the clean channel becomes unusable, but who wants to be clean and loud anyway? As for crunch and lead, same story. You can get some great bluesy tones out of these two amp models but once you push the gain too much they are trashed. The guitar's tone becomes way too sludgy and muddy. The main problem with this is that the curve seems to be very sudden. You can't get a lot of singing notes (a la Page or Rhodes) until you hit 6 or 7 on the dial and even then you need some powerful pickups (I am using a Duncan JB/Jazz set) to make it worth while. Brit Hi is by far my favorite. With the right dialing of the master and gain knobs this single amp setting makes the whole kit. You can go from a 70's rock'n'roll sound to Bark at the Moon with a few minor adjustments. Modern goes for the Mesa sound and does it decently (considering it is a 7 pound amp that is designed for your desk). It also has on board effects and delay/reverb though they aren't very customizable. All in all, I definitely like the amp as a standalone unit and for 200 dollars I would have to recommend it.
And now for the bonus round. This amp comes with Cubase AI6, a Steinberg program, that allows you to record straight from your amp. It also comes with the Yamaha THR editor which allows you to futz with your amp settings, through your computer. Both compliment the amp very well and add a tremendous amount of features to the amp. I'll start with the THR editor. In here you can dial in Treble/Mid/Bass along with a compressor (stomp or rack settings), an effect (chorus, tremolo, phaser, flanger), a delay, and a reverb (hall/room/plate/spring). Each of these comes with an array of adjustments for you to fine tune your tone. There is also a cabinet setting (for American/British/Generic speakers in 4x12, 2x12, 1x12, and 2x10). Since the amp is at my desk, I prefer to use the software rather than fiddling with the knobs on the amp itself. It allows for better fine tuning (for example the Tone knob adjusts the Mid from 2-5 when it is below 5 and then adjusts the bass to 8 and middle and treble to 10 when it is at 10). I haven't had the opportunity to use the Cubase software much but one thing it does that really bothers me is that by default it plays back your recording through the amp itself at what seems to be full volume.
There are a few bad points to this amp, the tone knob isn't very useful by it's lonesome, the gain knob needs some tweaking, and you have to pay extra if you want to export your sound files as MP3s (exactly why I am not uploading any soundbites). The orange glow from the "tubes" is pretty cool, but I wish there were a way to turn it off. Also there isn't a line out, only headphone and aux in so you can't run it through a power amp if the situation arises. I know some of these issues, specifically the EQ and the Line Out, are part of the THR10, so if a 3 band eq and line out are important to you, go with the THR10. For me they aren't, I have a Marshall and nothing will be replacing that any time soon. This little guy is strictly for practice (as I live in an apartment building and even with a Weber MiniMass my Marshall is a destroyer of ear drums). If you have 200 bucks to spare and you need a practice amp I would highly recommend this. It is much, much, MUCH better than my Vox Valvetronix. It couldn't get as loud but it seems to be more reliable (from other reviews) and the amp models sound much less digital than Vox's Valvetronix models.
I hope this helped out someone. If not I have gotten pretty used to talking to myself so it wasn't a total waste.
Also, if you would like some sound bites I would be happy to record them. It is just a whole process as I have to record them in Cubase, import them to Audacity and then re-encode them as MP3.
Today I have a lovely Yamaha THR5 come in the mail. I did some searching (on here) and noticed that no one has been talking about them (at least lately) so I was going to offer my two cents. From here on out I won't be saying IMHO or in my opinion or by my opinion, it is your job to just assume that it is my opinion and not fact.
First off, this amp is two very different beasts wrapped in one beige package. First off you have the hardware itself, which is the best practice amp I have ever seen. With the proper guitar bag you can bring along everything you need to practice. It is a little over a foot wide and about 9 inches deep and tall. It weighs just over 7 pounds with the power adapter included. The five amp modes, (clean, crunch, lead, brit hi, and modern) and only 4 of them are really unique. Lead sounds like crunch with the presence turned up a bit. The Clean channel is just that, clean. If you refrain from diming it you'll most likely be able to get the tone you want (as the tone knob is a little strange, more on that later). If you go past 8 on both the Gain and Master the clean channel becomes unusable, but who wants to be clean and loud anyway? As for crunch and lead, same story. You can get some great bluesy tones out of these two amp models but once you push the gain too much they are trashed. The guitar's tone becomes way too sludgy and muddy. The main problem with this is that the curve seems to be very sudden. You can't get a lot of singing notes (a la Page or Rhodes) until you hit 6 or 7 on the dial and even then you need some powerful pickups (I am using a Duncan JB/Jazz set) to make it worth while. Brit Hi is by far my favorite. With the right dialing of the master and gain knobs this single amp setting makes the whole kit. You can go from a 70's rock'n'roll sound to Bark at the Moon with a few minor adjustments. Modern goes for the Mesa sound and does it decently (considering it is a 7 pound amp that is designed for your desk). It also has on board effects and delay/reverb though they aren't very customizable. All in all, I definitely like the amp as a standalone unit and for 200 dollars I would have to recommend it.
And now for the bonus round. This amp comes with Cubase AI6, a Steinberg program, that allows you to record straight from your amp. It also comes with the Yamaha THR editor which allows you to futz with your amp settings, through your computer. Both compliment the amp very well and add a tremendous amount of features to the amp. I'll start with the THR editor. In here you can dial in Treble/Mid/Bass along with a compressor (stomp or rack settings), an effect (chorus, tremolo, phaser, flanger), a delay, and a reverb (hall/room/plate/spring). Each of these comes with an array of adjustments for you to fine tune your tone. There is also a cabinet setting (for American/British/Generic speakers in 4x12, 2x12, 1x12, and 2x10). Since the amp is at my desk, I prefer to use the software rather than fiddling with the knobs on the amp itself. It allows for better fine tuning (for example the Tone knob adjusts the Mid from 2-5 when it is below 5 and then adjusts the bass to 8 and middle and treble to 10 when it is at 10). I haven't had the opportunity to use the Cubase software much but one thing it does that really bothers me is that by default it plays back your recording through the amp itself at what seems to be full volume.
There are a few bad points to this amp, the tone knob isn't very useful by it's lonesome, the gain knob needs some tweaking, and you have to pay extra if you want to export your sound files as MP3s (exactly why I am not uploading any soundbites). The orange glow from the "tubes" is pretty cool, but I wish there were a way to turn it off. Also there isn't a line out, only headphone and aux in so you can't run it through a power amp if the situation arises. I know some of these issues, specifically the EQ and the Line Out, are part of the THR10, so if a 3 band eq and line out are important to you, go with the THR10. For me they aren't, I have a Marshall and nothing will be replacing that any time soon. This little guy is strictly for practice (as I live in an apartment building and even with a Weber MiniMass my Marshall is a destroyer of ear drums). If you have 200 bucks to spare and you need a practice amp I would highly recommend this. It is much, much, MUCH better than my Vox Valvetronix. It couldn't get as loud but it seems to be more reliable (from other reviews) and the amp models sound much less digital than Vox's Valvetronix models.
I hope this helped out someone. If not I have gotten pretty used to talking to myself so it wasn't a total waste.
Also, if you would like some sound bites I would be happy to record them. It is just a whole process as I have to record them in Cubase, import them to Audacity and then re-encode them as MP3.
