Roland’s multi-effect guitar units can still surprise with their versatility and bang for the buck. But the company is less renowned as an amp builder even though their 1975 JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp gave new meaning to the word “clean” and created such a demand for its pristine, clear tone that it remains in production 35 years later.
With the Cube series of amps, which debuted in 2005, Roland combined its amp and multi-effect know-how, as well as its knack for making things highly portable. And the product line now boasts a fistful of amps for bass and guitar ranging from the handheld, low-watt Micro to the 80-watt 1x12" Cube-80XL. The most recent addition to the Cube family is the Cube Lite reviewed here. And though it’s the least amp-like Cube (and least cube-like, for that matter) it can be a surprisingly powerful asset for guitarists who make their office or living room a creative or practice space
Dapper Dude
If you’re used to Cube amps in their most common form, which is to say a kind of cross between a Jazz Chorus and a lunch pail—the Cube Lite might be a surprise. It’s shaped more like a Bose Wave Radio than a traditional guitar amp, which is little surprise given that the Cube Lite isn’t strictly a guitar amp and also doubles as a stereo system. With its cloth grille and front facing bass ports, it has the sleek appearance common to many iPod-docking stereos. If you haven’t been able to sneak a guitar amp in among the living room décor, this may be your best chance yet. And considering it comes in black, white, and red, you may even be able to match it to the couch upholstery!
The Cube Lite has two stereo speakers, as well as an integrated subwoofer. Like the Orange OPC, the Cube Lite uses a speaker configuration designed to play back full-range audio. So while the Cube Lite can add distortion and effects to your guitar tone, it can also reproduce the full range of instruments from a backing track while you practice.
The amp has a 1/4" instrument input. This input feeds the signal through the COSM-based modeling section of the Cube Lite. You get amp models—including JC clean, crunch, and extreme—and a gain knob to control the overdrive level. Bass and treble controls adjust the body and crispness of your tone, while the volume knob adjusts the overall output. The Cube Lite includes two effects, chorus and reverb, and a single knob to adjust their levels. Unfortunately, the chorus and reverb cannot be used at the same time. Roland focused on making the Cube Lite simple. The back of the unit has DC power in (unlike some of the amps in the Cube line, it cannot be powered by battery), 1/8" headphone out, 1/4" instrument in, and i-CUBE LINK input with a corresponding volume adjustment control.
Baby Jazz Chorus—And Other Big Tones
Though I’ve never possessed a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus, my college roommate owned one. I always marveled over its brilliant, fully bodied clean tone and mesmerizing built-in chorus effect. So it’s no surprise that Roland was able to achieve a very compelling Jazz Chorus-like tone in the Cube Lite. But it’s remarkable how little difficulty the Cube Lite has replicating the spaciousness of the JC-120 and the bigger amp’s full, crisp clarity.
Rolling up the drive control added a bit of compression in the low end and some dirt in the highs and mids, and adding a bit of chorus produced that signature JC-120-style doubling effect. This particular setting ended up being my favorite sound on this little amp. Even on the diminutive Cube Lite, the distinctly Roland chorus can actually sound like multiple guitars, rather than the shallow, swirling detuned sound you get with most onboard chorus effects.
The reverb does an impressive job of replicating spring-style devices—a pretty tall order on an amp this size. With my Stratocaster in hand, I added some treble to the JC clean setting, cranked the reverb, and got an impressively convincing Dick Dale-inspired surf-rock tone.
Naturally, the Cube Lite doesn’t have the brute force and dimensionality of a cranked Dual Showman bouncing sonic fireworks off the rafters of the Rendezvous Ballroom. And if there is one predictable downside to the Cube Lite—especially in this clean setting—it’s that louder volumes can generate perceptible and harsh clipping, no matter how lush the reverb sounds at low volume.
Despite those limitations, the amp modeling fun doesn’t end with clean Jazz Chorus tone. The crunch model produces a chugging Marshall-like tone with a surprising, if not enormous, amount of dynamic range on top. A Fender Stratocaster’s single-coils summoned plenty of high-end spank, and the low end had a fair bit of body and punch. Like the clean model, the crunch mode sounds great with the EQ controls at noon, and they’re powerful enough that you can actually accentuate or tame any favorable or less desirable characteristics of your instrument’s pickups.
The Stratocaster’s brighter tone found me rolling off a bit of the crunch setting’s brightness by turning down the treble control to 10 o’clock. With my Gibson SG’s humbuckers, I added a bit of treble back to get more sparkle to go along with the additional low-end punch. Another very surprising positive with this little amp is its ability to render guitar feedback from the full-range speakers. It’s not an effect a lot of players will use, and the amp can sometimes produce that nasty PA-and-mic style screeching feedback at very high gain settings. But if you’re careful you can get a nice musical feedback out of the Cube Lite.
The extreme setting is for high-gain shred and ripping solos, which may be the environment the Cube Lite is least suited for. But like the other two modes, you can get surprising, low-volume approximations of the amp types it emulates. The Stratocaster’s high end was pretty intense and required rolling off the amp’s treble knob to tame the brightness. With the SG’s humbuckers, I could more easily generate the kind of molten, face-melting distortion you’d associate with a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier. For long chords, the distortion blistered and folded over itself as the notes decayed, producing a fairly complex distortion tone. And during single-note solos, the overdriven tones sang with clarity. Even chugging power chords and palm mutes maintained a dynamic punch when I caked on the gain.
Again, as good as this stuff sounds, you won’t be taking the Cube Lite to practice to go up against your bandmate’s stack. But around the office, living room, or apartment, the Cube Lite is dynamic enough for exploring the finer points of your technique.
Out and About
The only function that’s less than self-explanatory is the i-CUBE LINK. Any recent iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) features a 1/8" jack that enables stereo audio output as well as a mono input. These signals are transferred with a TRRS (aka 4-pole) cable, which has one more stripe on the plug than your typical headphones.
In the same manner, the i-CUBE LINK jack can send and receive sound through a single TRRS cable (which is included). The ability to have your amp and mobile device send and receive audio in real time opens up a new world of possibilities for mobile recording and practicing. If you want to record directly to your iPad and play the results back to the Cube Lite or want an app on your iPhone to process your guitar signal and play it back to the Cube Lite’s speakers, you can via the i-CUBE LINK.
Additionally, when recording to your mobile device, you can set the Cube Lite for one of two modes: line or direct. In line mode, the Cube Lite processes your guitar signal before sending it to the CUBE LINK output. Direct mode sends the dry signal to that output, allowing you to leverage any modeling software you may already have on your device.
Ratings
Pros:
Intuitive controls. iOS connectivity. Excellent models cover lots of tonal ground. Doubles as portable stereo system.
Cons:
Associated app lacks key features. Loud enough for jamming with congas, but not drums.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$169
Roland
rolandus.com
To take advantage of the interconnectivity between the Cube Lite and your iOS device, Roland developed an intuitive, free iOS app called Cube Jam. The app allows you to import audio directly from your iTunes library. This audio is then placed on one channel of a two-channel mixer. Your incoming guitar signal is fed to the other mixer channel. From here you’re able to practice alongside a tune, adjusting the two volume levels to taste with a slider on each side. The Cube Jam makes things easier (or more challenging, if you want) by letting you adjust the playback speed of your sound file without changing its pitch. The range is from 50 to 150 percent, available in 10-percent increments.
Cube Jam also lets you transpose the pitch of the sound file without changing its speed, from -6 to +6 semitones. Once you have the desired speed and pitch, you can practice along and record your session inside Cube Jam and mix them down so you can share them with your friends.
Video integration would have been nice to see in the Cube Jam, given how often people share this type of content on YouTube. Another minor drawback is that the Cube Jam app isn’t optimized for the iPad’s larger screen, and always remains in portrait mode. Hopefully these issues will be addressed in future versions.
The Verdict
There are literally hundreds of practice amps out there on the market. But by using the expertise they’ve gained through the development of their powerful COSM modeling technology and a fairly streamlined approach to smartphone and tablet integration, Roland has developed a pretty sophisticated and simple practice-amp package in the form of the Cube Lite. The free Cube Jam app expands its ease-of-use for practice and recording. But all the iOS integration in the world would mean little if the Cube Lite didn’t sound pretty dang good, and in settings from classic Roland clean-and-chorused tones to more aggressive fare, the Cube Lite impresses at low volume. This makes the unit an ideal practice mate for players who spend a lot of time at the office or share a small living space. That combination of assets is bound to make the Cube Lite a very valuable tool indeed to many modern players facing the modern challenges of less space and less time.
Chances are you’ve owned or at least played a Boss pedal at some point in your guitar-playing career. One of my first pedals was the venerable DS-1 which I used to distort some painfully harsh solid-state amplifier into a cacophony akin to a paint can full of bees. I sold the amp long ago, but the DS-1 is still around and working despite innumerable teenage beatings. Whether you’ve grown to love them or drifted away from their products in a fit of boutique fixation, Boss pedals remain some of the sturdiest and most effective stomps on the market.
2013 marks the release of the 100th Boss compact pedal, the TE-2 Tera Echo. And appropriately, it’s a pretty forward-looking stompbox. It’s not entirely a delay, nor is it entirely a reverb. Instead, the Tera Echo is an amalgam of effects that takes a cool detour from the normal single-effect Boss pedal and goes in some different sonic directions. And by using the company’s new MDP (multi-dimensional processing), Boss has made the TE-2 an especially dynamic delay, reverb, and modulation box that will satisfy adventurous guitarists, as well as the ambient crowd.
That Old Boss Magic
Not much has changed in the Boss enclosure department over the years, and that’s because they got it right the first time. You know the look—the footswitch pad is big and well out of the way of the controls which are securely mounted to the faceplate. A 9V adaptor may be used to power up the unit, but a 9V battery is included too, and is easily accessed under the footpad. The TE-2 is about the weight of most compact Boss pedals and will sit securely on the floor or fit on a board with a little Velcro.
The Tera Echo has four easy-to-use and fairly intuitive controls for dialing in the ethereal colors within. The wet/dry mix is changed with E. Level, which can completely cut out the effect or camouflage your original signal under a clamorous haze. Tone delivers a darker, bassier response when you turn it counterclockwise and a sharper, more cutting output when you turn the knob clockwise. Feedback sets the tail length of the effect and S-Time (spread time) alters the effect duration.
The final piece of the puzzle is the freeze function that is activated by holding down the footpad. Once it’s engaged, the LED will flash and the residual echoes from your last notes will indefinitely repeat and you can then play over the top normally.
Cosmic Slop
One of the feature attractions of the Tera Echo is its ability to produce heavy swells and big space-rock crescendos. But to really explore the functionality of this box, I started with most of the controls dialed down to a minimum and discovered some very cool, more understated sounds. I left all the TE-2 parameters around noon and dropped the E. Level to 10 o’clock. With the wet signal mixed at this ratio, most of the cosmic theatrics are present but very subtle, and you’re left with a lush echoed reverb with a little shimmer that harkens back to the sound of earlier Interpol records. Arpeggiated picking takes on extra saturation and notes glow with an animated quality that really reacts to your playing. It’s here you start to hear the MDP in play—harder picking accents the modulated aspects of the delay, while lighter attack reduces modulation presence to a subtle wash.
Kicking up the E. Level will, of course, bring more effect to the table, and pushing it past noon is where things start to get interesting. Set the pedal up for signal splits and multiple modulations, for instance, and the single-coil, chiming echoes of a Telecaster will pitch-shift until they wind down lower into a bubbling cauldron. Fast volume swells will rise with an expressive surge along the lines of Mogwai, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Ratings
Pros:
Highly durable. Lots of sounds in a compact box. Stereo output.
Cons:
More control over modulation would be nice.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$149
Boss
bossus.com
Pushing Feedback and S-Time into extreme regions yields lengthy, cavernous trails that can get out of hand if you don’t watch your levels. These types of freakouts are better suited for cleaner, high-wattage amplifiers that more effectively distribute a wide range of frequencies, and moving from a Telecaster and 15-watt Vox to a Les Paul and Fender Bassman opened up explorations of the headier, wilder soundscapes you can create with the TE-2.
Once Feedback hits 4 o’clock, you’ll have a near-infinite loop that swells drastically in volume. If the S-Time is dialed low, the incoming signal sounds like a tsunami rushing through your speakers, and you’ll have to turn it back fast or risk blowing your eardrums. With an increased S-Time, the babble gets very robotic, like a slightly rounded square wave. Luckily you can kill the feedback by turning off the pedal, and the delays will trail off.
The freeze function is a great addition that can be applied to many live situations. The E. Level and S-Time primarily affect this feature, although higher feedback levels enable you to snare and hold a cool bubbling surge. Such freezes are harder to capture and difficult to replicate, but they’re awesome in song climaxes when you want to noodle over weirder or more ethereal textures. And if you really nail the technique, you might not need that synth player after all.
The Verdict
The TE-2 Tera Echo will find favor among players who like their time-based effects tweakable and powerful. In the most basic applications, the TE-2 is a stout reverb you could use in any situation. The pedal’s most extreme sounds, though, could land you knee-deep in a noise-rock project. In between the craziest modulation and the subtlest effects, however, there are plenty of useful sounds for unique sonic explorations. The sound quality is excellent, it handles all pickups equally well, and the tone knob is powerful enough to tailor the peal for just about any rig or stage situation. And while the Tera Echo may not become a staple effect like the DD-3 or DS-1, it seems destined to become one of those Boss effects that stirs up a cult of players who can’t live without it.
Watch our video demo:
Classic Lines
Unveiled in 1949, Gibson’s ES-175 has been a jazz workhorse for years, preferred by improvisers like Jim Hall, Joe Pass, and Pat Metheny, and virtuosic rockers like Steve Howe and Mark Knopfler. The model has gone through a lot of pickup changes over its lifetime, including single- and twin-P-90 versions, as well as and single- and twin-humbucker incarnations. The 24 3/4"-scale Eastman AR371CESB uses a single humbucker in the neck position of its 16" laminated maple body, which also features a florentine cutaway that meets up with a 20-fret rosewood fretboard inlaid with split parallelogram markers—all of which is very Gibson-esque. The Eastman does deviate from convention on several important counts, however. It uses a 3-piece maple neck with a 1.75" nut rather than the traditional one-piece mahogany neck with a 1.687" nut. The Eastman also uses 5-ply binding on the top and 3-ply binding on the back, whereas the ES-175 has 3-ply on both.
As seems to be typical of Eastman instruments, craftsmanship on the Chinese-built AR371CESB is quite good overall, though it’s not entirely without issues. The Dunlop 6130 fretwire is smoothly polished and free of rough ends, the nitrocellulose lacquer finish is applied evenly (except at the neck joint, where it gets a bit thick), and the sunburst finish has a cool vintage vibe. But there are areas where the binding could have been more cleanly scraped, and on the back of the headstock a bit of finish chipped off near the 1st-string tuner, which might have been installed too tightly. About the only other disappointment is the hardshell case, which has a relatively flimsy-feeling lid and an under-padded interior. As nice as this guitar is, a gigging guitarist would be wise to swap this case for a more durable option.
Excellent Playability and Sound
When I first lifted the Eastman from its case, my disappointments about its container dis-appeared upon discovering how refreshingly lightweight the guitar is. I strummed a few open chords and found the guitar to be very loud and lively for a laminated electric archtop. It’s also unexpectedly and appealingly bright, with an impressive capacity for midrange.
Ratings
Pros:
Top-notch sound and playability. Classic, handsome look.
Cons:
Finer craftsmanship details could be better.
Tones:
Playability:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$780
Eastman Guitars
eastmanguitars.com
The neck is on the slender side, but the wider nut gives you room to range, and the fast, low action enables execution of sustaining single notes, deep bends, and complex chord shapes up to the 20th fret and across all six strings. Intonation on our review guitar was spot-on and there were no dead areas on the neck, and when I played uninterrupted for a half hour I didn’t experience any of the fret-hand fatigue I often encounter on a 1940s archtop.
With just one pickup, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the AR371CESB doesn’t pack a staggering assortment of tones, but it is an excellent-sounding guitar nonetheless. Through a Fender Pro Junior, it sounded full, articulate, and—unlike some guitars in this category—not muddy in the slightest. While the guitar’s inherent brightness adds welcome definition to single-note lines and complex chords, it can be easily deemphasized with the tone knob, which, works very smoothly and has real range. The guitar is also surprisingly resistant to feedback. I had to turn the amp over halfway up before it started to exhibit any real propensity for squealing.
Happy in a wide range of jazz approaches, the AR371CESB lends an authentic voice to everything from Freddie Green-style strumming to Jim Hall legato lines and Derek Bailey-inspired free improv. Naturally, selections from the classic Yes catalog also sound great on the guitar. And no matter the technical demands, the guitar is uncommonly play-able and truly a joy to handle.
The Verdict
The Eastman AR371CESB might look like a Gibson ES-175 clone, but it’s a great guitar in its own right. It’s lighter and louder than the average hollowbody electric, plays like a dream, and has a rich, complex sound that will satisfy the staunchest jazz purist and the most adventurous rocker alike. Best of all, with a price tag under $800, it’s a value that’s nearly impossible to beat.