List Price: $259.99
Sale Price: $199.99
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- Boutique-Style 5-Watt Class-A Valve Amplifier Combo with Reverb and Power Attenuator
- Authentic preamp design from the '60s featuring 1 x 12AX7 valve - everything from purring blues to mind-blowing crunch
- Integrated high-class reverb with dedicated Reverb control
- Vintage Equalizer with dedicated Tone control
- Built-in 2-way Power Attenuator allows you to get ultimate sound at any volume
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Bought this on Amazon. Incredible value. Hard to believe they can sell this for $150. I really like the way it sounds in the bedroom on 1 watt. Very full bottom end that sounds like a 10" rather than the 8" that is in the cabinet (when playing a single P90 hollow body Godin Kingpin). The 5 watt setting brightens up the sound (and raises the noise floor) but a bit brighter sound is what you want when playing with others and you need more volume. Excellent, natural sounding reverb. Behringer has really done their design homework on this combo and the sound and build quality is a step up from other Behringer products (which is maybe why they went with the Bugera name). I was about to buy a Vox AC4TV and I'm glad I didn't since I'm getting 10" style sounds and reverb for $100. less money.If I have one complaint, it's that I would have gladly paid a few extra bucks for a plywood box. The particle board construction just adds weight to an amp that is already heavy with decent transformers and a good custom loudspeaker with a heavy magnet. Not a lightweight box by any means. Don't think a Weber, Celestion or Jensen speaker would make much difference and this amp sounds good enough out of the box to leave the tubes alone for now.
Buy Bugera V5 5-Watt Class-A Valve Amplifier Combo with Reverb And Power Attenuator Now
I really like this amp for use at the house. The power attenuator is great for cranking down the volume while still getting a natural tube sound. I have found that I almost always run mine on the 0.1 watt setting and it's plenty loud for me in the lving room. Sounds best when the tubes are not driven too hard (just mild distortion / tube breakdown). If you push it too hard it gets into a king of weird tube breakdown that I'm not too crazy about, but maybe the tubes are not really broken in yet? The built in reverb is a nice feature and has a very good sound considering it's digital. This amp is a good deal if you just want something to get a nice bluesy tone around the house without blowing everyones ear drums out.A great choice for practice and recording, this tube amp puts out 5 watts of tube volume, which is a lot of sound. I'd recommend this to any level of guitar player.For recording, with an amp like this running about halfway, you can capture the amp's sweet spot at reasonable volumes. You're going to mike it anyway, so who needs the volume? And for practice, you can switch it down to 1 watt, one-tenth watt, or even use headphones, so you can still get the tone you want at low volume. You may need a big amp stack to play the outdoor stadiums, but for practice and recording anything but face melting metal, this is it.
I've been playing guitar for over 40 years and found this to be a great sounding amp when teamed up with any type of guitar, humbuckers or single coil pickups. Great tube tone, and with a bit of knob twisting on this amp as well as your guitar, and you can dial up a wide range of clean or dirty sounds.
Keep in mind this is a hand-wired amp at about one third of the price you'd pay for a bigger name. You can't beat the value.
And it looks great too. It actually looks better than the pictures. Heavy-duty case with thick black covering, chicken head knobs, and glitter speaker cloth. Looks like it's been around for years.
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Although I heard this is a copy of a vox ac30 I think it is more like a mini colossal. 3 wattage setting options with the built in attenuator. 8 inch speaker actually sounds fine in a bedroom. I don't think upgrading the 8" speaker will have much of an impact on the sound. However I'm interested in hearing this through a 10" speaker.The reverb is nice. Its a big difference between the other low cost/low watt tube amp options.
The amp has a lot of headroom so there is no reason to go with a 12au7 as a pre-amp tube. However to get heavy distortion will require a stomp box to push it.
Maybe a set of jj tubes in replacement of the rebadged sovtek tubes that bugera uses. But that too isn't high on the to-do list.
The amp itself looks and feels well made and the handle feels plush.
I can see this becoming a favorite in the after market mod kit scene given the reverb option.
Wish I could say that this is a locally made amp but they are made in China. 10 years ago I don't see this price would have been possible.
Pros
1) Great clean tone. Not a great Fender-type clean but good in its own right. The reverb, although not a real spring reverb makes the clean even more pleasant.
2) The attenuator is fantastic for getting great tube tones at bedroom practice amp volume levels.
3) The extra gain control on the amp really sets it apart from the competition, the bulk of which have only the volume control or perhaps a volume and tone.
4) The amp is very inexpensive and is built like a truck. I can't speak for the electronic components or how it is wired because I haven't dismantled it but to me nothing feels cheap in any way.
5) Speaker out means you can drive a an external cabinet with it. I have heard people get great results doing this.
Cons (And most of them are pretty nit-picky)
1) Weighs a ton. The housing of the amp is stupidly heavy.
2) Although the attenuator is great for controlling the volume, I think the 0.1 watt setting doesn't sound nearly as good ast the 1 and 5 watt settings.
3) I don't like the way the amp breaks up when it is pushed to the limit on the 5 watt setting. I have heard that you can plug it into a speaker cabinet and get better results but personally I like the clean and dirty tones up to about middle volumes on 5 watts and all of the tones on 1 watt.
4) I don't think this amp handles overdrive and distortion pedals particularly well. I have tried a variety of cheap and expensive overdrives and distortions and I just don't like them on this amp with the exception of the Danelectro Transparent Overdrive V2 which I do like but which reminds me quite a bit of the built-in gain on the amp so you are really just getting channel switching in that case. This doesn't really matter to me though because the amp sounds great on its own.
Upgrades
I have heard this amp benefits from new tubes and a speaker. I've tried a Jensen C8R in it and I very much PREFER THE STOCK SPEAKER. So I say don't bother. Save your money for a more expensive amp for gigging.
I have been accumulating a bunch of small amps lately and I like this one the best. I also have a Fender Champion 600 which I love and have no intention of parting with but just feels like a toy next to the Bugera V5. The fender breaks up more pleasantly so if you like that go for it but the clean on the Bugera is much better and you can control the gain which is a huge plus. My other small amp is a Fender Mustang I which is a marvel of technology and allows you to record directly to your computer. If anything I say buy 'em both. I have not tried the Vox AC4 but from listening to youtube clips it seems that that amp is very much in line with the Champion as an amp that overdrives very easily, just with a Vox-ier tone. For larger amps I own a Roland Blues Cube BC-30 1x12 and a mid-'90s Fender Blues DeVille 2x12. I now play the Bugera and Mustang way more than those amps.
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