Keyboard amp recommendations, please

[JonPorobil]

Hi Songfight!

I might be performing with a band at some point in the near future, but I haven't actually owned an amp of my own for quite some time, and even when I did, I was plugging my keyboard into an amp designed for guitars, which was... less than ideal.

I found these two on Guitarcenter.com; their low prices belie their high customer ratings. Can I trust them?
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Peavey-KB-1 ... 1154529.gc
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Behringer-U ... 1173577.gc

I'm not sure what to look for in a keyboard amp, or what exactly defines the distinction between a "guitar amp" and a "keyboard amp," so any basic info would be helpful, or if you've got experience with amping keyboards and have a product you'd like to recommend, let me hear it!

Budget it a big issue for me, so the more economical, the better. That said, I'd rather pay more for something if paying less means it'll blow out in the middle of its first gig.

[ken]

My friends have used the Roland KC series and they are good. You can probably find one used on Craigslist. I see them all the time here.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/navigation?q=roland+kc

http://austin.craigslist.org/msg/1382947513.html
http://austin.craigslist.org/msg/1370893916.html
http://austin.craigslist.org/msg/1336990363.html
http://austin.craigslist.org/msg/1380615661.html
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/msg/1355990651.html

[ken]

I just looked at the amps you linked and neither of them will be loud enough to play with a band. You should be looking in the 100-150 watt range. Something with a 12 or 15" speaker.

Another thing to consider is a small PA, which you might find other uses for as well...

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Harbinger-H ... 1428885.gc

[HeuristicsInc]

For my keyboards I use a Peavey KB/A 100... I think that's the right one. It has treated me well, but I don't play with bands. It does get pretty loud, but if you're going to be in a club with people yelling I think you would need the PA.
-bill

PS it is also freakin' heavy.

[Spud]

I have a Roland Cube 100 Keyboard amp you can have if you come to Seattle to get it. It's too heavy (for me) to ship (for free). I am currently using it as a tv stand for an old analog tv without a converter.

[Paco Del Stinko]

I have a Roland Cube 100 Keyboard amp you can have if you come to Hampton to get it. Great amp, and would sound the nuts in stereo with the one from Seattle. Run the triangle, and amp it up.

[JonPorobil]

Why does everyone want to get rid of their Roland Cube 100 amps? Is there something wrong with them?



I wish I did have the vacation time and the expendable funds to go visit you both (and claim your amps!), but it's a bit implausible given my current situation. Y'all still rock my socks off on a daily basis. 8)

By the way, it appears that the Cube 100 is marketed as a bass amp. Are bass amps largely interchangeable with keyboard amps?

[JonPorobil]

I just looked at the amps you linked and neither of them will be loud enough to play with a band. You should be looking in the 100-150 watt range. Something with a 12 or 15" speaker.

Another thing to consider is a small PA, which you might find other uses for as well...

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Harbinger-H ... 1428885.gc

Ken, your recommendation is taken into consideration; and I appreciate that you went the extra mile and found those Craigslist postings.

Here's a philosophical question for you all: Back in college, I used a relatively small amp (I think it was 15W; it belonged to one of my bandmates) for practice, and when it came time to gig, I just plugged directly into the house PA. Was this a bad idea? Because a smaller amp is more portable than a larger one, as well as cheaper (I've also been hitting up the pawn shops in my area), and there's a big difference between practice and performance.

[Paco Del Stinko]

Cube 100: I love that amp, just don't use it often enough. Here it is in bottom right of the picture, made in the late 80's.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacodelstinko/2739035604/

As far as going direct, you can certainly do that, better if you go into your amp and use its line out to the house board. Then you can use your amp as a personal monitor. I actually played keys out in a band a few times(!) and did this with my...Cube 100!

[jimtyrrell]

Well Hell, Paco, if Generic doesn't make the trip, maybe I'll come down and grab that thing.

[HeuristicsInc]

By the way, it appears that the Cube 100 is marketed as a bass amp. Are bass amps largely interchangeable with keyboard amps?

I am not an expert, but I think the important thing for keyboards is a flattish frequency response, and one that doesn't change the sound much like a guitar amp might.
-bill

[LMNOP]

I just plugged directly into the house PA. Was this a bad idea?

Nothing wrong with that at all. Biggest negative is not being able to hear yourself if you can't get an individual monitor mix. So think about going a little bigger without getting ridiculous and needing a dolly just to move your amp around. It's more than you want to spend, but I have a 150W Motion Sound (clean channel for the acoustic piano plus a tube channel for organ or Wurli or whatever). Despite what Ken said, this isn't nearly big enough for most (band) gigs. But it has an XLR out that - and this is important - doesn't kill the internal speaker. So it makes a great monitor and delivers a nice strong signal to the PA. I think it's like 30 pounds.

[JonPorobil]

By the way, it appears that the Cube 100 is marketed as a bass amp. Are bass amps largely interchangeable with keyboard amps?

I am not an expert, but I think the important thing for keyboards is a flattish frequency response, and one that doesn't change the sound much like a guitar amp might.
-bill

I know <0 about basses and their amps, so I'm assuming that a bass amp has the type of flat(ish) freq. response I'm looking for? There's some pretty nice brands of bass amp for low prices at the pawn shop across the street.

[jimtyrrell]

it has an XLR out that - and this is important - doesn't kill the internal speaker.

Can you elaborate on this? Is an XLR 'safer' than a 1/4"?

[AJOwens]

I have an XLR output on my bass amp. It provides a balanced low-impedance line-level feed, especially designed for input to a soundboard. I believe you get a better signal-to-noise ratio than with 1/4". Normally the XLR jack has nothing to do with the speaker connection; your amp and speakers work as usual.

[AJOwens]

Bass amps don't usually have the speakers for clean highs. Some of them do come with horns, but let's face it, they're made for the low end of the spectrum, and possibly they're made to handle attack energies differently. (Bass speakers really have to move, and if you want punch, they have to move a long way very quickly.) Mine (a GK Microbass) sounds fabulous with a bass, but if I put a guitar through it, it sounds awful for some reason, even through twin 10" speakers. Can't vouch for keyboards, but I suggest you try it out first.

[Spud]

As you can see in Paco's picture, this particular Cube 100 is marketed as a keyboard amp. You can see two of them in this picture: http://www.workshop3d.com/octo/studiosetup.jpg

I think Roland uses the Cube designation on a number of different amps of different types.

Guitar: http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/prod ... sku=480197
Bass: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/CubeBass100
Keyboard: http://www.spacemanmusic.com/Keyboards/ ... yboard+Amp

and don't forget Sober's favorite:

http://www.roland.com/products/en/Micro-CUBE/


Yes, I used to have two, one was stolen. I run the keyboards direct into the P.A. these days.

[Paco Del Stinko]

You can see two of them in this picture:

Nice! I can assure you that the stolen one didn't travel across country, though.

[LMNOP]

@ Jim T.: Pretty much what AJ said on the XLR thing but that isn't what I was calling important. My point was that if you plug something into a speaker-out jack on some amps, it switches off the internal speaker. So you've basically got a big ol' pre-amp. For this application, I'd like the amp's speaker to keep working so I can monitor myself while simultaneously sending a signal to the PA board.

[AJOwens]

Hmm, I wouldn't recommend using the speaker jack as an output to a board. The impedance matching is horrible enough (meaning noise and poor quality sound), but in terms of the power you're dumping into the board, I don't even want to think about it. The only thing you should ever plug into the speaker jack of a stage amp (or a practice amp, come to that) is a speaker. I know sometimes people plug their MP3 player headphone outputs into the line-in jacks on a stereo (which does not bode well for sound quality either), but that's not the same. MP3 players don't push upwards of 60 watts. You can actually light an incandescent bulb with the speaker output of an average stage amp. You wouldn't plug a cord from a household AC outlet into your PA inputs, would you?

(EDIT) Don't-try-this-at-home dep't: You can light a 60W bulb with a 60-watt tube amp, but please don't try it with a transistor amp on my account.

The technique was actually recommended in an Electric Guitar Amplifier Handbook published in the 1960s, as a "rough-and-ready" tactic for checking power output. (This was a very cool book, with actual schematics for Fender Twin Reverbs and the like.) The author, Jack Darr, noted that the impedance matching was less than satisfactory, but he did not provide the impedance of an average household bulb. If it's less than 4 ohms, your tube amp can probably deal with it for a short time, but your transistor amp could fry just like THAT. So don't do it!

[LMNOP]

No argument here: I said speaker-out, I meant line-out.