YAMAHA GTHR5UK Yamaha THR5 Electric Guitar Amp,beige

I had a couple of false starts. Originally I had a Katana 50, sound was great and oodles of it but it is heavy and bulky and as I am moving to a fresh house I wanted to be able to hide it away more easily. I tried a couple of other options a NUX which had loads of features but not great sound quality, then the Vox Adio air GT which had great polished sound, sort of, but there was a quite a bit of digital noise which I couldn't get rid of, sounded like resonance.The Yamaha had been one that I had liked the look of but I was swayed by the apps and the Bluetooth that went with the the other two. Finally I went with my first thoughts and from day one I realised that the crystal clear sounds of the Yamaha was much more of what I wanted to hear. Not as powerful and the Katana or the Vox so don't quite get the gutsy bass sound but total lack of any extraneous fizz or buzz is a delight. It has a smaller repertoire of effects but as I'm using it with a Boss BR800 I can dial in anything that I can't get on the Yamaha. The clear sound works well with my my electric and my acoustic and it is plenty loud enough to get uncomfortable in a room so it spends most of the time at about 50% volume. Its neat, compact and not many of the reviews I read spent any time on the Cubase LE AI Elements 11 that come with it. Its a faff to download but its a really competent recording solution. As yet I haven't put it head to head with the Boss BR800 but some day I might try.So in summary its a great little practice amp, good value and the best solution to home guitar practice I have found.

This amp is fantastic.For the first time, I've been able to get the tone my guitar is capable of at a volume level that I can cope with in the house. All five of the amp models are spot on, and the controls do exactly what you would expect them to do no matter what the "output" volume is.Essentially what you have are five simulated amps: Clean, Crunch, Lead, British High-Gain and Modern, loosely corresponding to a Fender Twin Reverb, Vox AC30, Marshall Plexi, Marshall JCM800 and a Mesa Boogie Rectifier. Unlike other modelling amps, Yamaha claim to model the actual analogue circuitry rather than just modelling the tone - however they do it, it sounds fantastic and the gain and master knobs seem to do exactly what they should do.While this model lacks some of the controls available on its big brother THR10 model, you can access many of these if you connect the amp to a computer and run Yamaha's THR Editor software. In addition to giving access to more controls, this software allows you to save and load presets, much like you can with a purely software-based setup like Guitar Rig.Speaking of which, as I've used Guitar Rig for many years, another function you get through the USB connection is a low latency ASIO input and output. It provides two stereo inputs, one of which is a straight input (i.e. like using a DI box) and the other is tapped from just before the final output. This means I can use this single device both as a standalone unit or as the I/O for Guitar Rig...however, after having had it for a couple of weeks, I haven't yet found myself needing to switch back to using Guitar Rig once - the native sound from the THR5 just sounds so much better. You also get a free copy of Cubase LE AI Elements 8, which gives you a good entry-level DAW solution.The onboard effects (the usual chorus, flanger, phaser and tremolo) are pretty good. On the unit itself, there is very little control over the effects (it's all done via one single knob), but it works surprisingly well for more purposes. If you want more control, you can use the THR Editor, though even here, you can only select one of these effects to be applied (no effects chaining) - though you also get control over compressor and gate functions.For reverb and delay, again there is a single control knob on the unit with full control available through the THR editor. When a delay profile is dialled in, you can set the delay speed by tapping the button on the left of the amp.I haven't tried it yet on batteries, but I have tried plugging my MP3 player in to the Aux in socket, and this seems to work well (note that unlike the THR10, there is no separate volume control for either the Aux or PC input - you need to control the volume on the device or PC. The Volume knob on the THR5 only controls the amp's own volume, i.e. your guitar's sound).What Yamaha have, successfully in my view, done is give you an amp which is very controllable via the THR editor when you need it to be (e.g. when you're tinkering to the nth degree for a recording) but when all you want to do is plug in and play, you are not having to constantly twiddle with the controls. The amp feels like it has been designed by a guitar player, rather than an engineer - and it looks great too!

Possibly the best 150 quid I've ever spent. The dynamic range of this thing - from clean to hi-gain - is quite phenomenal. Possibly the first amp I've ever owned, practice or otherwise, that I haven't spend a year and a day fiddling about with and plugging various external effects into to get a very, very decent sound at low, home friendly volumes. Just superb. Combining the built in amp models with the built in chorus / delay settings offers some very professional sounds; and with the addition of an auxiliary socket, you can play along to your favourite backing tracks to your heart's content with guitar and backing track merging seamlessly. Down graded by a star because of a weird raspy rattle that you have to spend some time playing around with settings to eliminate on clean sounds; but honestly, for an amp that's about the same size and weight as my fiancées handbag - and funnily enough, the same colour - it is a stunningly impressive piece of kit. If you ever get fed up with being confined to one room because of heavy gear / complex setups when you just want to play in the bedroom, in the lounge or wherever for a change, this little practice amp is both amazingly convenient and versatile... Oh, and produces sounds that simply defy the price tag.