AC-22LX Compact Acoustic Amplifier (AC-22LX)

Not powerful, but allows for great creativity.

I purchased this amp directly through Roland and it came with the Bluetooth transmitter but I felt the need to write a review here in case someone was considering it. I had such hopes for this amp… I have a couple of Roland Street Cube amps and have used them countless times for small room and street events and they have been wonderfully easy to cart around had great sound quality, and and with a 6 hour run time on AA batteries, it was hard to go wrong. That being said, when I saw this acoustic themed amp from Boss I figured it would be similar, but it wasn’t even close. You just can’t get much volume out of it without the speakers crapping out. If you try to get more low end, the speakers rattle at low volume and if you add in some highs, you get shrill ear piercing snap out of higher notes. Now as always, with anything Roland, the chorus is phenomenal. The mic placement settings are basically various preset eq settings that just aren’t that great, and the rhythm settings are very basic and setting the timing just right on them is a challenge. Again, I had great hopes for this, but it just didn’t deliver. I spent hours trying to dial this thing in using various guitars but for real, I couldn’t even get it to the point where it would be even remotely useful with a guitar no matter the occasion. Which is sad. It does however make for a good Bluetooth speaker in a pinch, But at a $500 price point, there are far better options available out there for that use. Usually with Roland, it’s hard to go wrong, but this ended up being pricey with limited performance and extremely disappointing results. Why 2 stars and not 1? It IS built well. Looks good….built to last… even though it sounds absolutely horrendous.

The pros. Fills a small room nicely, the sounds are pleasing to the ear and the rhythm machine is fun to practice with. The line outs sound good. Battery powered when you need it. Compact. AB airfeel option sounds bright and crisp. Onboard reverb is pleasing to the ear. It's more fun to play acoustic guitar through this unit than not. The cons: Small, not very loud. Air feel is a plus but also a con in that really only AB and XY are better sounding than dry to my ears. Maybe someone else can comment on this but I thought I would be able to take the USB out from the unit into the usb-c port of my phone and have my phone's video use the audio from the boss unit and this doesn't appear to work on my phone. Overall I'm happy to have this unit. I use it to jam with a friend that comes over and it fills the small room nicely. I also use it to record demos straight into my Scarlet interface using the line outs and it sounds quite nice. I do think the vocal out the line outs isn't quite as nice as the sound of the guitar but it's still quite usable. In terms of stage use, It wouldn't be loud enough on stage with a drummer but you could use the line outs and have those fed into your monitor and that would get you through the gig.