Customer Reviews

Line 6 Spider IV 15 15-watt 1x8 Modeling Guitar Amplifier

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

PROS:this is the perfect practice amp!!!!!! i love it!! i got it for christmas, and i use it all the time! i love how it has clean, crunch, metal, and insane settings! (my favorite is metal) this amp allows you to play any style whether it is country, blues, alternative, rock, metal, or deathcore! i am rockin' out to nirvana, ozzy, three days grace, skillet, guns n' roses, metallica, and evanescence! the effects are great, and you will need them for some songs. also it comes with a tuner, and a place to plug in anything you need to plug in like a footpedal or an effect box. it also comes with something very handy. it has a place to plug in your ipod, mp3 player, or cd player. just buy an audio cable at radio shack for $8. the sound is phenomenal when you play your ipod. this means you can play along with your favorite songs from the same source! this will take practicing to a whole other level.
CONS: the booklet it comes with is absolutely no help WHATSOEVER. the tuner sucks. just buy a chromatic tuner for $15. when you are on clean, it automatically turns on the echo effect, even if its off. to turn it off, you have to manually turn the echo effects knob all the way and back to turn it off. this can be very annoying if you dont want the echo effect.
Overall, a fantastic amp. Recommended for anyone. Hope this review helps.

I use this compact modeling amp for guitar practice in my living room and am thinking about doing some recording with it. You will not believe the amazing sounds that can come out of this little box. The Clean amp model sounds as sweet as honey, and the Insane model kicks-out down-and-dirty, soul-satisfying distortion. There are two other amplifier models (Crunch and Metal) that pretty much cover the gamut of electric guitar amplification sounds. All six effects sound good, and this amp is light enough to haul around easily.

Read all the features this unit has. I can't believe the sound from this !!! Clean is very crisp. Crunch is classic rock Marshall tube sound, Metal is a cranked Laney &/or Peavey amp sound & Insane has that Mesa Boggie metal red tone for sure. All are adustable w/ tone & effects. each preset is nicely tunable with your pick up selector, volume & tone right at the guitar. It cranks too ! Gets nice & loud with very controlable tube like feedback. A must have ! The price is a steal & the case,speaker grill, knobs & buttons are very good quality. I give it raving reviews !

Bought this amp to play along with a Squier Classic Vibe 50's strat. It has a broad range of settings and effects that can be used. I found the clean channel to be not so clean. Tried resetting the clean several times to get rid of the pre-programmed echo or chorus effect, but it still has a bit of distortion to it. The crunch, metal, and insane channels all have their uses, but I found myself constantly playing to get to the sound quality I wanted regardless of channel or type of sound I was shooting for. I accessed some on-line help to try to work in the sounds, but it still takes more time to dial in the sound than I want to spend (more time messing with settings = less time playing).

Overall, the sound quality was OK for a practice amp

I'm sure that some people would be able to work this amp well for the type of music they are playing, but it just wasn't for me.

I see that today this amp is on sale for $89 with free shipping, ten less than I paid. I'm not tempted to buy one, even so.

There are so many glowing reviews here that there must be a lot of folks who like the noises that come out of this amp. I'm simply not among them.

To give the devil its due: if what you want is over-the-top distortion, distortion so thick that it's hard to tell how many guitar strings you're playing, or whether you're a fret off in your fingering, this is the amp for you. There's certainly no need for anything more than an 8" speaker, and the sound would probably be unchanged if it was 4".

The thing has a lot of settings one can play with. The only problem, from my point of view, is that 95% of the sounds it can make are dreadful.

With painstaking setting, it is possible to find a few kinda-clean settings, although even the cleanest is flangey. Flangey can be nice, but it's also nice to be able to do without it. There are other buttons you simply don't want to push without turning every gain and volume control down first, lest you unleash a Chernobyl of overdriven mush to shriek out your windows and into your neighborhood.

My previous amp was a classic fender princeton I got in the '60's, which I just sold off since it was crusty-rusty, buzzed like a cicada, and its power cord was as brittle as last year's licorice. Its putative value was about $750, and I sold it on craigslist for half that, figuring I'd pick up a cheap amp off Amazon - which I did. This was it, and I quickly sent it back. I bought the Behringer GTX30 instead, at $130. Mind you, neither amp sounds as good as the princeton's tubes did, which I didn't expect to be as obvious... but I wasn't looking for miracles. I plan to keep the Behringer and get used to it - it, too, can be easily overdriven, but it has a broader range of "cleanish" sounds, plus a 12" speaker and a bit more power.

I have little doubt that some younger players will comment on this review, noting that I am probably senile and just didn't work the knobs right. Well, point #1 is arguable, but on point #2, I'm lucid enough to try the permutations on twisting knobs and pushing buttons, and I was horrified at most of the settings. (In fairness, if my playing was sloppier I'd probably appreciate the forgiving nature of the mush it puts out).

So maybe this review is mostly aimed at the generation which were teens with the Beatles were new, which I hie from. Beware buying this amp as a cheap gift for anyone living in the same house unless you lay down some strict rules about using headphones.

I give it two stars, since the knobs were nice and shiny and I like the company's attitude, and Amazon was very good about the return. I tried to like it, I really did.

I got this amp, like 2 months ago and its amazing. It has so many combinations to choose from. Like "Clean + Eco", "Crunch + Eco", "Metal + phaser", and many more. It's very durable and i don't think it will ever break. I recommend this amplifier to any man and/or Woman who plays Guitar. :D

Well, after reading the reviews I gave this little amp a shot. The first one that arrived was dead out of the box [I think it was poor packaging by Amazon and it likely got shocked too hard]. Well, logged into Amazon and quickly got the return/replacment squared away and they "next dayed" the replacement to me. The replacement worked, and I love the sounds this thing can create. The manual that comes with it is very sketchy so I logged in to get the online manual. It was not a whole lot thicker, but was more helpful and answered a couple of my questions about what seemed a little strange. The preset buttons automatically "set" the various volume and tuning settings, but do not move the actual knobs. Thus when you touch something like the local gain knob, it cuts out the autmatically loaded setting and restarts at wherever the knob is. Thus you can go from really loud, touch a button and have zero volume. Once you see what is happening, it makes setting those buttons up for your practice area nice and easy and sensible. This little amp has a lot of heart and soul in it and is just what I wanted. I am a 52 year old former rock and roll guitarist relearning my old skills and this amp has great sound and sustain, even at whatever volume you want to play it at. It definitely makes practicing much more fun then trying to work with my old 100 watt Gibson solid state amp circa 1974. I have to blow the doors off my house to get that old amp to sound good. The Spider IV is a much better investment then an expensive fuzz box for my old amp, especially since I have no plans to perform anywhere but at home [and if I do someday, I will likely look at their bigger amps]. Oh, and I use a Les Paul Ultra guitar. Buy it, you will have fun with it, and if it is for your kid to practice with, he/she will love it.

Well, the second one started acting funny after a couple days and now the FX stuff randomly jumps into the mix. I can no longer turn the FX stuiff off by turning the knobs off. The Clean channel has a fast tremelo and heavy reverb now. Thus number 2 is going back for a refund. I think it likely that shock during shipment nailed the electronics. The manufacturer just puts it in a box with no styrofoam corners and then AMAZON just puts it in another bigger box with no padding, and thus it can slide all over and is shipped flat, rahter then standing up. Thus, I loved it while it worked, but I am not attempting another delivery of this from Amazon because 2 out of 2 is too bad of odds. I am crushed.... i still rate it high because it has a lot of potential, I just think they need to package it a lot better, and/or design their boards for more shock before letting a mail order house sell it.

I bought the Line 6 Spider IV 15 Watt version to use with my Carvin guitars, mainly for practice. It's a good little amp, plays with good tone, and is very versatile. I was so impressed with Line 6, I have a pod floor plus in the mail now.

I'd buy it again!

Line 6 Spider IV 15 15-watt 1x8 Modeling Guitar Amplifier

It's been many years since I have bought a guitar amp and I was pleasantly surprised at what would come out of a $99 amplifier. I do Swamp Rock/Swamp Blues for my own enjoyment and this Line 6 Spider fills the bill admirably. Don't expect to move the walls of an auditorium with this gear but it will make the living room shake a bit. In just three words... I love it.

Remember... alligators need love, too. ;>)

The sound on this amp is always distorted - it is never clean. Not only this but the dial settings drift and change. Hey - it was cheap - but you could get a nice clean amp for a few dollars more. If you are tempted by the price you will get what you pay for.