Line 6 Spider 2

I have the first spider, its comparable to the 2. Good starter amp. Very versitile, good tone for the price.

I wouldn't recommend it, personally I think it's a mistake to combine effects, modellers and amps. They sound good enough and are really kind of cool, but ultimately they are limiting.

I think a much better track to take is to get the best straight amp you can afford. You're looking for the best clean sound you can afford using your guitar (or guitars).

There are some great amps in that price range that can be used for studio work, practice, and even small gigs that will grow with you as you grow as a guitarist.

If you pick up the Spider you might have a great deal of fun with it, but if you want to do serious recording or gig'ing you'll find yourself buying another amp.

Sure you don't have all the cool effects, but honestly, eventually you'll want the individual effects for finer control anyway.

Ahh the Spider 2.

I had a 112. The thing rocked for a minute. Then I couldn't dial in the sounds that I really wanted, so quit using it and didn't turn it on for months.

I'd just plug straight into my Kustom 16 or run through my V-AMP.

Notice I said HAD one. When I saw the Fender G-DEC I went down and tried it over a few days and fell in love with it, (for a practice amp), I'm still a newbie and I really enjoy the backing(s) on the G-Dec. So I asked if they'd take a trade on my Spider. They did.

It boiled down to this. I didn't play 20 hours on my spider. Yeah its loud, Yeah the distortion is massive, but after a while it sounded way over processed and I didn't enjoy it, so I never played on it.

Now I'm looking for a True TUBE amp.

Happy Hunting.

Yeah, they're handy in their own way. Periodically, when there's a weird sound we're looking for, we'll coax it out of the spider when it would have been difficult to get out of more conventional amp, but yes there are some issues:

1. As mentioned, the sound is very very "processed" sounding. There's no doubt that it's all digital, solid state. Hard to inject artificial warmth in there, responds to your playing dynamics in very boring, uninspiring ways.

2. 99.99999% of the time I just want either crunchy distortion, glassy clean or some area in between there. Maybe a touch of reverb. So if you don't use a flanger, phaser, and need 6 kinds of chorus, you pay for a lot of unused effects.

YMMV, but I don't think it's the right amp for a lot of the people who buy them.