line 6 spider

If thats the type of amp your looking for it will work fine. it will allow you to produce a wide range of sounds and has a headphone jack that can also be used for direct output for recording. They've come along way with amps like this. I'm sure you'll have fun exploring and experimenting with it.

Joe

You could probably play this for a while, if you're a beginner, before feeling that it lacked something that you could hear in other amps. They really sound pretty good and are pretty flexible. They don't really sound any better, to me, than the Behringer and Vox competition, some of which you can get for a little less money (but not enough to really base your decision on.
I think the Line6 Vetta 3 sounds better than the Spider, but it costs more.
I don't think either sounds as good as an equivalently priced Fender Tube amp, but they can create a lot more sounds, if that's what you are looking for. The tube amp will give you a couple great sounds vs. the half dozen good sounds you will find in any of the line6 amps.
Personally, I think an amp like the Line6 amps is great for someone who wants to... or is in a band that has to... play a lot of covers and wants to duplicate the sound of the original song. Like a wedding band or a band that plays school dances or some such. They also weigh a lot less, if you need to carry it around a lot. They are also useful when you don't know what sound you are looking for, allowing you to try alot of sounds as you hone in on your sound.

Well, mixed bag. On itself, it is a lot of amp for little money, and I bet Joe and Wes would have loved to have started out with an amp like this. However, it just isn't 'it'. I am very much pro-modeling, and I usually don't care much if it has transistors, tubes or rotten potatoes in it, as long as it sounds good, but this amp just sounds 'flat'. The Behringer V-ampire is in my humble opinion merely slightly better (but cheaper, so cool), an dthe Vox sounds a big deal better.

Is it an enjoyable amp worth its money? Yes. Are there better choices in this price-range? In my opinion, yes. But you won't buy a bag of crap if you go with the spider. :D

I played one of these today, and found that they are very versatile amps. The Effects are probably the best in-built effects I've seen on an amp.

The real problem with these amps is that they have absolutely no character. Would be great as a first amp, or on a recording maybe, but they really lack any sparkle.

Peter

English one: try the V-ampire, Vox AD60VT, higher line6 models or some Roland amps, they all have better effects if you ask me. (come to think of it, Line6 did an even worse job with the effects on the POD 1.0 and 2.0 modelers...). But the effects are useable though, which is something I can't say of half the effects on my amp :D

Thanks for the replies.
I want something that will last for quite a while, I've been playing guitar for around two years on a 10 watt crate amp. What I'm looking for is something with a good clean tone but also has a bunch of effects to mess around with. I'm not in a band or anything, I just like messing around making my own music and haven't really found my own "sound" yet.. but I still want the amp to be good enough to gig with incase I ever get into that..

I don't have much money to spend, preferably something around $300-350.. I might be going down to guitar center next week and I'll take a look at these:

Line 6 Spider
Behringer V-ampire
Anything else?

Also check out the Roland cube 30 and the Vox AD30VT. Have fun.
:D

I don't know how I did that :oops: This was meant for the Crate topic.

I'm not really fond of Crate amps either. I had a Crate Vintage Club 50 watt 2x12 amp a few years back and it died after about 1 year of very light use. I was so disgusted with it I sold it as-is. Prior to that I had a Music Man HD130 that lasted forever with no maintenance and I've had really good luck with Fender amps. Oh, I forgot, I had a Marshall Lead 12 practice amp for several years also and it was bullet-proof, in fact I gave it to my daughter and she still has it. I wouldn't take a Crate amp if you offered it to me for free.