Vax
New member
When you hear the terms "1-watt head" attached to an amplifier, the immediate thoughts that come to mind are, "lack of headroom" and "too small-sounding". I was quite pleasantly surprised by two "pedals" offered by Surprise Sound Lab. Why the quotation marks? Well, I can't really classify them as pedals even though they can certainly fit very nicely on a pedalboard. The Rock Block is a true tube-driven, fully analog amp that's a direct competitor to the Zvex Nano Head and can run any cab of your choice, or as a stompbox integrated in your chain of effects. It has a really good clean tone that has surprisingly good headroom. Even when cranked, you can use the good 'ol combination of picking dynamics and pickup volume to clean up nicely.
Here's my video review with the SE-5 speaker emulator.
Understandably, the tone with a speaker simulator will not be the same with a cab played live. Running this into a Vox 2x12" cab really brings out more thumping low-end and definition (which I think will be even better with a 4x12").
As for speaker emulation, I quite like the tweakability offered by the SE-5. Other speaker sims only allow +/-20dB jumps in volume, but the SE-5 offers 8 notches of +4dB increments, allowing you a fair degree of fine-tuning when running this live into a sound console. The tone control is also very useable, and to my ears, going from 0 to 10 corresponds to a decrease in the virtual cab/speaker size. At 0, I think it sounds like the boomiest possible 4x12", and at 10, it reminds me of an 8" Fender Champ, with all the gnarl and snarl associated with those types of speakers.
In this video, I do a shoot-out between the SE-5 and a cheaper Mooer Micro-DI:
I hope you found these informative and useful!
Here's my video review with the SE-5 speaker emulator.
Understandably, the tone with a speaker simulator will not be the same with a cab played live. Running this into a Vox 2x12" cab really brings out more thumping low-end and definition (which I think will be even better with a 4x12").
As for speaker emulation, I quite like the tweakability offered by the SE-5. Other speaker sims only allow +/-20dB jumps in volume, but the SE-5 offers 8 notches of +4dB increments, allowing you a fair degree of fine-tuning when running this live into a sound console. The tone control is also very useable, and to my ears, going from 0 to 10 corresponds to a decrease in the virtual cab/speaker size. At 0, I think it sounds like the boomiest possible 4x12", and at 10, it reminds me of an 8" Fender Champ, with all the gnarl and snarl associated with those types of speakers.
In this video, I do a shoot-out between the SE-5 and a cheaper Mooer Micro-DI:
I hope you found these informative and useful!