Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've been playing guitar for about 16 years, but I'll admit I know next to nothing about amps. I know what are generally considered to be good amps (Bogner, Marshall, Mesa/Boogie, etc.), but I couldn't look at the specs on an amp and tell you if it was any good.
After a little research, I came to the conclusion that I wanted a tube combo amp, something suitable for gigging or for practicing in the bedroom, that would give me a good variety of tones. (I like to play a wide range of music, from classic rock to metal and fusion, and bands I play with usually do covers.) I went down to Guitar Center with this in mind, and one of the salespeople pointed me to the Line 6 Spider Valve 212.
I plugged in an Ernie Ball Music Man JP6 (the same guitar I have at home) and immediately fell in love with the tone. You can see the specs for this amp a little farther up on the page, so I'll just talk about what matters: this amp sounds great. Plug in a good guitar with some good pickups, and you can dial in pretty much any tone you're after. Crank it up loud, and the tube power really shines. More than a dozen amp models (two choices for each individual setting on the dial) give you a wide variety of possible sounds. You'll likely hit on one or two models that you prefer, but even within a single setting you can dial in an impressive variety of tones.
I wasn't thrilled with the clean setting, but all I had to do get the clean sound I was after was to turn down the gain on the crunch setting, add a tiny bit of tape delay and some reverb, and there it was: my perfect clean tone. I've settled on the metal modeler (amber LED) for most of my high-gain tones, but I've only had it for about a week. I'm sure I'll find all kinds of great tones on different settings.
The one complaint I have about this amp is about the effects. They are limited, as you might expect with onboard effects, but the modulation effects in particular are practically unusable. The chorus and flanger are combined on the same dial for some reason, but all I really hear when I turn it on is a flanger, which is far too overpowering besides not being tweakable. A shame, since chorus is the only modulation effect I regularly use. The phaser and tremolo are okay, but I rarely use either and haven't experimented with them. The delay, on the other hand, is very usable, and I'm glad it got its own dial with three different flavors. The tap button for setting the tempo is essential and makes the onboard delay all most guitarists will need. The reverb is decent but a little overpowering at anywhere past about 11:00 on the dial.
Some other cool things about this amp include a built-in noise gate (just hold the tap button while turning the reverb dial past noon to activate it), distortion boost (hold the tap button while turning the drive dial past noon), and a tuner (hold the tap button in until the preset indicator switches to tuner mode). You can also save all your favorite settings as presets, easily navigable with a Line 6 FBV Express or Shortboard foot switch. (I strongly recommend spending the extra $100 on an FBV Express, though $230 for a Shortboard seems a little steep.)
(A quick side not about presets: the amp comes with 400+ presets, including 9 user-programmable banks with 4 patches each, totaling 36 programmable channels. You can't overwrite any of the artist or song presets. The presets are mostly decent at best, but they're a good starting point for tweaking. The amp does include a port for a PODxt, which you can also control with your FBV foot switch, and though I've never used one I'm sure it has plenty of programmable patches, so you aren't exactly limited to the amp's channels or presets.)
All in all, this amp sounds great with a huge variety of possible tones and options that will suit the needs of most guitarists playing in cover bands or just having fun at home. No, it can't compete with a Mesa Dual Rectifier half stack, but for a tube combo amp at well under $1,000, it can't be beat. Did I mention how loud this thing gets? I haven't been able to crank it past 10:00 on the master volume yet. I can't imagine anyone would ever need to go past 1:00, even at gigs. It's a seriously loud 40 watts.
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Spider Valve fuses the versatility of amp and effects modeling with the performance and feel of a world-class tube amplifier. Combining award-winning Line 6 modeling technology with a genuine tube amplifier designed by legendary amp designer Reinhold Bogner, Spider Valve delivers unmatched performance, responsiveness and tonal flexibility on the stage and in the studio.
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