My Boss Katana 100 is still the go to for band use because it’s loud enough to hang w/ the band but I couldn’t resist when I saw a Roadtripper MCM on sale used at Guitar Center. It’s red, unlike my first color choice, which would have been Seafoam Green, but at under $500 i thought it a good enough deal. It’s the same red as in this video - and she ain’t joking about how light it is:
It’s a single-channel amp with a clean tone that pleases me, and also sounds good with overdrive and fuzz in front. The “wide band” spring reverb is the only one I’ve heard that sounds good with electric violin - most others have pronounced ringing that can clash with what I’m trying to play on violin. It brings out the tonal character of my semi-hollow guitars like the Eric Johnson Thinline in a way that the Katana doesn’t - it let me hear the airiness of that semi-hollow body, whereas it just sounds like any other Strat through the Katana. Oh and the amptremolo sounds great too.
If you don’t mind my guitar playing, this vid was recorded on the MCM, with the aforementioned Strat:
For this demo of the RM-1n dirty reverb, I tried recording the XLR output of the MCM into a Roland Go:Mixer Pro. Reverb on the MCM was turned all the way down. Interestingly, connecting the XLR out of the amp does not disable the speaker, nor does the amp volume knob have any effect on the XLR signal. There is a speaker simulator circuit on the XLR output although the video doesn’t really showcase that.
