Gig loud? Well, not really, but certainly something that is worthy of being miked up, as it spews frothy distorted tones that are full of fang-y midrange and sweet top end. It’s not the sort of town you would want to live in, but a fun place to visit – maybe on a recording session for a lo-fi track, or practicing at home when you need to be super quiet.īut plug the Greta into a speaker cabinet and stand back – it sounds remarkably real, true, and loud.

Using the onboard speaker, the tones are small, funky, and kind of fun. There’s also a VU meter that moves to the red the more you push the amp’s Volume control. Sporting a retro, tabletop-radio look, the Greta is an adorable lil’ thing with a 4' speaker and Volume and Tone controls. All in all, the HT-5R is a surprisingly versatile little tone generator. The speaker-emulated output is effective for recording and headphone rehearsing alike.

The reverb sounds good on the clean channel, but it gets a little lost in high gain tones. It’s a gutsy little monster, too – although low end is understandably attenuated in a package this size. The Overdrive channel is surprisingly versatile, and runs confidently from chewy blues crunch to high-gain sizzle – all of which are a total blast to play. Tested with a Tele and an SG, the HT-5R hopped easily from Fender-y cleans to British overdrive and beyond. The cabinet and cosmetics are mostly businesslike, although the black grille cloth on the review model was a little slack across the speaker front. This implies a sonic signature that’s more “big amp feel in a small-amp package,” rather than the typical mini-class-A deal. The HT-5R achieves its 5-watt goodness by using both sides of a 12BH7 dual triode – normally a preamp tube – in a pushpull output stage, rather than following the traditional single-ended format. The chassis’ underside boasts a series FX loop with level switch, an mp3/ line input, a speaker-emulated DI/headphone jack (with closed-back 4x12' and open-back 1x12' options), and multiple speaker outs.

The ISF (Infinite Shape Feature) control is continuously variable between tight, bright, in-your-face “American” tones and warmer, looser “British” tones.

Vintage airline guitar amp 1-39515