Really kick ass for a practice amp. Got one for my birthday the other day so I'd have an amp that wasn't a half stack to carry around to places, and it blows the Cube and other modeling amps out of the water. If you've got an extra $100 to toss around it's worth checking out for the 15 watt one to carry around. Haven't heard the bigger models or the nanocube, but it's basically the same head with a different power section in each of em, the hybrid tube seems pretty nifty for a 'my first half stack' sort of rig.

The fx sound killer, and it can run delay, reverb, and the other effects all simultaneously. The amp models are pretty awesome all around, the recto's a little bit off but still sounds OK; I think they just didn't model tube rectification as well as they could have. I'm just happy I've got a tiny amp that has a very good heavy hi gain distortion that doesn't have that really fake digitial sound that all the COSM amps have.

It's got a fair amount of that signature transtube hiss to it (it's similar but not as overtly audible as the way the classic bandit series distortion sounded), so none of the amp models sound exactly like the real thing, but I'd say all of em model it at least 70-80% as good as the real thing if not 80-90%, and the dynamics feel pretty well modeled. Only thing that's lousy on em is the octave/pitch shifter tracker sucks and the stock speaker cones are lousy, but you can get em replaced and it sounds ballsy.

It's definitely a jack of all trades, but while it is master of none it does each one pretty solid justice. For the price range I would say you wouldn't find an amp that is at all as versatile and probably as good sounding as it, especially for hi gain metal tone. It has all of the balls that line six lacks. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend the 100-120 watt heads and half stacks without hearing them first, but the hybrid tube stack seems like it sounds quality enough to be at bare minimum a backup amp and quite possibly a solid main half stack rig for gigging.

[swervedriver]

What about durability and reliability? When I looked into these amps about a year ago there were several reports of it failing, crashing, getting stuck in a start-up loop, etc. Basically some infancy diseases, but also related to the cheap material and labour that goes into these things if I recall correctly. I'd say it's good for bedroom use and possibly band rehearsals, but wouldn't want to rely on it solely when playing a gig.

Maybe things have improved in the past year though in terms of new builds or upgraded firmware, I don't know about that.

There has been issues with the durability for sure; I mostly meant in terms of sound quality it'd probably be gig-ready, I haven't gotten a chance to look at the big models so I don't know personally how the construction of them seems.

It seems that the place they cut costs in in the lower end models is the materials for the enclosure and the speaker, but both can be replaced if they're particularly bad; peavey has a pretty well established history of having really shitty stock speakers in their combos. A lot of the issues with crashing/other software wonkiness on the bigger models has been addressed with firmware updates if I recall correctly. On the little guys, the bit of cheapness in the speaker can be replaced and the enclosure is small enough that it'll probably last a good while, it feels solid enough.

I think peavey's problem was that they wanted to get as many of them out of the door as possible, there's a couple signs of factory rushing in the construction of the enclosure like screwholes not being as well aligned as they could be, but it doesn't overtly seem like the actual amp itself is poorly constructed. All of the hand done stuff such as the mounting in the enclosure and stuff was definitely not done as carefully as it could have been, but the head to the amp is all machined circuit board stuff, so there's a lot less room for cheaper labor to effect it's quality.

Hopefully the software issues on the bigger ones are corrected in all of the models they've made since the big release rush, I'd definitely get them on warranty. That's why I was suggesting the half-stacks as backup amps; they can do most tone types well enough to be used live and hopefully you wouldn't need to use a backup amp anyways.

Amazing as practice combos though. The guys from Trivium summed em up pretty well in an interview as being basically the perfect little amp to use to practice in the hotel in. I'd only really recommend the 50-75 watt combos if you're needing something to practice with a full band with, and the 30 watt combo if you really need the footswitch and couple other features. All of the features aside from the power sponge you can mod onto the 15w one anyways, which I thought was pretty rad. Gonna look into doing that to mine along with the speaker replacement.