Playing for 35 years, I play thrash, speed and power metal. Recorded three albums, tried a lot of equipment, so I know what I am talking about. This is a good amp on its own, BUT with the band you will have a hard time cutting through. It lacks high mids. It has V shaped EQ. IF you buy EVH speakers and EVH pick-ups than you will have great Van Halen sound. Nothing else. This amp has a lot of presence and highs, so you can not use pick-ups with same characteristics, for example FORGET about EMG 81 !!! You will need darker pickups to tame the amp. Also very picky about speakers, if you do not want to dish out money for Celestion made EVH Greenbacks, you have to buy ordinary Celestion Greenbacks: G12H and / or G12M. As I already sad, this is ONE SOUND amp, dialing the pots will NOT change the amp character. First channel clean, second channel so called brown sound, in this case very dry, synthetic lacking mid highs, third channel better but hard to use due to too much distortion and feedback, you can not dial gain more then 3.
Effects loop is foot-switchable but there is a noticeable pause when turning "ON and "OFF" if you have longer cables from and to the loop. It can be solved, just leave the loop "ON' all the time. Or keep you pedals always "ON" on top of the amp with short patch cables. With the so expensive amp they should have solved that better. I do believe that it is overpriced a bit.. I am not shore about quality as I have it for a few days only, will give it 5 stars but I will update later if I get disappointed.
And THOMANN has a MISTAKE on the site, the weight of this amp is not 11,4 kg. it is 15,9 kg.
Conclusion: In order to use this amp I had to change pick-ups on my guitars, speakers, and still not 100 percent happy because I do not have enough mid highs and have hard time cutting through the band. Sound is still a bit harsh. If I knew all this I would not have bought it. If you do not mind building your equipment form ground up or you just lucky to have right stuff, and don't care about mids, than buy it.
