Best addition to a Bass guitar
"This is of such high quality that I sold my previous bass headphone amp. Virtually zero distortion when hitting very low bass notes. Now I have the flamma Guitar and Bass headphone amp. Seriously brilliant."
Cool little practice device, super useful
"Pros:
Good number of settings to choose from in amp models, tones and effects
Flexible design that accommodates the reversed knobs on my jazz bass (more on that later)
Reasonable price
Built in sequencer plays some 24 different beats to practice with
Sturdy build
Great design with the swiveling plug
USB connectivity
Cons:
Some of the effects seem married to the amp model (more later)
Wish the sequencer had a high-hat count in
Needs more rounded bass tone models and fewer distortion models
I'm really pleased with this little practice amp from FLAMMA, and when I say little, that's the first thing that jumped out at me when I opened the box up. I expected the normal stomp box size but this is smaller than that to where you plug it straight into your bass and have the controls at your finger tips. On my bass, I reversed the knobs so that the tone knob is closer to the pickups and the neck pickup knob further down. I did this because I do a lot of popping and strumming that sometimes would cause my hand to hit the pickup knob and unexpectedly turn my volume down, to the point where I had black electrical tape holding it fully on. But that causes a space problem now because the larger neck knob is crowding this amp where it plugs in. Fortunately, because of the cool design, I can just swivel it up vertically and spin it to get to the controls or to change the pickup volume, then lay the amp back down flat. In a playing situation (that it's not meant for), that would be too slow, but during practice I can live with that.
For sounds, there are quite a few amp models built in that are fun to listen to, but I will probably use only the clean, blues and jazz settings on a regular basis. Even on those, I turn off the effects and set a medium tone because I don't want my playing washed out by blurry effects. And if I had a tune I played live that needed those effects, I would most likely practice with the actual device I'd use on stage since this amp isn't meant for that. In fact, I thought I would use it on stage as a pre-amp into my bass amp, but when I tried practicing it with that setup, I had to turn the volume knob on my bass amp nearly half way up to get any volume. That's a setting that would blow me out of the room without the pre-amp, so I guess there is an impedance mismatch or some other issue that I don't want to take chances with on stage.
There is a USB-C charging port which you can plug into a laptop and use to record with if you have an OTG cable (they say) but I didn't have one with any OTG marking on it, so I just used a regular data transfer cable and was able to see signals coming into my M1 Mac laptop. Oddly, I could not get the sound to come out of the speakers. I haven't resolved that yet but assume it's a configuration problem in the Mac. It would be nice if FLAMMA would describe how to set that up for both PCs and Macs in more detail, but all they say is that it's possible in Windows if you install an ASIO driver. They don't mention Macs at all. They do say this device isn't meant to take the place of an dedicated audio input device (like a Focusrite or similar), so maybe they're just trying to avoid all the comparisons they might get to that.
There is a Bluetooth capability in this amp that allows you to stream music into it from any host that can pair up with it. I got it paired up to my Mac and the sound quality is great going into some Bose headphones. You control the streaming volume from the sending device and then mix your bass volume in using the dial on this amp, It's a sweet combination I'm really digging for learning tunes.
On top of that, there is a set of 24 drum tracks you can play along with, dialing in a tempo you like by feel (there's no indicator what that actual tempo is.) I wish it had a high-hat count in, but that's not a deal breaker. I can imagine other players might be glad it doesn't have it, so to each their own. The one thing I found odd about the drum tracks is that one of them is a 6 bar phrase when all the others are 4 bar patterns, best I can tell anyway. I have to admit my non 4/4 playing needs work because I'm having a heck of a time figuring out the blues 3/4 pattern and getting into the groove of it. But that's what a practice amp should do I guess, take you to places you've been neglecting. It does get pretty repetitive after awhile but, in my case I have an Alesis drum machine I can fire up if I need exact tempo settings, count-in, midi programming or foot-switchable pattern variations.
As far as what I mentioned about some effects seeming to be married to their amp model, I'm not sure if that's correct. All I know is that when I select one of the amp models, I think it's a jazz setting, it turns on an effect that I turn off. Then if I switch to a different amp model and come back to the jazz amp, that effect is back on. I thought in the manual it says it will save the changes you make, so maybe I'm doing something wrong there. It's easy enough to turn effects off with 2 button presses anyway, so not a big issue.
Overall, this is a great little device that's got me practicing more than ever because it's just fun to use. The price is really reasonable at $79.99 too, so I highly recommend it."
