"BACKGROUND (REVIEW BELOW): As people are often more interested in the views of people who share similar interest & taste,, I'll start by saying that I've been playing for 30 years, I own a variety of guitars and amps. What I play most often is my American Fender Deluxe Strat through a Fender 4X10 Blues De'Ville tube amp, usually coupled with an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer.. As many will know, with that setup, you can get as close as you need to,, to the tone of Jimi, Stevie, and many others. So why buy a new amp?

The problem (again, as many will know) with the amp mentioned above is "weight" and "volume." It is simply too heavy and too loud for daily jamming in the extra bedroom, or in the den, when I want to play along (fills and solos) with my stereo.. I bought that amp because I was a tone junkie. I love overdriven 6L6's. But it's simply too much amp for my needs.. Normal house living doesn't allow for overdriving 6L6's. Yet I can't part with it. Once every six months, I'll dust it off and get my fix.. Then it's back to jamming through my practice amp under 90dB.

REVIEW STARTS HERE: I chose the Spider V 30 based on several YouTube reviews. I wanted small, versatile, and inexpensive. I got ALL THREE with this amp, and am very happy with my purchase. At first, knowing the older Spider V 30's came w/ 12" speaker (because I bought one for my son 10 years ago (and he still loves it BTW)), I was hesitant. The new version has an 8" speaker and tweeter horn arrangement. But I think I understand why LINE 6 chose to go this direction. The new V 30 is compact, PERIOD. They are getting 95% of the sound with half (?) the weight.. I confess to not know the actual values, but side by side with my son's,, his amp is much heavier, but sounds very similar. It was worth it.. It's amazingly compact.

The older version has a dedicated knob for every tonal quality and effect level, which added to it's required size and weight. The new version has half the knobs, shrinking the panel size requirement by nearly half. The new version has a button to toggle between tone and effects, which are LED backlit. It's awesome. Every feature is one button press away, intuitive, and easy to see, even in low ight conditions..

This, being a modelling amp, means that some very smart signal processing engineers over at LINE 6 matched the waveforms of the sounds of various popular amps and songs. So if you like the sound of the guitar on AC/DC Back in Black, you can go to that preset and be in the ballpark for amp and effect sounds. It will not be perfect, but surprisingly good. And once that preset is selected, you can EASILY adjust the tone are effect levels to tweak it. And you can EASILY save your adjustment. I say easily because I figured it out without even once touching the manual !! A big plus if you ask me.

The only area that I think can be improved upon (and here, I may be wrong because I refuse to read the manual) is that the presets are not random access. If you know that a preset you like was around number 60 (there's 128 presets to play with), and if you are currently on preset 4, you have to scroll through 56 presents to get to no. 60. I wish I could make jumps of 10. But again, there may be a way to save the ones you like to easy access location.. Or rearrange them per'se. I'm just to lazy to research it.

Errol
NOLA"

"I ordered this amp a week ago and the first one was defective. At the time, I wrote this review:

"The amp arrived defective. No noise whatsoever when plugging in the instrument cable, no volume at all with master and volume up. Puzzling. Returned it for a new one."

Now that I have the replacement, which works, I am happy to say that I love this amp. I have serious gear (12 guitars, amp heads from Friedman, Matchless, Hiwatt, each with their own high-end pedalboards). And I am not a snob about a less than $200 non-tube modeling amp at all. This amp sounds fantastic. You cannot gig with it, but for a practice amp, it is great. I am going to use it just for a quick plug in, turn the dial to the type of amp effects you want and start playing. It is not going to be a Friedman with a high end cab and top of the line pedals. But it will get you 75% of the way there on most of the effects you can dream of in order to practice and compose a bit. It is just more efficient to practice on this than to rev up the tube amps, get all the pedals turned on and so forth. For practice you just want efficiency. Not to mention preserve the life of the tubes in your heavy hitting tube amps for when you need them. The savings on tubes alone pays for this amp. Very impressed."

"I would have never believed an amplifier could have so many features and tones! It’s absolutely outstanding in how this thing (Spider V120 MkII) sounds and operates. If you’re on the fence with buying a modeling amp, well you don’t know what you’re missing! I am seriously amazed and audibly laughed with joy when I heard what the amp could produce. Also, the knob functions light up white in “amp” mode and various colors in “fx” mode, making the user interface excellent. Other features include “looping”, “drum” and so much more. I wish I had known about this thing earlier so I wouldn’t have wasted $$$$ on FX pedals and now useless amps! It’s a quality product!"