Somewhere in between...
This thing is in limbo. It has too many functions to be a basic amp and not enough to be a really broad-ranged amp like it's bigger siblings. It annoys me that it gives you effects and then doesn't give you a whole lot of ability to fine tune them to your own tastes. The tremolo is especially annoying because you have no control over the depth (which goes from all-on to all-off) just the tempo. Another thing and this is something that has become standard in the Spider series is that the knobs are digital. While this is not a problem per se it could be better implemented. When you change the amp model it overrides whatever you had the knobs set to. This is a problem because you have no idea what the positions of the knobs are for the presets and you have to turn them a little to get control of the knobs function which instantly throws it to the knobs current physical position (indicated by a dimple on the face of the knob which by the way is kind of hard to see in low light). Confused? Yeah some kind of led's around the knobs to show their current digital position would be nice.
On the plus side they should never crackle when you turn them even 20 years from now!
The farther you roll the amp selector knob to the right the higher the gain goes so if you are trying not to disturb the neighbors make sure you back off the master before you select Crunch Metal or Insane.
As far as sound quality goes I don't have any complaints. It does sound pretty nice it can be adjusted to give you a really clean sound but as is typical of solid state it lacks the warm fuzzy tone of tubes. Not a knock really just par for the course.
The instruction manual does not explain how to use the built in tuner function and the FAQ's on the Line6 website seem to be describing the 15w model procedure not this 30w (which is very different in the way it works) but you'll figure it out pretty quickly when you start turning the tuner knobs.
Bottom Line: If I had a piece of advice to give to those of you on the fence I would either get the 15w model (because I really don't see enough extra features in the 30w model to justify twice the price) or step up to the 75w model which has 300+ presets (and it's probably loud enough to gig with a drum set which this probably is not). I honestly don't see a hundred dollars difference here if they had included the 300+ presets on this model I would give it 5 stars but as it is it is a nice little 4-star amp.More detail ...
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