I always have sworn by my Fender Princeton as being the perfect amp because of it's tone. For 25 years it's worked well for me. It's getting on in age ( 1972) I just joined a top 40 cover band and the Princeton is not dirty enough for hard rock tunes. And I hate to bash it around to much. So I've been looking at small amps.
I sat in a music shop yesterday plugging in and out of a whole bunch of mainstream Amps. My criteria is smallish, portable and TONE! Loud is not so important as I always mike up. I am the last one to consider modeling as an option and reluctantly tried a few of those type of amps, A Mustang, Roland and a Line 6. Then I plugged into a
Blackstar ID15 and that was it! The Tone. It held it's own up against some pretty $$ tube amps which were not exactly potable either. I was surprised at the price of $279. It was so loud I thought 40 watt, not 15. Anyhow I bought it without even knowing much about them and no regrets.
Not only does it have a wide pallet of tones from punchy clean through insane metal overdrive it has excellent effects that are also 100% programmable. I can leave my pedal board at home. All except my Mooer Trelicopter. The tremelo is the only effect I found badly done.
And it gets better. There are more than enough programmable presets. to cover a 45 song set list. And a few options to control them including a multi footswitch or with a laptop via usb connection. The software is very easy to use and all parameters are available and can be saved, named and recalled. There is also 3 banks of 4 buttons on the front that recall presets.
It was interesting that Sonar recognized the device and the dialogue box popped up asking if I wanted to connect the device. It's a class compliant driver so of no interest to me to record it that way. Probably works if you swicth to WDM mode. I would be inclined to record it from the stereo line output jack which is speaker emulated. It has a Master volume that turns the speaker right off that does not effect the line output so is studio friendly.
Anyhow pretty cool stuff for the money. Seems all reviews are very positive.