Fender Greta short review
I got a Greta last week to match my highway one for mostly home use. So far, it appears to be a good investment. Here are my initial feedbacks:
1. The sound coming from the 4” speaker improves after break-in. The suggestion from some forums is to play through an ipod for at least 20 hours. I have played mine for more than 10 hours and the sound seems to improve though you have to remember the physical limits of a 4” speaker.
2. Forum posts suggest the replacement of the stock Chinese tubes, specifically changing the 12AX7 preamp tube (100% gain) to a 5751 (70% gain) to increase the clean headroom. They also suggest replacing the 12AT7 output tube with a better brand. I still have no luck finding replacement tubes locally.
3. Notwithstanding the speaker and tubes, the build quality appears to be good, based on analysis from various forums. It even uses a choke for better filtering. It is a real tube amp that can be modded by simply changing tubes!
4. It is a touch sensitive amp. A guitarist used to maxing the guitar knobs and adjusting the amp’s settings will have problems taming this. It is not for guitarists who cannot control their picking. As suggested, I dial my desired setting on the amp, and then adjust the guitar knobs until I get a clean sound, bordering on distortion, with light picking. With this, you can easily go from clean to dirt without changing the knobs from either amp or guitar. All you need to adjust is your picking style. Of course, you can still get a dirty tone by adjusting the guitar volume knob. Imagine playing a song with clean stanzas then jumping to distortion territory during refrains without stepping on a pedal. I enjoy this when jamming at home!
5. The auxiliary input is the bonus here. I expected a crappy sound when plugging an ipod through it. I was wrong. It is a good ipod mono speaker. So good that guitar licks sound realistic. Do not expect a full range sound though since this is still a 4” speaker. Since it looks like an old school radio than an amp, my wife lets me place it on the living room’s small center table where I place my laptop. I can then jam with downloaded backing tracks just by plugging my tele. The tweed hard case looks nice under the small table and I have a power outlet beside it. This makes setting up and cleanup for quick jams quite easy.
6. I do not have a speaker cabinet so I cannot comment on the alleged improvement. However, plugging the Greta’s line out to a powered speaker significantly increases the clean volume while retaining the touch sensitive characteristics. I feel like I have a bigger and more expensive tube amp while doing this. I love the clean tone on this setup!
I'm going to try this as a tube preamp for my acoustic guitar next time. The behringer tube preamp was good and I expect this to be better. Overall, I am beginning to love this amp
