Pignose Hog 30 - 30W Portable Amp

Checked out Danelectro N70, Peavey microbass, and small Hartkey. The Pignose was better quality for the money and better sounding. Even at full list price would have been a better value than all the competition. Best thing about it is it's good quality sound for very small and light weight package.

Features: Simple Bass practice amp with 8" speaker. Tone controls include Bass, Mid, Trebel, and a "funk" bass switch which sounds a bit like over drive. Simple but effective, has both a pre-volume and post-level knob which is nice.

Sound: Very Clean for a small Bass amp, mine was used the batterys didn't work so I took them out and after finding out how much they cost to replace decided I'm never going to use battery power and throw them away. Reducing the weight of my amp by a few pounds, I like it more portable. Not that it was heavy amp but I just reduced the weight by another three lbs. Sound quality is really very good for small amp.

Durability: Full steel grill, very solid cabinet, easy to take apart with a screw gun if you need to repair but I don't know what could go wrong.

This amp stinks. Don't bother. It's cheap, but it makes a really expensive door stop. This amp was not meant to be played with bass. That's just my opinion from my experience with it.

Features: It has one off/on volume switch. I do NOT recommend this amp for bass players. I bought this amp to play with my first bass, I thought I didn't need much volume, so this would be fine. Wrong! MAYBE you could use this with an acoustic guitar, but bass will blow this thing out. I *always* kept my volume low when I was playing through it, and only used it under optimal conditions and it still died on me. It's the speaker that goes too, not the power supply. A friend who's an engineer made me a new power supply for it, and this had no effect. I use it as a doorstop.

Sound: I used it with an Ibanez 400 series bass when I was a beginner. It never hissed or distorted, because I never turned it up that loud. One day it just quit working and never worked again. To me it's not worth the effort to fix - especially if it just blows up again.

Durability: Read my comments under "Features".

I was deciding whether to buy a acoustic bass, or a portable to use with the basses that I already own... I think I made the right choice... Cool little amp....

Features: See Chris Immel's review.... He could have taken the words right out of my mouth... Great little amp for its' intended purpose....

Sound: Again, see Chris Immel's review....word for word....

Durability: Like I said....ditto....

The Pignose Gog 30, Recharging Portable Amplifier Model 7-300 is really a cute little amp. It comes covered with fake (I think!) brown pigskin covering with black metal corner protecters. The 8" speaker is located above the amplifier, and is covered with a round, black, heavyduty metal kickplate, just like the big boys! Totally overkill! I love it. The amp itself is located at the bottom of the combo and has a black face. As I mentioned before, the on/off switch is a silver hog's pignose. The Silver and Blue Pignose logo is attached to the center of the kickplate. If I ever am happier with a $139.00 amp, I'll be sure to write about it, but I don't believe it will be soon. If you have a need or desire to be totally portable, you will not be disappointed with the Hog... ;-)

Features: This is a versitle small practice amp that supports, on the front of the unit, one instrument input, a 'Funk Bass' toggle switch, Volume (gain), Master Volume, Treble, Middle, and Bass pots, Red Led power light and a powere knob in the shape of, yup, a pig's nose. On the back of the unit, you'll find the 12vdc input, one line out, one headphone, and one input jack. There are two power sources for this Hog. One is a 12vdc adapter that has it's own attached power cord. It is not a wall-wart! How nice!

Sound: I've used two basses with this, and let's face it, what kind of sound do you really expect from a 20 watt 12vdc amp with an 8" speaker for $139.00??? The amp itself was listed at Musician's Friend as a 30 watt amp. It is not. The pignose literature states that it runs 20 watts, 35 watts peak. The amp itself is silent! When I first turned it on, I saw the led lit, but was sure there was a malfuncion because I didn't hear ANYTHING! To my surprise and delight, it didn't sound like my Yamaha Budokan that hums like a snake pit. I bought this because it was so portable, not because of what great sounds I might get out of it. With that said, I'm very pleased with the upper end. Where it falls down is from A down to E. I think I could almost hear the poor speaker ralphing. It gets very loose and sloppy sounding on an open E. I can't imagine what it would be like below that. I've been toying with the idea of replacing the stock speaker with something a little heaftier. That might make an improvement. Playing with the gain, funk and volume does help. Final words on quality: Don't expect powerful bass out of this unit as is, but do expect it to get the job done. The rating I'm giving it is compared to a Yamaha 12 watt practice amp with an 8 inch speaker.

Durability: So far, so good. It came well packed and is solidly built.