Harley Benton G112A-FR

If you own a modeller, this is the amp to have. Try this before spending more money on expensive brand crap. It is supposed to be FRFR, so it does just that; no colouring, no anything, just the clean amplification of the modeller. The tone controls are highly efficient, be careful at gigs as they have a wide range, I keep them flat most of the time depending on the room. I had an issue with the shipping and the EU lead sent to the UK not working through and adapter. I found out it was the adapter so luckily I had an extra UK kettle lead laying around and no further issues so far. It is loud as hell, usually I keep it at 12:00 at gigs, controlling the volume mostly from the guitar, I'm old school; if you set the modeller correctly and have nice IRs (York Audio for example) the tone and feel are pretty much the same as a real amp, the Harley Benton just helps with the thumping. I can get Scott Henderson tone and gain in one setting from sparkly clean to screaming lead without changing presets just tweaking vol and tone pots. I could not believe before that you could do this with modellers. The modellers is the Ampero II Stage, also bought from this lot. My expensive heavy amps/cabs ( 30-45 kgs) now collect dust. This thing weights 15kgs. Now I'm exploring stereo, so either adding another one or get the 212, which is a lot heavier, we'll see.

This thing gets LOUD. After that, you can turn it down and not disturb the neighbors (much ... ha ha). Not too heavy. Doesn't take up too much room. Paired with my Helix Floor it makes all the sounds I enjoy and probably more than I'll find before I'm too old to play anymore. The Presence knob is a major bonus. Took more than a little while for Thomann to ship. But, it was definitely worth the wait.

I bought this to use with a Strymon Iridium (or modeller) centered setup, for home or live monitoring.

It is not really a FRFR but more of a powered open back cabinet. So it does color the sound a bit. It does not sound bad at all and it does give you the amp in a room feeling but it is not a faithful reproduction of what you hear through studio monitors! So I would not design my core tone using it and expect it to sound the same through the PA... I guess an alternative to this would be a regular powered PA speaker. Also, it does sound good at low/mid volume but have not tested it in a rehearsal/live situation.

I tried to use the resonance and presence controls to shape the sound to get closer to what I head in headphones or studio monitors with mixed results. A regular EQ with a variable mid Q would be much more effective but these work as well in some situations. I have not tried the XLR in/out yet but it looks like the volume of the XLR out is affected by the volume knob which is a bit unexpected :(

All in all it is not bad but it it is not great either.