Ibanez TBX65R – 2-channel transistor amplifier 65 In RMS with Xmode afterburner.
"How not to spend too much, and sound good?This is probably the most frequently asked question by young adepts of applied guitarology. Many equipment manufacturers meet the proposals of inexpensive hardware, however, few manage to meet these needs in any way. It's rare to find anything really interesting. How is Ibanez doing in this category?
First impression, that appears after watching the TBX65R is a word - nice 🙂 Personally, I like simplicity in everything, so the unsublime yet elegant design of this stove appealed to me immediately.
Equipped with 12″ The Ibanez IS1204G loudspeaker is a closed design, such a classic combination of black and silver, I think it looks really good – but enough about the superficial, it's what's inside that counts:)
The amplifier has two channels, clean and hot, on each of them we can fasten a separate correction, on the other, there's even a dual midrange control knob.
In addition, both can be slightly tweaked - but let's start from the beginning. After the first few hits on the strings, I will admit, that I smiled. I really like! Mimo, that the sound is clearly transistor, has something in it. In any case, there are no similarities to the bad representatives of the genre, plus or minus a few hundred zlotys, you can hear the light nature of this amplifier - after all, the Tone Blaster series was announced by the manufacturer, so maybe this time it didn't stop at the promises. After playing a few licks and chords, I pressed the "overdrive" button and the timbre changed to a slightly crunchy one. However, a few adjustments to the correction were required (at least in my opinion) but it's not much - and after that it was really good.
However, the full strength of this equipment is revealed only after switching the channel to overdriven - here we have much more room to show off. The "unarmed" sound alone already satisfies many requirements, but only the increased possibilities of playing with the correction cause, that the range of timbres is really large - you can use it to set both meaty distortions, as well as bright-sounding distortion typical of British rock.
We also have an X-mode switch at our disposal, the symbol of which is on the front of the stove - after pressing we get a really nice boost of the effect. Then I said, that basically I am not interested in playing without this mode - the amplifier sounds much better, if not for the power and dimensions listed, you might think, that we have something much stronger in our arsenal.
As in almost every equipment of this type, there is also a reverb knob, which sounds quite correct – it's not a plate, it's not an echo chamber, something in between. Nevertheless, it does its job.
For practice, we can also use a separate mp3 input on the front, to play with the background a bit. It's a very nice thing in general, that the amplifier sounds really "clean", The distortion in particular is free from most distortions, unwanted noise and "dirt", without causing a numbing impression of artificial sound, which very often appears with Chinese interpretations of classic brands.
Final impressions? In my opinion, it is a very good amp for playing at home and at rehearsals, and sound experiments. Ibanez really coped with the task, which he had placed before him, especially when compared to the price, which it requires for this implementation - at the moment you can get this model for just over 200 Net euros. In fact, it is difficult to talk about competition in this price range at all - the stove beats all others. Sound and character. Maybe 65 Watts is not very much, but still after turning the volume knob to 2/3 I was sure, that my neighbors are testing this equipment with me - anyway, they probably had positive impressions as well, because I didn't hear any complaints afterwards 😉 And the power is enough for small club stages or rehearsals.