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There's a guy in my area selling a Polytone Mini Brute II (12" speaker) and a Mini Brute V (15" speaker) for 350 each. How would they compare? Which would be the better buy? I play a Tele and have been wanting a proper jazz amp. I currently play through a Fender Princeton Chorus, but I do have a Roland Cube 60 Orange (12" speaker) that sounds distorted on the clean channel. How would I fix the Roland? Is it worth the trouble, or would I be better off with one of the Polytones?
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12-20-2023 01:39 AM
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I have a MB3 15" and a Teeny 10"
Both simple 3 knob combos.
I was using the 3 for guitar and upright.
Now I use the teeny for guitar and the 3 for bass. I tried a 2 for bass but didn't like the boxiness/lack of bass tone.
If I could I would probably end up with the 2 and the 5!
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I'd look at a Fender Champ 40 for what you seem to need, It has a 12" speaker and a warm enough jazz tone in the clean channel to please a lot of forum members here. You can find one for about $200 new if you search the usual vendors' websites for holiday sales. A lot of pros gig with them because they're reliable, sound quite fine, and are very reasonably priced.
The DV Mark Jazz 12 is another great choice for you and a step up from the Champ 40. I gig with one regularly and am amazed at how verstile it is - big sound, very usble EQ, light, and tough. We've had it in our backline for at least 6 years, and it's never let us down despite being used at least twice a week by me and by touring acts coming through the club. We've had a few failures in 2 of our "better" Fender tube amps in the same time period, but the Jazz 12 has always been there to save the day. They're often on sale for $350 or less at one of the big online vendors.
Personally, I wouldn't buy an old, used amp if you plan to use it regularly and need to rely on it. I had one of those 60W orange Cubes for years when they were new, and it was a great jazz amp. But when it started to get wonky on me, I had it repaired and sold it with disclosure. The Champ 40 and Jazz 12 are two excellent amps at fair prices and the risk of problems is very low. Better yet, you'll have a warranty if anything goes wrong early in its life.
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I currently own a Polytone MB II and a Cube 40 and 60. I prefer the Polytone. You can't go wrong. Give it a shot but offer $250 and buy for $300. You'll likely be able to see right around there if you wanted to later.
Originally Posted by weaselsrippedmyflesh
How would anyone know how to fix the Roland??? Nobody knows what's wrong with it.
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The great Ed Bickert made beautiful music for years with a Tele and an orange Cube 60. Classic, wonderful sound. I have a later Cube 60 which has been a tough, reliable workhorse for 15 years. Not quite a classic, wonderful sound IMHO but good enough once the rest of the band starts.
Polytones are hit and miss. Some are just a box of problems, some are like the rock of Gibraltar. Getting one fixed is a job of work in many places.
Although I'm not sure what a "proper" jazz amp is. I have the Cube 60, a tweed Deluxe, a Polytone Baby Taurus, a silverface Fender Pro Reverb, an Egnater Rebel 30 and they all work fine for jazz. I have a really cheap Fender transistor amp with a 8" speaker, can't remember the model but it was well under $100, which is not a good amp for much of anything except checking if pickups work. It sits by my workbench for that purpose.
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What exactly is a “jazz amp” anyway? Virtually every amp I own, when run on the clean channel with the tone controls set correctly, makes good jazz sound. Even a junky ‘Drive’ brand amp - as long as the group is not loud, set correctly it provides a usable jazz tone.
I have amps that would not be suitable from a form factor perspective (Marshall Major, Hartke bass head, etc). But I have the following amps, all of which sound very good indeed with my jazzbox or a Tele or other ‘jazz’ guitars:
Fender Princeton Reverb II combo (just re-capped and re-tubed, sounds wonderful)
Marshall DSL 40c combo
Boss Katana 50 gen2 combo
Crate BX100 combo
The first two are tube amps, the first three have 12” speakers. The last is a 100w bass amp with a 15” speaker, and while a bit heavy it gets a sound very close to the Polytone. Which the Polytone amps themselves were designed as accordion amps! Guitar was part of the design too, but they were conceived as full range amplifiers.
IMO speaker size has a lot to do with how good most amps sound for jazz.
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The 15" Polytones make damn near anything come out with a pretty classic jazz sound. The 12" with an eq pedal (and perhaps a different speaker) can be a pretty damn versatile amp.
I like the 15's myself.
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I can vouche for these comments. A few months ago I picked up a Polytone Taurus Elite (1x15" Eminence, 2x 3" Motorola piezos) that was "original and working", so he said. Honestly, I don't think the guy was out to cheat anyone, more that he was fooling himself and less than fully competent. Originally Posted by Cunamara
It's the most complex git amp I've ever worked on, in terms of stuff built in the mid-90s that lacks computer modeling. The horns were dead, the "modulator" effect was dead, reverb only worked on one channel.. hardware was all rusty, footswitch was missing and more..
I only gave $220 for it, and that rose to $300 by the time it was ready. Do I need to mention that it was a total beotch to work on? It's built like another American classic, the Harley-Davidson motorbike. What this means is that for every screw you remove, a nut and two washers (all inaccessible) fall off the back and disappear into the works.
On the bright side, it's properly fixed - everything works correctly - and it should give good service for many years to come. The modulator effect is pretty cool, too.
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weasels, I won't bother. I don't know how serviceable the Polytone amps are today but there are alternatives:
1. Henriksen Amps;
2. Polytone preamp pedals such as the ones made by Rasmus Bröhammer (?) of Denmark and Jason Coombs of the USA;
3. Modelling and cab-speaker IR pedals like the Helix Stomp where you twiddle an amp model and IR to sound like a Polytone;
4. any good Parametric Eq pedal-just shape it to get a tone you like.
The DV Mark Little Jazz mentioned afore is very good, too.
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Er, quick OT question.. not worth creating a new thread.
If I want to install a neck plate on a Tele copy that wasn't furnished with one, what prep work is required?
Does the plate area on the body need to be milled / routed flat? Or will the plate just bolt-on using the rubber pad to make up any unevenness?
Or "does it depend"? Ha!
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Generally they just go flat on the wood. The metal flexes a little bit.
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I own both a Polytone Mini-brute and a Roland Cube.
The Polytone produces by far the best conventional jazz guitar sound of the two, but for everything else, the Roland is a much more versatile amp.
I've had the Polytone since the mid-1980's, and it's never given me a moment's trouble, and if that conventional jazz tone is what you're looking for, you'll get it from a Polytone. However....if it goes wrong, you may find it difficult to get it fixed.
If I was in your position, I'd work some more on seeing what you can get from the Cube. Depending on finances, I'd seriously consider getting a Henriksen.
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I have a Polytone Mini Brute II and an earlier (heavier, no bluetooth) version Henriksen Bud. I do see them as good substitutes for each other except the reverb on the Mini Brute does not work and it has that cheesy but fun drive channel. Obviously, it moves more air than the Henriksen so the feel is a bit different.
In your case, the Brutes (especially the 15" one) can also handle bass guitar or upright bass if you want that feature.
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Polytone's in there day were a good amp and can be, but I got over them completely. They can have issues with things going wrong. The best solution by far is a Henriksen amp and be done with it. More money but lighter and completely reliable.
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I have only good experiences with Polytones, starting with 102 and going thru all Mini Brutes and a Teeny Brute. Only one stayed and it is the MBIV, combo with 15” speaker and reverb. Originally Posted by weaselsrippedmyflesh
The I has 12” spkr, no reverb, II has 12” spkr AND the reverb, III has 15” spkr, no reverb and the IV has 15” spkr AND the reverb.
What is the MB V like, I have never heard.
No experience in repairing Rolands, but I believe that everything is possible!
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I have both brands. I have an older Mini-Brute ll and an old orange Cube 60, both similar size with 12” speakers. I also have an older Teeny Brute and an old orange Roland Cube 40, both similar size with 8” speakers. I have compared all of these amps many times. The little cube 40 sounds quite nice but lacks bottom end. The teeny Brute has much more bottom end and sounds warmer overall. The Cube 60 sounds great and has lots of bottom end. It has lots of power and stays clean at higher volumes. The Mini-Brute is also quite powerful and sounds warmer than the Roland. Both of the Polytones have more mid-range than their Cube counterparts, which sound a little more scooped to my ears. Overall, I think the Polytones have more of a jazz tone, while the Rolands have a more general purpose type of sound, suitable to many genres. The Cubes also have a much better sounding reverb than the Polytones. All four amps have been used extensively for somewhere around forty years and have been reliable. The only repair I ever had to make, was the reverb on the Cube 60 (a local amp tech was able to service it)
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I have had an Orange Roland (back in the 70's IIRC) and many Polytones. Some of my Polytones gave me trouble, others did not. I liked the Polytone way better for jazz than the Roland.
All of that said, for the solid state jazz guitar tone, it is Henriksen for me these days. I have given up on all the rest. Just as for the tube amp sound, I have given up tube amps and gone to Quilter.
IMO, with amps like those made by Henriksen or Quilter, we are living in a new golden age for guitar amps.
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FWIW my Teeny has a 10" speaker. Lovely amp. Originally Posted by floatingpickup
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My teeny brute is the old diamond tolex version and it appears to have an 8” speaker. I did make a mistake on the Roland Cube 40 though…it has a 10” speaker. Originally Posted by garybaldy
Keith
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And for completeness' sake, the Taurus Elite has a 15" 4 ohm Eminence driver, 2x Motorola piezo tweeters, 3 fully independent input channels each with 3-band EQ and lo/hi gain jacks, a Hammond reverb tank and the "Modulator" effect which simulates a Leslie speaker with a Philips TDA1022 BBD chip. Originally Posted by Herbie
It also has the "120W" power amp - in quotes as clipping begins around 85W continuous into 4 ohms.
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Couldn’t have said it better than this, Mark. Originally Posted by deacon Mark
And now, it’s time for my annual Polytone rant:
I think a Polytone is a gamble. I’ve had two over the years and, when in good order, they sounded good. But mine didn’t age well. Although I felt like a proper jazz guitarist with my 175 and my Polytones, I eventually came to see that they weren’t really all that great.
I had been gigging with a 15” mini brute III for a couple years and one night I was asked by a friend to sit in on bass (the bass player couldn’t make the gig). The Polytone sounded fantastic with my Precision Bass. But, funny thing, listening more closely to the other guitarist playing through a Roland Cube 80, I was amazed at how good he sounded. That night I began to fall out of love with the Polytone. On subsequent gigs, I began to dislike the Polytone more and more for its sterility and lack of character and ended up buying the same amp the other guitarist had, a Cube 80gx. The clean channel on that amp was everything the Polytone wasn’t. The Cube 80 was so much more fat, tight, and musical. It became my main amp for the next 6 years. In retrospect, I think the Polytones were good in their day, but I have no desire to play one now.
Rant concluded.
Happy Holidays all!
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Both the mega-brute and baby-brute have 8" speakers. The Teeny has a 10". Originally Posted by floatingpickup
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thanks for clearing that up. Mine is a baby-brute. Originally Posted by garybaldy
Keith
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I just saw on YouTube that Kurt Rosenwinkel now endorses a DV Mark Micro 60. Finally, a top-tier American jazz guitarist drawn to DV Mark's darker sonic world. There's probably a commercial string attached. As a non-American, I don't have Fender in my DNA and have liked the DV Mark sound since 2016. But those "micros" weigh too much by my current standards. Luckily, there's a growing number of classy Class D alternatives.
To quote Stringswinger: "...with amps like those made by Henriksen or Quilter, we are living in a new golden age for guitar amps." I'm keen to add DV Mark and a few others on that list. By all means, may the debate continue about whose was best 30 years ago. Yet, we have never had so many so good and priceworthy modern takes available.
My Holy Grail is still missing, though: a Super-SuperBlock with more clean headroom and darker voicing. It can be larger than the current model but will inevitably be lighter than DV Mark. Why couldn't TC Electronic just plant a reverb chip into the BAM200? I've tried to establish a line of communication with several amp manufacturers. DV Mark, VOX, H&K, G+K, TC Electronic, even Quilter lately - they all clamshell.
Edit: I think it was actually a Facebook post released by DV Mark.
Edit II: Here's the Rosenwinkel quote/quotoid from DV Mark's website. So he's not using a DV Mark combo/cab. “I’m always looking for ways to get consistent great tone on my tours, and when I tried the DV Mark Micro 60 I immediately realized how much of an improvement it was over the Fender Twin that I always have on my rider. I just use the DV Mark Micro 60 to power the cabinet of the twin and it really opens up the sound to a fuller, more detailed and pleasing tone.”
BTW, when Kurt performed in Helsinki early in the year, he played through two PA speakers raised well above head level.
Disclaimer: as the maker of TOOB and Metro speaker cabinets I try to stay abreast with micro amp developments and have tried several models by all the makers mentioned above, and then some.Last edited by Gitterbug; 12-26-2023 at 04:39 PM.
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I have just purchased a Polytone Mini Brute IV myself this week chasing a traditional jazz tone.
I have previously used a Roland Cube 20XL with an 8” speaker and a modded Laney 15 LC15R 10” speaker for a clean tone, both of which performed very closely to each other on tone.
In fact I have always been impressed by the Roland Cube how well it provides such a clean tone for the size and cost.
My first impressions of the Polytone are that the 15” speaker, as would be expected, provides more depth and warmth than the other two.
In addition with the higher wattage there’s a lot more power and it would have plenty of volume in a band setting or for a larger venue.
I also agree with some other commenters that the reverb is very subtle on the Polytone. When I was testing it out before buying I initially thought it wasn’t working until I turned it up quite high and could hear some reverb.
And although I purchased the Polytone for my archtop for jazz, I tried some other guitars last night and was equally impressed by the clean channel for those as well.
I’m mostly a bedroom player, and the Polytone is fairly heavy, has the handle on the side, which feels unusual, and if I were lugging an amp to gigs, would realistically choose the Roland for solo or quieter gigs.
If you find a Polytone in decent shape at a good price, why not at least give it a try and see if it’s what you are looking for?
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