Once upon a time (as all the best stories start) there was this amp. It was small and green. Yes, green.

And though it was multipurpose, it was loud and it was cheap, the little green amplifier found itself largely unwanted. Not because it wasn't a good little amp, oh no.

The only reason wa just because it was green. Such is the level of racial prejudice among amplifiers these days that a little tiny amp could not stand the harassment and name-calling any longer. So it did the only possible thing in the circumstances.

It changed the colour of its vinyl, joined the Black Panthers, and started spraying slogans on walls, setting fire to old ladies and shooting policeman.

Last anybody heard, it was holed up in a ghetto in Chicago's Watts district selling Angel Dust to schoolkids and playing in a Hard Funk band...

A lie? Possibly, but the grain of truth stuck in the middle of all this garbage is that the Alligator amplifiers had a very good name, a fine sound, an excellent concept, and pretty hot prices.

However, they made one basic marketing booboo.

Maybe they were following Henry Ford's famous utterance you can have any colour you like as long as it's... green.

Whatever, they're now back in black and that should make people feel a little keener about buying them. After all, it's no good going out and buying a violet-and-puce paisley shirt for stage wear (£425.78 from Miss Selfish) if it's immediately upstaged by the keyboard player's amp, now is it?

Matching the colour, the new range goes under the 'Ebony' name. The two that we took for a trundle around the One Two Testing test track were, respectively, the small 60 watt general purpose combo and the large 175 bass version.

The surprise for seasoned Alligator-watchers is, of course, that there's now a dedicated bass combo in the range; after all the original idea of the amps was that they should all be completely multipurpose, covering a wide enough range of frequencies to allow bass, guitar and keyboards (not to mention electronic drums) to be amplified cleanly and without undue colouration.

It worked to an extent; many a bassist found the twin-speakered Alligator cabinets to be sufficient for their needs, and keyboard players were pretty impressed, too. Guitarists, however, being a finicky breed, didn't take to them quite as well; but no matter.

The bass 175 is, however, a U turn and no mistake. But it's not a bad crack at the bottom-end market.

It's not small, in fact it makes the most of its two twelve-inch speakers by putting them in a cabinet which is roughly the size of the average four by twelve.

But as anyone who's ever tried to play bass through a tiny cab knows, unless you've got a reasonable amount of air inside a fair bit of wood, you end up with a noise like a strangled hamster fart and no sound below the third string.

The amplifier section has all the things you'd expect; gain, master and optional (footswitched) boost controls handle the volume-changery and the tone is tackled by an impressive array of knobs including bass, treble, low, high and two mid controls - a semi-parametric array, in fact, which is just a techno-muso way of saying that the mid is able to cut or boost a specific amount at a set frequency.

Bass is probably the instrument that's most finicky about equalisation in that area, so it's a boon to be able to change your tone drastically from fat and squelchy to tinny and piercing; and the Alligator will do all that and more. In short, its tonal range is excellent.

In use, it will do the things that any self-respecting bass amp should. It is loud enough for all but the most manic spandex-crotched metal mutha and the deep, solid bass would do a Rasta roots rocker proud.

Mind you, it isn't perfect. When it was wound up there was a slight tizziness about the top end that means a transistor amp is being pushed just slightly too hard. Compared to something big and loud like, say, an Acoustic or a Trace Elliott, it came out well, but lacked a slight edge of clarity. But that is what you pay Acoustic or Trace Elliott prices for.

At £450 it's not amazingly cheap, but neither is it in the pro bracket, so maybe the Alligator name with its history of budget multipurpose gear will work against it being accepted by the middle-market players it's obviously aimed at.

In the past, Alligator was something to move up from rather than to. But if this range gets the exposure it deserves, who knows?

However, the traditional do-everything style of the firm been carried over to the 60 watt combo.

With its single twelve-inch speaker and begrilled bass port it looks as hunky and chunky as you could wish, very Tonka Toy chic, and very rugged, too - with the (included) plastic cover, as also supplied with the bass combo, it should put up with a fair few roadie assaults.

Talking of roadies, the controls are simple. It's got a mains on and a standby switch (both mini-toggle types - surely not heavy-duty enough for such an otherwise solid amp?) and two inputs; it's got low, mid and high equalisation, gain and master volume controls, a DI output and a headphone socket, and a dodgy little cartoon of an alligator grinning smugly from the front panel.

And it's also got a boost control, and next to that a three-way switch, again of the dinky but fragile mini-toggle type, labelled 'keyboards, bass, guitar,' all of which has a lot to do with the socket underneath, which is for the included footswitch, this time a double one.

This is the interesting bit - one side of the footswitch switches in or out the boost control, which does exactly as its name suggests, adding more oomph to the front end of the amp and thereby bringing up the loudness and, coincidentally, the distortion, about which more later.

The other half of the footpedal changes the settings on the toggle switch, depending on where you have it set, from keyboards to bass or from bass to guitar.

The idea is that these settings are basically preset tone curves designed to make the best of the specific instrument. Hence, the keyboards one is fairly flat, the bass has a dip in the midrange and the guitar setting boosts the top and upper middle. Swapping between them can work well - switching from normal bass setting to guitar when you're playing bass is good for the occasional slappy bit - or not. When you use a fat, middly sound on a synth and then switch to the bass setting all the punch disappears from the sound.

In fact, its preset nature means that this function is a bit hit-or-miss at the best of times. Something switchable might have been better - but obviously at £250 you don't have much margin left over to add extra knobs and circuits, and to find a double pedal included at this price is pretty good anyway.

Talking of the footswitch, guitarists will obviously have just one use in mind for it, and that's to bring their volume up to bone-crushing levels so their phenomenally talentless but very very fast solos can roar out of the mix and castrate small animals in neighbouring towns.

Well, it will certainly give you boost - but what happens then is another matter. In fact, it may be a matter for the ear, nose and throat specialists, because it hurts your ears, gets up your nose and sticks in your throat.

The distortion is, well... vile. There's no other word for it. All right, there are several more but they shouldn't appear outside the pages of medical journals. It sounds like the sound of a thousand tortured transistors screaming for mercy, and that's being kind.

But let's be fair. These are days when if anyone wants distortion he either buys a valve amp or an effects pedal. Nobody but the most brain-damaged string-twanger would expect a multi-purpose amp built to handle bass and keyboards cleanly to also offer brilliant guitar distortion. Not for two hundred and fifty nicker, anyway.

Which is the main thing. For the price, it offers a lot. It'll handle most sources respectably and while it's no Mesa Boogie, it's no Woollies practice amp either.

It just goes to prove that a jack of all trades who gets all work and no play saves nine. Or should that be...

Alligator Combos: A60 & A175 £250 & £450