Dual-purpose often means a horrible compromise. To use a vile cliche, 'jack of all trades, master of none' applies more often than not in musical hardware.

Let's face it, what's the compromise solution for people who need two types of guitar? The double-neck, one of the ugliest instruments known to modern man. And coincidentally, used by some of the ugliest pop stars. Given a choice between Mike Rutherford and Jimmy Page, who would you snog with?

But in speakers, surely it's a different kettle of Marillion. Surely if speakers sound good they can be used for any application, anyhow.

But not so.

Not in this case anyway, which was a great disappointment because they look pretty good, they're compact (16.5 x 10.25 x 9ins) and I was really looking forward to trying them out.

There were two of them, one black, one white. Each one had two quarter-inch jack sockets and terminals for bare wires, one black, one red.

In the bottom of each there were threaded holes for stands or brackets. The front was curved and covered in cloth.

Delving deeper into the box I found a woofer, a tweeter and a cardboard toilet roll.

But as Brian Clough will tell you time and time again, it's not looks that matter, it's performance and I'm afraid that, for me, these did not perform as well as I'd hoped they would on the day.

They weren't clear enough to be good studio monitors and they weren't loud enough to be good PA speakers.

I tried all sorts of things through them starting with vocals. In order to get anywhere near the being heard above a drum kit the bass had to be cut almost completely to avoid distortion and the resulting sound was horribly trebly like a BR tannoy.

So I tried putting guitar through them and the distortion was just as bad if not worse.

Before you say,'oh, you were obviously using a dodgy amp,' I must add that I put a variety of amps through these speakers and the result was always the same — low frequencies produced distortion and the only compromise was much too trebly.

I tried playing records through them and, although there wasn't any distortion, the low frequencies were too resonant and there was a continual hum in between tracks. Again, cutting this out meant taking the bass out almost completely.

So, as I said before, I was disappointed with the performance of these speakers, especially considering the price. Dual purpose they may be but dual practicality? Hardly.

RAMSA PA/Studio Speakers: £299