Gary Cooper says hello to the newest member of Custom Sound's 'Cub' family — the 100 watt twin channel guitar combo

Although the paramount duty of a reviewer is to be as impartial as possible, you can't help developing respect for certain brands of gear that consistently manage to impress you whenever you look at them. In recent years particularly, a good example of such a maker has been Custom Sound. Their amplifiers aren't aimed at the glamorous Pro end of the market, but in terms of giving the semi-pro musician a hard-working, good value for money product. I've rarely found them less than very impressive. This has been especially true of Custom Sound's Cub combo series.

The first experience I had with the Cubs (apart from forgetting where I'd left my woggle!) was just before we published our very first issue of IN TUNE, when I ended up convinced that they offered really excellent value for money — particularly the Cub 30 watt Bass and Lead/Reverb models. Following the success of the Cub 30s (and various dealer friends tell me that they sell very well), 60 watt guitar and bass Cubs have also been launched, again meeting with good reactions, and Custom Sound have just announced a further new model — a 100 watt rated 1x12" guitar combo with full channel switching and reverb. The price is a comfortable RRP of £299.

But are Custom Sound being over-ambitious? 100 watt guitar combos aren't exactly scarce, and the competition is tough. Can this newcomer compete?

Facilities, Features & Build Quality

Like the rest of its family, the new Cub 100 has a handsome foursquare shape. It's also covered in the now familiar grey mottled fabric which I've described in the past as the 'Cyril Lord Carpet' look. But, as time has now shown, this covering material (aided by comer protectors) doesn't just make the Cubs look different, it also gives them phenomenal resistance to scrapes and other disfiguring damage. We've all had that sinking feeling when our brand-new vinyl clad amp received its first bash, beginning the inevitable descent from pristine perfection to the battered tenth-hand appearance that seems to afflict even the best vinyl covered amps after a year or so on the hard road. Not so the Cubs! This fabric is remarkably resistant to knocks and scuffs — I even attacked it with my Stanley knife to see what that would do, and have to report failure to make much impression. At last, a worthy scratching post for the IT Cat!

This new Cub does look different in one respect, however. A red-speckled-with-black fabric mesh now stretches over the front-loaded 12" speaker (identified by a silver badge saying 'Fane equipped'), and this offsets the red baffle board very nicely. It's a clever bit of cosmetic design in fact, as it seems to make the 100 look somehow more professional than earlier Cubs.

The fully sealed enclosure (with a carrying handle on top) has the control panel in the usual Cub position, i.e. on the rear top of the cab, with a metal backplate housing the usual modem plug-in IEC mains socket and revealing the exceptionally liberal in/out jack sockets with which the combo is provided: FX send, FX return, power amp input, DI out, slave amp output and headphones. One nice extra touch worth mentioning is the use Custom Sound make of an IEC socket which has a clip in and out tray containing two spare fuses. No getting stuck on a gig without a replacement fuse with this combo!

Being a proper twin channel amp (as opposed to one of the 'semi-twin' types that expect you to make do with just one set of tones and offer only independent volume levels), the Cub 100 has quite a number of rotary pots, logically arranged. These provide channel I Gain, Treble, Mid and Bass, and the same facilities are repeated for channel II, with the addition of a channel II Volume. This makes channel II the choice for overdrive. In addition to these channel controls are a socket for the footswitch and two overall controls — Reverb Depth and Master Volume.

The final points worth noting are that each channel has its own LED (green for Clean, red for Overdrive), showing which is selected by the footswitch; likewise there's a red LED by the reverb control, showing when you've got that switched on.

Overall — especially when you bear in mind that both a footswitch and a stylish waterproof cover are included in the price — you're getting a lot for your money with the Cub 100. It's very well built, usefully light and easily portable. The use of MOSFET output power devices should make it reliable, too.

The Sound

Loud! That's my first reaction to this new amp. As you'll no doubt have gathered by now, I'm no great friend of those who make a big fuss about watts as any sort of standard by which to compare the loudness of different amplifiers. Pump 100 watts RMS into an inefficient speaker, and you'll get a very much reduced sound pressure level compared with pushing exactly the same wattage into an efficient one. This is why the choice of speaker a manufacturer makes when designing a new amp is so very important, and it's also one of the reasons why Brand A's '100 watt' combo can sometimes sound twice as loud as Brand B's. Custom Sound's close ties to Fane (they're sister outfits within the Audio Factors group) makes a Fane speaker their natural choice, but this would have been a happy decision for any maker to have made as this appears to be a very efficient speaker, producing a massively solid wall of sound.

In terms of the Cub's sound quality, channel I has a really brilliant clean response. With a Fender Strat it was a piece of cake to achieve a high treble response — painfully loud with the amp confined in a small room, and ear-splitting in its top frequency attack. Equally, driven by a humbucker (my Gibson SG in this case) it was just as easy to fatten the tone out and get a warm, mildly raspy, chugging rhythm sound. Jazz tones, too? Yes. This is a really versatile channel and is fine for both the all-rounder and the specialist — particularly one who likes his or her treble sharp enough to give even a bat earache! Don't be conned by the Cub 100's relatively small size, either; it's twice as loud as you'd expect!

Switching channels via the footswitch, my initial reaction (this was still when I had the Strat round my neck, incidentally) was that the Cub could have had a useful bit more gain available. Even with channel II's Gain and Volume controls on full, although I could get a respectable overdrive sound when I was belting out chords, I couldn't get enough sustain and overdrive when soloing. Talking this over with the makers a few days later, their reaction was good to see. On reflection they felt that they agreed, and will be providing more gain on the second channel once the amp gets into production (which it will have by the time you read this review). Mind you, owners of higher output guitars than Strats (which quite a few have today — even some of the cheapest Japanese and Korean types) won't encounter this problem. Driven that bit harder than you can with a basic Strat, the Cub 100 produces a good, hard-edged distortion. It isn't a valve sound, and it isn't meant to be; not at this price. What you have is a fierce and furious overload, which is immeasurably better than the once inevitable bi-polar tranny amp grit and grind that could set your teeth on edge from two counties away.

Tastes in distortion sounds are very personal (just because you like cabbage, why should I?!), but my guess is that a lot of players in the Heavy Metal fraternity are going to really love this one to bits — and why not? It's the sort of sound that you could use to demolish walls with, especially at the sort of SPLs the Cub will deliver! It isn't the smoothest overload I've heard, but it's certainly very heavy! Incidentally, the reverb is very satisfyingly deep, too.

Conclusion

Destined to have to slug it out in a wildly competitive market sector, this new Cub has obviously had a great deal of thought put into it by Custom Sound's design team. Their formula for beating the competition has been to develop a very distinctive looking, substantially built combo, packed with facilities, loud as heck, offering a good versatile sound and true twin-channel features with MOSFET reliability. I think they've succeeded yet again.

There may be savings of a few pounds here and there with other products, but in the cases I can call to mind they usually make you sacrifice one important feature or another in return. The Cub, on the other hand, really is a very complete combo, well worth the money asked. It's almost impossible to single out any one style of guitarist who would appreciate this amp most. Country players will fall for the sparkling treble of channel I, Jazz and Pop guitarists will love the versatility it offers, while their metallic relatives will be equally smitten by the Overload sound from channel II. If a 100 watt combo at a more or less basic price is on your shopping list, do make a point of trying this latest Cub. I think you'll like it a lot — I know I did!

RRP £299 inc. VAT

More info from Audio Factors Ltd., (Contact Details).