Over dinner at the Tudor Rose Carvery, Coulsdon, I began to hold forth about this great new amp that had been delivered for appraisal. By the time I had finished, the entire clientele of the joint insisted on dropping round my gaff for a butcher's. Even those who had no interest in music whatsoever were enthralled by the mere mention of the little, grey, 65 watt, 2-channel, switchable amp with reverb, retailing for under £200. 'Remarkable', we all thought. Remarkable it was.

For the guitarist of slender means and broad mind, the Sidekick 65 Reverb is the ideal device. Firstly it is small (16¼" x 18½" x 10¾") thus leaving plenty of room on the small stage for your frenzied dance routines. Secondly, it is plenty loud enough even for those self-indulgent bastards who firmly believe that volume is directly proportional to talent and therefore insist on raising the roof at every church hall gig they spoil. Thirdly, it is versatile.

It has two inputs and two channels. If you plug into input 1 then you can use the foot switch to send it through either channel 1 or channel 2. If you plug into input 2 then it goes through both channels and if you plug one thing into input 1 and something else into input 2 then they will go through their respective channels separately.

Channel 1 offers simply volume, bass and treble control while Channel 2 offers volume, gain, master volume, bass, midrange, and treble control. Obviously this means that you can get a wider range of sounds by playing through Channel 2 and so you're best to set up your number one guitar sound on this channel and use the less versatile Channel 1 for lesser used sounds.

Those of you who use acoustic and electric guitars will find this instant switchability invaluable. Setup Channel 1 to suit your acoustic guitar — you can get a good amplified acoustic guitar sound with just the two tone controls — and set up Channel 2 to suit your electric. When it comes to changing guitars you simply unplug one, plug in the other and stamp on the foot-switch marked C. Simple.

Now with all those controls on Channel 2 you can get an awesome variety of tone and textures. Hack the volume and gain right up and turn the master down a tad and you'll get a pretty good dose of distortion. Other than that it's all tone variation and the variety varies voluptuously. Any sound you want. Playing requests now on the bandstand. The two remaining knobs on the black control panel are Presence and Reverb which effect both channels automatically. The switch to bring the reverb in and out is located on the same (provided) unit as the channel switch.

Round the back there is a Power Amp input and Pre Amp output which can be connected directly to a range of effects which then loop back into the Power Amp input.

As the people picked the beef from their teeth they marvelled at the superb sound gushing forth from the jaws of this little devil of an amplifier. The bassy sounds were beautifully warm and smooth and the more aggressive treble cut like a carving knife.

Drawbacks? I counted two. One was the footswitch unit which was rather small and consequently the switches were a bit close together. This calls for a certain degree of caution when rendering your plates of meat thereon (your average size 10 Doc Marten spans both buttons twice over) but you can't expect big first division foot-pedals when you're paying Vauxhall Opel League prices. Two was that it came fitted with a two-pin plug requiring either an adaptor or a rewiring job. Mind you, at least it had a bleedin' plug.

Not only did it have a plug, it had size appeal, versatility, quality, value for money and, what is probably more important than ay thing else in the world, I want one.

FENDER SIDEKICK 65 £186.33