Arrow 16 Review

The Arrow 16 is a self-contained combo amp offering 16 watts of power and an 8" Celestion speaker. It's perfect for rehearsal or smaller performance environments.

Features:	8
Sound:	9
Reliability:	9
Impression:	8.7
Overall rating:	8.7
Users rating:	8.7
Comments:	1

overall: 9

Featured review by: Kid Fisto, on april 21, 2007

Price paid: $ 150

Purchased from: Music Maniac

Features: My amp was made in 2006, not entirely sure where because I can't find a "made in" label anywhere. It's a very versatile amp, you get everything from enourmously crunchy thrash metal sounds like Slayer, old-school Black Sabbath, Classic rock like Led Zeppelin, Grunge, RHCP sound, jazz, basically everything. I play all sorts of things, and randomly decide to change songs, so this is excellent for me. This amp has two channels, Clean and Lead. On the 16 DFX (which I have) there's a built-in effect box, encompassing a fairly decent bunch of effects. You have your basic delay, flanger, rotary, phaser, chorus, tremolo and slapback, but then you have autowah, RotoVerb, room and hall reverbs, chorus reverb, delay reverb, tremolo reverb and spring reverb. Very decent for $150. The only thing I really wish it had was an adjustable delay timing, because the built-in timing is way too fast. However, I rarely use the autowah, simply because I have a nice Dimewah. I use this amp everywhere, practicing at home, at band practice, Jazz band, the music room hallway after school on fridays. So far, the loudest I've needed it is during a pep rally at my school, where I had to light up a gym with sound, and it performed very well with just 2/3 max volume. Be forewarned, though: if you have the lead on, and the gain and volume higher than 12 o' clock, beware of feedback within 10 feet of the amp. Aside from that, I'm fairly sure that I could easily crank the volume to max, stand back, and be able to do an outdoor show. I can't guarantee the sound would be the best, but then there's always the external speaker output for putting it up to a PA system. Makes a great playing seat, perfect height to be comfortable playing and sitting. And nothing brings people out of the woods after school like a guitar. // 8

Sound: I use this with my Mockingbird, 2 humbucker guitar. I've also used it with some of my friends Strats and Deans, and it performs fairly well. Acoustics do not perform well on it, though. So don't try it. Why? the bass is too strong. Plain and simple. As I said, I play everything from Slayer to Ozzy to RHCP to Jazz. So this works very nicely, as it is very very versatile. The only thing I can think of it struggling with is acoustics. For a while, it was quite noisy with the gain turned higher than 3/4, but I then replaced my bridge Pup and the noise stopped dead. Now there is a barely noticeable hum with the gain to full, but once again beware the feedback. This amp loves to scream if you get too close. This amp does most sounds very well. It isn't the best on extremely heavy stuff, but it gets the job done. I'm fairly sure that with some quality pedals it could easily do just about everything. I've never had the clean channel higher than 2/3, but even then it was clean as can be. My wah crunched it a little, but that's the wah. The distortion is not exactly "Brutal", but it's substantial. I guess my only complaint with the distortion is that when you turn the gain down to zero, the sound just leaves instead of being clean. // 10

Reliability & Durability: I'm fairly sure I can depend on this ompletely. I would and have used it at a gig with no backup. It's never broken down, and there's no tubes or such to replace. It's a fairly beefy design, not the heaviest thing out there, but it can easily survive a beating (it fell down half a stairwell at school, and still works fine). // 9

Impression: I play everything, as I've said, so this is a very good match. I've been playing for about a year, and I own this, my Mockingbird, my acoustic, and my Dimewah. There's nothing else I wish I'd asked before I bought it, I'm completely happy with it. Were it stolen or lost, I would probably just get a larger amp, like a Crate, Vox or one of the larger Kustoms, with more features. I love the simplicity and the sound. When people see it for the first time, they always say something like "Wow, that's a great sound for such a little amp!". I don't really hate anything about it, if I did it would probably be the non-adjustable delay. My favorite feature is the amazing bass end... so rich and sounds awesome. I also love the reverbs, they're just excellent. I compared this amp to several other amps of similar and slightly higher prices-Marshall, Crate, Randall, and Behringer if I remember correctly. This amp's effects and sound blew the Marshall out of the water, and was slightly superior (in sound and price) to the others. I recently saw a Vox Valvetronix for about the same price, and its sound was about the same, but the place I got this one didn't carry Vox at that time. Like I've said, the only thing I wish it had was the adjustable effects. // 9

overall: 9.3

Reviewed by: hminh87, on september 01, 2008

Price paid: € 100

Purchased from: 4Sound

Features: This camp has two channels, lead which has gain and volume knob and rhythm channel for clean sound with its own volume knob. On board 3-band EQ (low/mid/hi). My version is 16DFX, means that there is effect built in. There are 8 different effects available (hall reverb/spring reverb/slap back/delay/chorus/chorus+reverb/flange/reverb/tremolo). Hidden on the back is a external speaker and headphone output. Very standard for a practice amp. // 9

Sound: This amp has the warm sound characters of a tube amp and surprisingly very 'organic' and 'lively' for a Solid State amp. I can't hear any digital clipping or so whatever, the sound comes out smooth as silk even in the dirty channel! The 3-band EQ works well and can give me quite wide range of sound variations. This amp takes my Ibanez TS7 Tubescreamer in a very good way and together with my Line 6 Pocket POD, I can pull off almost any sound I can possibly desire.

There are of course a few things that I didn't like from this amp. No noise cancellation or gate built in so it picks out every single bit of noises coming from the guitar input. Some 'hall echo' mixed in the sound that I can't get rid of. The effects are pretty generic, the only thing that is editable is the volume. This is solved with using my Pocket POD effects instead. Not a big deal. The sound coming from headphone jack on the back is really bad, distorted and loud. // 9

Reliability & Durability: It's a solid state amp so I don't expect it to be as sensitive as tube amps. The thing built sturdy and feels solid. The knobs has nice quality feeling to them as they are not loosely. Under two years it has not given me any problem. This amp might not be loud enough for a medium gig but small ones would be perfectly fine. It's so small and light, very easy and simple for mean of transportation. // 10

Impression: I have been playing for almost two years and this was the amp that I started out with. From the beginning I have always judged it based on price so it was a 'bad budget amp' that I just happens to own. It was left collecting dusts in a corner for half a year until recently when I just sold my Vox AD50VT and picked it up again. Now that my ears are little better trained this thing sounds wonderful! It brings me joys to see that I could find my sounds within' this amp I've been having the whole time. I just wish the effects name were writing on the front instead of the back panel and that they would be more customizable. Maybe a noise gate built in would be nice but I understand that it is not a feature an amp of this level would normally have. // 9

overall: 7.8

Reviewed by: perkristian876, on october 26, 2006

Features: This is first of all a transistor based amplifier. And it's Cheap. But it is Kustom. First of all the amp looks great. It is small and versatile, So you can take it everywhere and it doesn't dissapoint you. The amplifier has two channels. Rhythm (clean) and lead (overdrive). Medium, high and low EQ options and gain knob for the Lead channel. You can also have different volume levels for each channel (Lead and Rythm) wich might be useful and might not. The amp has a headphone jack and a AUX jack so that you can plug in your mp3 player and play along or connect your guitar through a Distortion Modeler pedal if you want to play with your friends on this amp. I use this amp as a practising amp. My regular amp is Vox AD30VT. I have used this amp on a Epiphone Les Paul 100 And a cheap Behringer guitar. This amp has more than enough power for me as a practising amp. What I miss on this amp is Reverb! You can get reverb on the model higher Kustom Arrow 16R. But that is more money. But in cheap amps like this, Rebervb is not always present. So I can always order a reverb pedal! // 7

Sound: Most of the time I use this guitar on a Behringer v-tone guitar. But I've also played with my Epiphone LP 100. And the distortion sound just blew me away! The distortion of this amp is so great! comparing this to other cheap amps, you have to search long to find somone to beat Arrow 16! At some points I also prefer the distortion sound of this amp instead of some of Vox AD30VT's amp modelings. I play most metal music and with this amp it all sounds great! And after having this amp for so long I think I'm going for a Kustom stack when it's time for something new! Now Clean soound on this one is quite standard. Nice warm tone wich is quite acceptable for a cheap amp. But there might be other cheap amps with better Clean/rythm sounds than this one. The distortion sound gets better if you turn the gain to 12'o clock. It might get to much if you turn gain on full. But the amp definately can handle it. Now about volume this amp might not support you at the very highest levels. The tone gets a bit crunchy and the celestion speaker begins woofing to much. So That makes this a practise amp. don't go on stage with it! The EQ works fine and can give you many different tones! The distortion is very "clean" Wich makes it perfect to many Metal songs. Especially Sandman. If you want it more brutal, Turn up the gain and start playing along! // 8

Reliability & Durability: I haven't put this amp to the ultimate test. It has never broken down for me either. I would say it's very dependable. But the only thing I'm worried about is the speaker. When I play at quite high sound levels, it seems to have a hard time playing along. So be careful with the volume. I think using this in a gig would make no trouble. It seems very reliable and handles a fall or two. // 8

Impression: This amp is very standard so don't expect too much of it. what you see is what you get. But considering that it has external speaker output and AUX input you can get more out of this amp. But this includes more equipment. I've been playing on this amp for about a year now. And it has always supported me! I mostly use this amp on a cheap Behringer v-tone guitar. But I've also used my Epiphone Les Paul 100 from time to time. This amp is worth the money paid! You get a good enough Clean sound and Very good distortion! But the lack of reverb makes it a bit sad. The amp fits very good for classic rock and metal. I love the distortion, But the speaker output levels seems to be too much for the amplifier! So don't start playing very loud on this one. I compared this to a Behringer Vintage amp and a SX G-Pack amp. The Sx amp was horrible and lacked gain. The Behringer amp seemed cheap and the sound was downright boring compared to Kustom Arrow 16R. Comparing this to my existing Vox AD30VT amp the Kustom impresses with it's distortion. However the Kustom has very small sound picture. So Vox is more exiting for it's effects. All in all: I recomend this amp to all rookie guitarplayers that needs good Amp sound for a fair price. Also for those Who travel a lot and need a amplifier to go! // 8

Comments

[perkristian876]

I Kinda regret giving this amp only 8 in sound! The sound of this amp is absolutely fantastic! The clean tone is very varm and solid! A good rocker!