Pignose 7-300 HOG-30 Amplifier

I have been using this amp for an acoustic group (2 guitars, bass and vocals) with my Ovation acoustic/electric bass guitar. The bass is not quite loud enough when played acoustically, but just needs a little bit of help to match the other instruments. I was surprised at how clean the sound was, but then, I am not really pushing the volume. Another big plus is that the battery has a tremendous life between charges. I can honestly say it has never failed me even when I have played it for 6 or 7 hours continuously. Plug it in overnight and it is ready to go the next morning. It is not real heavy, but I strapped it to a small dolly for ease of moving around. I have used the amp on the dolly as a seat while I am playing, but it would be more comfortable with a small pillow or foam pad on the top. I also use it as a practice amp with several other basses (solid body and violin style) and it is as nice a sound as my 10" Fender Bassman. I would kind of like to see some legs on the sides to make it into a kick-back style, but it would be easy to add them myself. Great little amp as long as you don't need huge volume.

I'm a bass player. I had my doubts, but bought this based purely on other people's reviews.Is this a 4x10 200W Marshall stack? No, come on now...But it IS a bass amp that sounds like, well, a bass amp... and it plays on batteries! 30 Watts in the park? In the back yard? At the beach? During a blackout party? YES!It actually does a great job indoors and like any amp outdoors, it does the best it can... which is pretty decent. This is a GREAT amp for busking, and you can make it pretty easy to swap or supplement the batteries while busking if you play that long. In most busking situations, you can't play that loud, anyway, so the batteries will last a good long while (hours).It has a bit of growl, it has that slightly soft sound that Pignose are known for, and it has a "make it Funky" switch which is better than no distortion/fuzz, but... use your own stompbox. Has a Pre out, Headphone out for clandestine practicing and is just tall enough to sit on (stool height), and strong enough for the burliest bass player to sit on it.Metal hardwarde, groovy (stealable) Pignose volume knob and look-of-football vinyl wrap make it just a little different... and inexpensive for what you get compared to any other battery bass amp (in terms of power, size, simplicity or price). Not too heavy, a girl can lug this and it will strap to a folding luggage cart (busking 101 tip) with room to spare.Great practic amp, busking amp, handles growly high output pickups or a kb and plays loud enough for what it is. Get one. It's pretty awesome, even if it's your only amp. Not too big, not too small, mikeable, etc.

Preface - have bought & used their products for 25+ years, never a problem, always recomended them.This time - Totally ruined all that loyalty with one unit, which if it had been fixed could have been understood - everybody has a bad day/unit occasionally. Worse than the unit was the 0 (as in zero) support or response after this unit given to a young musician as a gift began to malfunction (loud line static, drop-outs, assembly defects) after less than 1 year of practice room use.First asked for repair location suggestions - no reply - then asked about a return/exchange, no reply to emails or calls. Not worth the hassle or the expense to bother with this sort supplier, especially if you have to depend on the unit or if you can't afford a spare.In one series of stupid moves Pignose lost a 25 year multi-unit customer and turned off a music department of 20-something musicians...quite a change from their early days. Now that there are multiple alternative offerings, we'll be changing to those. Buyer beware.

The first one of these that came was defective, it would not charge the battery. Amazon replaced it with another one and it has a working battery. It has a very nice natural sound that works well to amplify my Kala Archtop Ukulele with pickup. It also amplifies my vocals through the Shure SM58beta mic. BUT it will not do both at the same time, in spite of having two separate inputs. SO, I can't use it as I'd planned, singing and playing the ukulele. It may be possible to link it to a second HOG 30, but I am exploring other options that will allow me use a keyboard and to get some vocal effects too. It is probably my lack of knowledge and not the fault of the product, but I think the advertising should clearly say that mic and instrument won't work at same time, it is one or the other.In the meantime, to be fair, this is a fine and portable practice amp. I am learning a lot by listening to my own ukulele playing, working for clean fretting and smooth chord changes. So this product does have some use to me.UPDATE: I bought a "Y" cable to see if I could plug the mic and the instrument cable into one input to amplify both vocals and ukulele through one input. Does not work. Still gives precedence to one or the other.VERY disappointed.

The bass player in my band uses this Pignose amp and likes it, so I bought one for my wife's bass practice / portable jam amp. It is not super loud, but is adequate in most accoustic jam situations, plus it goes anywhere (outdoor jams). I put a preamp between the bass and the amp, and it boosted the volume; I didn't experiment to see how much volume I could get without distortion, but I didn't hear any distortion when I gave it a slight boost. I shopped around, and this amp seemed like the best one for the money. My bass player often plays for 3 hours at practice on the battery and it has never run down. It did get low on battery power on time when we were playing off and on all day.