Since I've had my Roland Cube Street EX for a couple of weeks now I think I should share what it's like. I recently bought it because my Cube Street (the older, smaller model) suddenly had a total audio drop-out for about one second as I was street busking. That hick-up scared me because if the Cube Street should go belly-up on a sunny day it could mean a drastic income loss for me. So I immediately ordered a copy of its new bigger brother, the "2 x 50 w" Cube Street EX. Good thing with the EX is that both the voice/instrument input and the dedicated instrument input have reverb. On top of that the instrument channel (melody side) also offers delay. I'd love to have a delay option also on the bass side, but you can't have everything and it is still better than the smaller Cube Street where you have to chose between delay or reverb (I used delay on both side, skipping over reverb).

The first time I brought the EX out in the streets I could not get as good sound as I have with the smaller amp. I like to play with a singing tone rather than with a honking clunky tone but the EX tended to sound way to clunky for my taste. This was with the SG-12, by the way. After a lot of experimentation I finally found my singing tone on the EX; what I had to do was:

1. Plug the bass side into the voice/instrument channel and set it to "voice". This is a technical mismatch but gives a lot better Stick sound than using that channel with the "instrument" input mode selected. Tone knobs: bass at noon, mid at 11 o'clock and treble at noon.

2. Plug the melody side into the dedicated instrument channel with "Guitar Clean" mode selected. Tone knobs: bass at noon, mid at 9 and treble at 9 o'clock.

3. I also had to turn my melody side PASV4 to the thinnest sound, the filter knob position where no filtering is applied. For the bass side I had to select the second thinnest of the four possible filtering positions. That caused a little bit of "clunk" on the bass side, just enough for making rhythm by arpeggiating chords and bass notes; a tasteful compliment to the more singing tone on the melody side.

It is amazing how much more umph the EX has compared to the older/smaller model; it is this umph factor that causes the ugly clunkiness in case you feed it a too beefy input and miss out on cutting down mid and treble frequencies by the tone knobs. I'm not talking "matters of subtle personal taste" here, the smacking CLACK of every note becomes physically painful to the ears without the correct settings. The smaller street bitch never smacks you on the ear like that, it just sings and hums in a sweet way. So you really have to tame the EX power carefully.

I would guess the EX does well with a full-scale Stick too. The lowest string on my SG-12 is pitched like the second lowest string on a long-scale instrument and I hear no fatigue whatsoever in the lowest SG-12 notes. I have tried the EX with my long-scale Grand Stick at home and the low bass comes out fine, but that isn't the same as the real outdoors test with audience.

The EX has a line out and a stereo line-in so I tried to put my TC Flashback delay pedal in an effect loop there. For this the pedal has to be set to "wet only" to avoid a feedback loop. I got a feedback loop anyway... in a quite funny way: Suddenly the amp just started screaming with a loud feedback tone while I was playing. What had happened was that the pedal's battery power died and when the battery was dead the TC's "Kill-Dry" setting (two small dip-switches inside the battery cave) also stopped working and the pedal repelled back into "True Bypass" mode. The change was sudden and violent, so avoid this! To avoid this happening again I adjusted the Flashback pedal's dip-switches to not activate True Bypass and then I could use the pedal until it had consumed all the juice and silenced out itself. The cool thing with having a real effect loop in the amp is that you get that cool dub effect as the delay signal itself also goes back out into the effect loop. It's a nice musical tool to be able to adjust this dub effect by the "Aux Input" level knob on the amp while you're playing. I have stopped doing that now though, because I noticed it gives the street audience a better experience if I put more focus into playing well and "reading the audience" while playing so I can play in a more communicating way. Same goes for the effects; I stopped using pedals and rely only on the reverb and delay of the EX. A great sound for being portable.

My Roland Cube Steet Ex is on back order. I can't find anywhere that has it in stock. I was told it will be available in late june

Lol looks like a wicked setup. I eagerly await my railboard... 2 more months at least haha

Aw, Per! That photo makes me wanna toss a few kronar in your bag!

How many hours do you busk on the average day?

I usually play 40 to 60 minutes at one spot. Then I move somewhere else. Often a lot of time goes into talking with people. I'd like to limit that for talking to people that express interrest in booking a regular gig, but I seem not so successful in preventing time loss due to stick chatting. Time also goes into moving around to find good spots. I guess I'm out four to five hours on a regular day.


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Thanks Per, great review of the new Street Cube. Any idea of max battery life yet?

Talking to people, posing for photos etc. is part of busking. I gave up worrying about it after a few years
I've generally found that people who spend money on a busker (particularly with CD purchases) make the decision fairly quickly - CD buyers often appear almost out of nowhere. Conversely, with others it seems the more they waste your time, the less likely they are to give you anything. I try to adhere to a Zen approach these days. Be patient and kind and you will be rewarded at some point...

Cheers,
Andy

I always run the EX at the highest battery power consumption setting but have never run out of power on duty. It's said by Roland that it can run five hours like that and five hours run time translates into at least ten hours busking time - given the chats, the breaks and the transportation time. Hey, by the way... today I was greeted by a friend and film production partner to Dan Chapman!!! How cool is that! An american guy with a Swedish wife.

It's amazing - the people you meet while busking!

Still happy with the Cube EX Per? Anyone else using this amp?
I'm thinking about buying one for a slightly easier travel setup...still love my AER for unplugged gigs, but would like to have the option of using AA batteries; easier for flying, really long busking sessions when there's nowhere to re-charge... Unfortunately none of my local shops have them in stock. I was never impressed by the original Street Cube in terms of the bass range, so I'm a little bit worried. By all reports (including yours), the EX is much better on the low end (also better than BA-330 and KC-110 from reviews I've seen). One reviewer praised the EX but mentioned that he could hear quite a bit of "compression" when using batteries (I think he was using one of the lower battery consumption settings)? I'm not too worried about the EQ range etc as I have some really nice pedals for sound shaping.

Cheers,
Andy

Yes, Andy. I'm still happy with the EX. It covers the low end well and also delivers a fat punch around the mid range. So much omph that I actually run the melody side's three EQ knobs at the 9 o'clock position! Keep in mind though that this is with the SG12 and PASV-4 set to the fattest pup lo/mid boost. With EQ set at "noon" it would sound terribly overdriven in the tone department; you know, that hard slap-on-the-bones that almost hurts physically.

Here are my exact settings that I think sounds fantastic:

Bass side into the voc/amp/guit channel with the input selector set to Voice Mic. I know that technically this is a mismatch, but it gives the best sound for the bass side. A smooth compression like you find in classic tube amps. Volume knob for this channel never higher than 9 o'clock. That is the sweet-spot and it also affects the overall sound including the melody side; that smooth and sweetening compression starts to spill over into the full sound of both channels around that 9 o'clock sweet-spot. Reverb set to 3 o'clock.

Melody side into the COSM instrument input with the CRUNCH type selected. Reverb set to 3 o'clock.

These settings gives me a warm but sparkling clean sound for the SG12.

For the last month I have been using some pedals before the EX: Melody side passing though a Ibanez TS808, then both bass side and melody side passing through a passive stereo volume pedal and finally both side's signals go in stereo through a TC Flashback stereo delay. This is a fantastic sound! But I doubt playing with a rhythmic slap delay on both sides would make as much sense on a Grand as it does for the SG12 (typical low end issues with delay slaps).

Just out of curiosity I took out both my EX and my Cube Street one day and ran only the bass side through the EX while keeping the melody side through the Cube Street. I was surprised how bad this sounded compared to only using the EX for both outputs. I really missed that mysterious general compression that affects both sides dynamically (with my settings described above).

Regarding battery consumption settings I want to say that only the high consumption setting sounds good to me. I have 16 chargeble batteries around but the first round of 8 batteries have never let me down (busking 3 to 6 hours with an intermission for an espresso) so the backup may not really be needed. The EX allows you to losen two screws and take out the complete battery holder pack and I find this very convenient. I never have to take out the EX of its bag, I just lift out the battery pack and replace the batteries when I get home at night. If one buys an extra battery holder it is a 30 second procedure to charge up anywhere, and you could do it blindfold! Charging 8 AA batteries takes about three hours.