Harley Benton TUBE15 Celestion 4-stars Reviews

Great budget practice amp

Modest single tube . nice low and higher watt volume settings. Light , simple and fun .

Impressive! ... But

Overall I love this amp but the output valves were all crackles and hum inside 6 weeks. I replaced those two but I won't be truly confident until I replace the other three. It pushes the cost by €150 unfortunately.

Great Little Amp

The Tube15 is a Great Little Amp. It ticks many boxes - It's loud, it's small, it's well made and it has a built in real spring reverb. The inclusion of an effects send / return loop is something very useful and often not seen at this price point - and what a price point it is!! The Tube15 is easily loud enough to play gigs with. It has a lot of gain - maybe too much gain - for those of you wanting a loud clean sound it may be nessacery to swop out the 1st 12AX7 tube for a 12AT7 or even a 12AU7 to reduce early breakup. The tone controls are typical of this type of amp and are not as "wide sweeping" as more modern circuits. (perhaps 6db/octave rather than 12) The only thing I didn't like was the sound of the speaker cab and speaker combination. There is not a lot of bottom end "push". I kept comparing it to my Fender Mustang lll cab which sounded SO much better

Best bang for the buck!

Its a great value for the price paid. Use it every day.

Rock was meant to be heard through this amp.

The factory valves had a shorter life than I expected. Once replaced this amp is an awesome, loud, angry and very naughty piece of gear. When Dimed this amp can make ears bleed. I only wish I had another two for a 3 amp rig.

Great little amp

I have this amp for home use and I love it.

The tone is just what I was looking for....Clean but on the edge of breakup. If you are looking for an amp with a lot of clean headroom then it's probably not for you. If you like a little dirt, then it's worth a look (Blues/classic rock). I usually have the gain on 3 and the volume on 4 and it's plenty loud. In fact it can get really loud for a 15 watt amp.

All in all, great value.

Tube15

Harley benton tube 15 amp, sounds great, warm bluesy, user friendly tone nice and full,

Arrived, in 6 days from Germany to my door in the UK, around Christmas time, (impressive)

Good overall quality, but has some bubbling to the cabinet covering, but mabey due to cold weather during transportation.

Very good clean sounds

The amp provides very good clean tones. It has also very versitile eq contrals for tone shaping. The big con for me is the overdrive and especially distortion tones. The sound is very fizzy for me and much of it is probably because of the speaker. I tried it with two notes captor x with various caps and irs and again cleans are very good but overdriven and distortion tones are alright there but not impressive. Interstingly, the speaker has very PA-like quality and you can kind of set the amp to be like a FRFR speaker and to use it with a modeller.

Great valve amp

Really good 15 watt valve amp.One channel, Reverb. 4 band EQ, Clean and Gain knobs. FX loop in the back.Has a switch to select between 1 watt or 15 watt.On 1 watt setting you can get dirtier drive tones.15 watt allows for cleaner tones.Loud enough against a drummer for smaller venues

More than Enough

Forget the sound samples this amp sounds much better when you are actually in the room with it. Fantastic amount of features on this amp that you might expect on an amp costs 3 or 4 times the price. Even many of those amps haven't got as many features and extras ( think Fender or Vox). This amp sounds great and will do anything right up to a Classic Rock tone. For me the most useful features are the ability to run a pre-amp pedal into the Fx loop section and the ability to run it into another speaker Cabinet. Also having ability to run other effects into the Fx loop is a real bonus.

Using the amp directly I find that the Tone Control is another very useful feature and it really makes a difference, giving this amp great flexibility of sound above and over what you get from the 3 band Eq. I tend to use this between 1 o clock and 3 O clock to brighten up the amp. The Gain really comes alive past 2 O clock mark and still increases all the way to max. Past 3 O clock you get into Classic Rock territory. However even at the 1 watt setting this is still a loud amp. To overcome this problem I run mine out to cheap 1 x10 cabinet via a Harley Benton PA-100 Power Attenuator to bring it down to a range of bedroom practice levels. It really works so other people in house can easily watch TV without being disturbed etc. Using the 15 w setting you could easily do a small venue.

My only criticism would be the speaker. It's ok but I find the bass a bit boomy and it lacks a bit of detail in the mids. For the price it's ok. For a beginner it's also great. But this is where the compromise is being made in it's manufacture and what keeps it below the £350 mark. However I fed this into a cheap 1x10 cabinet ( cost about £60) that was well broke in and all these problems fell away which indicates the amplifier itself is an absolute gem. Maybe if I took the time to break the amp's own speaker in I may have a different impression. To conclude I am well satisfied with the amp and it's a no brainer at the current price. Because of the fx loop you can really get creative with this amp if you know what you are doing. You can get stuff to make it sound like a Marshall or a Vox for example and because it's all tube it sounds so much better than digital modelling ever could, even those units costing 4 times as much.

Just buy it.....

Well there's not much you can say about a tube amp that costs about 200$, other than it's a tube amp that costs around 200$...

BUT, it sure doesn't sound like it (350$-ish sound). The FX loop is a huge bonus btw! Amps that are this considerate, are quite a rare find.

Very good sound for its money

The sound is very good regarding the money it costs.

I believe its No1 choice for an affordable 15 watt tube amplifier. The four stars are for the noise it makes. It has a humming that when you dont play the guitar is annoying. You have to buy a noise gate pedal that costs extra money to get rid of the noise.

Not bad.

Looks good, certainly loud enough for small venues, tones are ok. Mine came with a small crack in the woodwork that holds the speaker, not bad enough to send back, just a little concerning with regards to quality control.

Overall, bloody good value for the price.

it's a winner

I had a Blues Jnr. and was looking to upgrade the speaker to help with the lack of bottom end that amp is known for. I noticed this HB Celestion kept appearing in the reviews and eventually opted to sell the Blues Jnr and go for the HB as i always wished the Fender had an FX loop plus the 15-1watt option appealed to me, plus put a bit of money in my pocket. Playing single coils through a Fender is pretty hard to beat, but this comes pretty close, it's a great sounding amp, with a bottom end that is so badly lacking in the Fender, a very usable spring reverb, the 1-watt attenuation and the FX loop plus the 70/80 speaker makes this a serious rival to the Blues Jnr. At half the price it's a no- brainer. The only downside to this amp is the power plug, which is not great

Harley Benton Tube 15

I bought this amp in november 2021 and felt is was better to wait with a review after the "honeymoon" was over. But after three months I'm still happily married. :)

I'm a professional player for over 40 years and studio-owner/producer and I own way to much equipment, as far as that's possible ;) Most of those amps cost way more than this Tube 15.

But I'm going to to do a theatretour and because I wanted to travel light I decided not to bring one of my Fender amps (it probably would have been a 1991 Blues de Luxe or a Blues Junior because those are the snallest combos I have) and no large pedalboard.

I'd already heard of this amp sometime ago and after reading many reviews and watching numerous clips I ordered one, because I was almost sure it could do the job.

And it can. This is a serious amp, absolutely not just for starters.

It has nice cleans, a nice crunche and even some serious distortion without the need for a booster or other pedal. Use your volumepot, but make sure you have a good "treblebleed". You'll be surprised.

the EQ works fine, the tonepot is a nice extra feature and the reverb does the job. The effectsloop is also a feature that in my opinion should be on any amp for the time-based fx. No stand by, but own more amps without one, like my early Peavey Delta Blues and it never bothered me.

No cons?? Not really and that's not even considering the price. I've heard people not liking the stock Celestion-sspeaker. So far I've only compared it with a Celestion V30 and that wasn't an improvement for me. I will for sure try other tubes in the near future, but so far they're ok. Yep, nice amp!!!

Very good overall, poor reverb

Great sound on clean, good retro gain tone, reverb though is really poor.

Might be the best amp I have owned

Love playing on this amp. Bought it for home jamming and recording, works great on both!

Pros:

* Great clean tube sound

* Can go from really quiet morning twinkles to MAKING THE APARTMENT SHAKE

* Love the design and vintage cover

Cons

* It is quite dark so I usually leave the Tone knob cranked

* Not a fan of the gain sounds in this amp so a channel switch with a Clean channel would be a nice edition

* The power cable is built in so if something happens to the cable, you might need to replace the entire amp

All in all its worth the money and great for home use!

Great

It is my first tube amp, and so far im very impressed by sound of that beast.

Volume and Gain are separated, that provides an oportunity to get some kind of overdriven sound on relatively low volumes.

So far I like it very much. So if you are looking for tube amp, consider this one.

Nice small tube amp

Nice sounding amp

It can be used at low volumes at home with the 1 watt switch

Typical tube sounds , nice clean , good overdrive Reacts well on the dynamics off the guitar Effects loop . For the price also good to experiment with some V1 placed replacement tubes. Celestion speaker has a good range the amp is overall loud

No competition in the price range