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“The Fender Frontman is my first amp, and does a good...”

written by axemanR on 03/07/2006

Good Points
Cheap, loud, good clean sound.

Bad Points
Cheap, un-sensitive controls

General Comments
The Fender Frontman is my first amp, and does a good enough job. The clean channel is loud and works best with lots of treble and light strings for blues or indie noodling, and if you set the tone control on your squier strat (I know you've got one - don't bother denying it) to zero you get a soulful tone which makes the speaker buzz like the amp has smoked too many cigarettes. Strangely, you get a similar effect when you set all guitar controls wide open, but with a lot more bite. Less guitar volume causes the buzz to disappear, making the jangle a lot more noticeable, but it stops the guitar driving the amp as well. Switching over to the distortion side causes immediate buzz-saw distortion at anywhere above 4/10 gain - good for death metal, but losing the clean side's good chords and clear tone. Open chords become a mindless wash of harmonics, barre chords still have very little note separation, and only power chords really take advantage of the channel's power and grinding tone. Full guitar volume causes screaming buzz no matter where you put the gain. Backing it off produces a more vintage tone, but because of the huge gain it isn't really very useful. A good amp for the money, but upgrade it before the squier.