Bugera V5 Infinium

About a week ago an ad slipped through my inbox for an amp (and amp bundle) that was priced ridiculously low, so I let it pass. But it nagged at me for a bit and tonight I came across the amp at Sweetwater. It's the Bugera V5 Infinium, and it's a 5W, 1x8" combo tube amp. The specs and videos on their site make it seem like it could be a pretty good practice amp, and even a small-venue gig amp, properly mic'd.

I don't have the savvy about tubes, but what Bugera claims is a 12AX7 preamp tube and an EL84 power tube, built-in power attenuator, so you can hit the sweet spot at any volume. Complete with a high-definition reverb and British-engineered Turbosound speaker. There's also something called Bugera's Tube Life Multiplier Technology they claim ensures that the V5 Infinium guitar combo amplifier gives you reliability and consistent tone over the lifespan of your tubes. All for a mere $199 USD.

Check out the videos at Sweetwater. Thoughts?

https://imgs.search.brave.com/OYC4oF...jU5MzgzMDlm/Mg

It may be a decent practice amp, but with an 8" speaker, you are unlikely to get much low end, unless you use an external 4ohm speaker cabinet. Also, if anything on the pcb board fails, the cost to repair it will most likely exceed the value of the amp. But for $199, that may be a fair risk to take. I'm not familiar with any other Class A amp that uses a EL84 power tube, but there may be some out there. The statement in the video that "the infinium technology automatically biases the tubes, making it possible to use unmatched tubes" is misleading because there is only a single output tube, thus no balancing is necessary. I'd be interested to know exactly what the "infinium technology" actually is. Possibly the output tube is cathode biased with a variable resistor?

Thanks, Michael. My interest in this amp is purely academic, as I have more than enough amps to suit my needs. Sometimes I wonder if someone has actually come up with some new technology that might be a game changer, or if it's just more marketing blather. My suspicion is the latter, and you've pretty much confirmed that, I think.

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Originally Posted by OldStrummer

Thanks, Michael. My interest in this amp is purely academic, as I have more than enough amps to suit my needs. Sometimes I wonder if someone has actually come up with some new technology that might be a game changer, or if it's just more marketing blather. My suspicion is the latter, and you've pretty much confirmed that, I think.

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+1

There's a lot of techno-babble in Bugera's product descripton. I'm not certain I'd call it "hype" but it is suspect......