Only nine out of ten because, whilst this has been a fine piece of kit for a really great price, and never let me down, it is I fear a little quiet for something rated at 500w. I use a 450watt amp as well in a stereo set up and it out performs the a500 every time. Nontheless reliable, clean sound and no other complaints.

I bought this amp for use as a live monitor for playing keyboards through. I've gigged it several times now and it has been excellent. Although fairly heavy, it is compact and well built; I'll probably put it in a rack case eventually but until then I'm confident it won't get too bashed about. The connectivity is sensible; no captive mains lead and jack ins/outs mean that you can just stick a line level input in and a speaker out, plug in a kettle lead and you're away.

Sound quality isn't really paramount for stage monitoring, but it has a good clean sound even at high levels. I've been using it in bridged-mono to get levels for very loud stages and it behaves fine. I've not yet had a problem with getting enough welly out of it from a line-level source.

The front-panel level metering is useful, and clear at all times.

It is obviously being sold more as a PA/studio monitor amplifier, which is fine, and a handy bonus for me as it'll probably end up having a second use as a small PA amp; it has the appropriate balanced inputs for such uses.

For the price, you can't really argue with this and it's a very handy thing to have around.