I bought the Carl Martin Rock Bug because I realized it wasn’t possible for me to play through anything else but headphones. There is no way of getting a proper sound from a small amp with speaker, or a big one for that matter, playing at low volume. It’s just utterly dissatisfying. So for playing under these circumstances, the Rock Bug in a headphone setup really is the way to go. You get the full sound from the Rock Bug, with all the detail, effects and dynamics in bass, mids and treble, nothing is lost, and everything sounds right, just like it would with good volume on a full size speaker setup.
In the manual it says “(600 ohm)" with the headphone output. This could suggest a rather high output impedance on the headphone out and it means you’ll need a 600 ohm headphone to get proper damping. Since I use the 80 ohm version of the Beyerdynamic DT770 and the 64 ohm AKG K702 headphones, I’ll just use the headphone out as line out to my Lake People G109s headphone amplifier, which has a low output impedance. The sound quality of the Rock Bug is very high and will also give you outstanding results in combination with a high performing headphone amp like the Lake People.
The rca line in is also really useful. I use the analog output from my Mac mini and connect it with the Rock Bug rca input. Then I’m able to play along with anything from music I like to Youtube educational videos. This is brilliant.
So needless to say I am extremely satisfied with the Rock Bug and recommend it without hesitation.
