Blackstar amPlug2 FLY Bass

This is an outstanding product.

I've been using a headphone amp by a class A competitor for about 4 years. Great for playing late at night when the rest of the house is asleep or in hotel rooms or in the garden on a hot sunny day when you want to rock out but don't want to annoy the hell out of the neighbours.

The competitor's product was good but a little fragile - I'd already had to replace it once. After the second one broke, I just happened to be on the Thomann site looking for another one...Thomann didn't have it but they had the FLY so I thought to give it a try.

And, boy, am I glad I did!

The sound quality is just as good but the FLY has so many more features, including a gain control and a fuzz box setting. Plus there are more settings for the onboard drum tracks - and they seem easier to operate.

A headphone amp is essential for any electronic musician wanting to play without disturbing others. If you're a bassist I can heartily recommend the FLY.

Time will tell if it's more robust than the competitor product...but so far so good. I'm very impressed!

It has 3 modes (they call it "old school", "modern" and overdrive or something like that). I personally didn't like overdrive at all, it just awful. In other modes it produces heavily compressed sound, and I'm not a big fan of that either. But considering how it should be used - it doesn't really matters.
It has build-in drum machine, although drum patterns are not that great, but you're still can have some fun with them. Anyway it has click, so again - for home practice is ok.
Controls are intuitive, but not easily operable. That's stays same for all devices with that form factor, so it is also ok.
Of course it also has AUX in, so you can play along with you tracks.

So in the end, for the task it designed to use - that's an ok device. Yes, not very versatile sound (at least I found it that way), yes, its hard to operate (at night with lights off trying to find that volume knob somewhere under you bass...), and yes - built in drum machine is not that great... But you're here for practice, not gigging, after all. Without waking up your family at night. And not being tied to some place to do so.