Practice Amp with Loads of Tone?

racman

Any advice on a small practce amp with decent tone. In the ideal world I would like a good clean and overdrive tone but at low volume. I am "in transit" from CT to JHB and currently stay in a small flat in Sandton, so need a small amp - maybe headphone output as well. It seems like most of the small amps on the market today advertise "as loud as a big amp" as their strong point whereas that defeats my purpose for a small amp. I want a small practice amp that has heaps of tone and can overdrive at low volumes (that Fender Bassman tone ?).

Any ideas or is it an impossibility?

Heath

The roland cube 15 or 20 are really lovely little amps .....

nick

I had a laney LG20R I think it was, lovely clean bluesy sound, nice reverb, had switchable overdrive which sucked a bit but I never had stompboxes at the time.

I do regret selling that amp, its clean tone blew my bigger Fender Frontman out the water ☹

oh and for a 15w amp it went from super quiet to fairly loud ?

JK

Marshal avt20, great practice amp with excellent tone! Its not feature rich like the Cubes, but its a killer sounding amp -
closed-back cabinet and a specially-designed Celestion 10", with a pre-amp stage that is driven by an ECC83 Dual Triode valve. Very warm sound.

http://www.blamepro.com/mar/avt20.htm
http://www.musiciansnews.com/guitars/30/avt20_20w_2_channel_10_in_guitar_combo_amp_wi.shtml

MoJo-JoJoe

Bane

I've got an Ibanez Valbee. Full Valve and cheap. Clean is amazing but i don't like the OD much BUT is does come with loop send/return sockets so any pedals you have can fix that. Really happy with it. here are the specs and the a pic in YOUR Gear section in my post

5W@4Ω Tube Guitar Amp
6L6GC x 1 (Power)/ 12AX7 x 1 (Pre)
6.5” Speaker
Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence, Volume, Boost SW
Send, Return, Valve powered Phones/Rec Out jacks
Closed-Back Cabinet
300(W) x 280(H) x 240(D)
7.8 kg (Appearances thing is deceiving)

AlanRatcliffe

MoJo JoJoe wrote only one way to go ...
Fender VibroChamp XD or SuperChamp XD

+1 I looked at one recently and was pleasantly surprised by how nice they are.

Bane

how much are they going?

AlanRatcliffe

Don't know offhand - you'll have to ask Bothners. VibroChamp is the smaller 5W one, SuperChamp is 15W.

WantzChas

I own a Cube-15 and it's really a nice amp to have. Lots of sounds and decent quality for what you pay.

Matt-White

Has anyone tried the Behringer Firebird GX108 yet? Certainly looks cool! BTW Racman, you sure you need an amp at this stage? I just bought a small [b]Vox [/b] [b]amPlug [/b] - tiny thing. Plugs into your guitar's jack and you plug your headphones into it. Amazing tone and volume for a thing it's size. I was really surprised. And it gives you privacy and freedom to move around. You can also plug an MP3 player into it if you want to jam to songs. 'Bout R400.

racman

Hey Matt, Good idea. Maybe I should even look at a used Pod or something similar. Any ideas and suggestions on this everyone?

Capricorn

I have a vox pathfinder 15R and I'm pretty happy with it.
Beautiful cleans which I use for recording... overdrive not so good.

Remus

I use a Roland CUBE 30X, it's a great little amp with loads of features. IMO it's got a great clean tone, and uses Roland/Boss's COSM technology to "simulate" six different sounds, from a clean sound through to a double stack. It's also got a great feature to "drop" the wattage of the amp allowing you to crank the volume knob and give great gain at low volume. I'd definitely recommend checking it out. There are smaller ones in the family, but if you're going to jam with people the 30W is still small enough to carry around and loud enough to not be drowned out.

http://www.roland.com/products/en/CUBE-30X/index.html