MI Pro

Release Date	Out Now
Vendor	JHS, Peavey, EMD, Korg, Line 6, Headstock, Roland, Marshall, Orange, Sutherland

SECTOR GUIDE - Practice Amps

Practice amps have often received short shrift from reviewers, retailers and end-users alike in the past. A thin, tinny tone through a buzzing, sub-standard (and sub-sized) speaker, and circuitry that would make a wartime radio look sophisticated, it has often been a case of ‘oh, well, if I must…’

Starter packs have done a good job in dealing with the small practice amp – guitar and amp in a nicely presented box… Sorted. But with the range of practice and micro amps now so vast, there is a lot to be said for selling these babies as standalone products, or putting together your own ‘pack’ deals.

It is always a good move to show the pack and then tell the punter ‘but for another 50 quid you could get…’ and promptly show them something with a bit more quality and substance and (hopefully) a bit more profit, too.

For reasons of size, the practice amp is traditionally a solid state amp, and far and away the most of them today still are, although amps such as the Fender Champ or the Blues Junior, the Peavey Nano Valve, or the Epiphone Valve Junior sound as good as many of their larger siblings and cousins and will often be the choice of the discerning guitarist looking for a quality practice rig. They can also be a good starting place for those sales people who like to propagate the ‘valve is best’ school of thought – if you can get the beginner to fork out that much.

The majority, however, remain transistor powered and it has been a good 20 years since that meant a life sentence of horrible sound.

Transistor technology and subsequently modelling technology means that the smallest of amps can pump out some fine tones – tones that almost perfectly match the sort of sounds a cranked up performance amplifier produces. And all of it can be channelled through headphones for everybody’s peace of mind.

Here then is a run through – in no particular order – of the sort of things suppliers are flagging up for 2008.

Kustom

One area that hasn’t really changed (although it is a lot better than it was) is speaker size. Anything under a ten-inch speaker would simply be something to be avoided as smaller cones simply couldn’t cope with the full range of tones and harmonics an electric guitar produces. Nowadays it is possible to get a good sound out of speakers that go down to as small as four inches, but there will always be compromise the smaller you go.

Despite this, Kustom is possibly the first company to produce an out and out practice amp (just 16 Watts) with a quality 12-inch speaker. The KGA12G 12 Gauge amp delivers a huge sound for its size and price and features a three-band eq, a plywood baffle board to enhance cabinet resonance, metal knobs and built-in reverb and delay effects. There's plenty of flexibility thanks to separate rhythm and lead channels, an external speaker jack, a headphone jack and an auxiliary input for audio sources.

JHS & Co, Kustom’s supplier in the UK, tells us to ‘prepare to be amazed at the enormous sound’. That’s subjective, of course, but a recommended price of £99.99 certainly makes it worth a look.

Kustom’s Dart series of amps has been doing well for some time now and beginners could do a lot worse than looking at the Kustom Dart 10FX. With 10 Watts from a two-channel design, a three-band eq and a digital effect that toggles between reverb and delay selections, the Dart 10FX is also something of a looker. It has diecast logos, jet-black grille cloth, white piping and stylish control panel layouts, proving that effort can be made on appearance at the budget end of the scale.

Rounding things off nicely, the Kustom 16DFX retails at £129, giving the user 16 Watts through an eight-inch Celestion speaker, again a two channel affair, but this time with quite expensive digital effects. Again with a distinctive look, this is one of Kustom’s best sellers.

Peavey

Talk guitar amps and you have to talk Peavey. The ‘working man’s’ brand is as ubiquitous in the bedroom as it is on the small stages of the UK and it has a serious amount of kit to offer guitarists looking for a quieter option.

The Rage amps (the 158 and the 258) have been on the market for 25 years now and if ever you wanted an example of a cash cow, this is it. Two channels into 15 Watts, three-band eq, headphone out and aux in, this is as much a no-brainer to stock as guitar strings.

At the very entry level, Peavey has the Audition, a seven-Watt combo and the smallest in the Trans Tube series. It has two channels and a two-band eq through a four-inch speaker and retails at a mere £29. For the trifling of an extra tenner, end-users can get the Trans Tube Backstage amp, with ten Watts through a six and a half-inch speaker and the added joy of a headphone out and an aux in. Then there is the Solo, which adds an eight-inch Blue Marvel speaker, a third band of eq, and a ‘modern/vintage’ voicing switch – all for £49.

A real star in the practice amp fraternity is the Nano Valve. The simple spec (five Watts Class-A tube combo with an eight-inch speaker, a 12AX7 preamp and EL84 power amp tubes) belie the quality of traditional valve sound packed into this little box.

It’s a beauty… But Peavey doesn’t end it there.

Last year’s Winter NAMM saw the launch of the Joe Satriani JSX Mini Colossal, a paired down version of the full blown JSX head. It isn’t cheap by any stretch of the imagination, clocking in at £449, but it is one hell of an amp. An all tube, five–Watt amp with Class A circuitry, switchable Ohmage, cab simulated XLR output, effects loop and a custom C8R eight-inch speaker are just some of the features. It’s a practice amp, Jim, but not as we know it.

Stagg

If one were to crown the king of entry-level brands, it would very likely be EMD’s Stagg that is the young pretender. Proving increasingly popular with UK dealers, the ranges of instruments covering all sectors are simply staggering (pun not really intended). In terms of practice amps, there is a lot to choose from, starting with the £33 10 GA UK, with a ten-Watt amp feeding a six and a half inch speaker, three-band eq, aux in, headphones out, and an overdrive switch for lead, there isn’t much this can’t do for the beginner. At the top of the line there is the 20 GA DSP UK, a 20-Watt combo with digital reverb and an eight-inch speaker, a parametric mid control on top of the three-band eq, and both volume and gain controls.

This will set customers back just £95. In between, with specs to fit, are the 20 GA DR UK (with digital reverb), the 20 GAR UK (with spring reverb) and the 15 GA DR UK, a 15-Watt amp again with digital reverb.

Vox

The classic name with a very modern tilt these days is the Korg-owned Vox brand. Having just celebrated its 50th anniversary, the Vox name, and all that sails in it, is healthier than ever, and when it comes to practice amps, it has some pretty nifty contributions to make.

The new DA series has five models, ranging from the DA5 (a battery or mains powered amp with a switchable output rating up to five Watts) to the (barely practice) DA20CL 20-Watt with two eight-inch speakers.

The DA5 and DA15 are rugged little beasts with some killer bells and whistles, such as 11 distinctive amp sound styles ranging from clean to high gain, and 11 great-sounding digital effects. The new DA10 and DA20 combine higher power with the same tone and portability of the DA5 and both offer the option of running on battery power.

Line 6

Talking of amp modelling, what does Line 6 have in the way of practice amps? The truth is, not an awful lot, if you are talking about dedicated practice models, but then again, the inventor of amp modelling discovered very early on that its technology allowed for the sound of a screaming stage stack at the lowest volumes possible.

The latest in tech-wizardry from the Californian developer is the Spider Jam, a 75-Watt (so, yes, a bit outside the practice genre per se) combo with a 12-inch Celestion speaker and a two-inch HF driver. This little beaut has all the models of amps, cabs and stomp boxes you would expect, but also over 100 rhythm sections to jam along with and a looping recorder with 14 minutes of capture capacity for training or layering sounds.

Laney

Laney’s Generation LX series is another good looking range, clearly targeting the sk8er fraternity and nu-whatever culture with its metal grilles and tattoo graphics – and the amps are ranged well to take the user from a ten-Watt beginning up to a 65-Watt giggable model.

The Laney LX12 is a great little amp for practice, with ten Watts output, twin channels, eq and a six-inch custom speaker. Further up the line is the LX20, which goes a step further with twin channels, three-band eq, an eight-inch custom speaker, CD input and headphone socket. Also check out the LX20R and LX20D – another step up in power with both reverb and digital effect equipped versions.

The twin channel LX35 packs a serious punch for a compact package and features include eq, CD input, headphone socket and a ten-inch custom speaker. The 35s also come in digital and spring reverb versions.

Roland

Roland pretty much led the way with compact amplifiers for some years back in the 1980s, and as the world caught up, Roland just kept getting smaller. This year saw the launch of the phenomenal Micro-Cube. The smallest ever Cube amp can run on mains or has an incredible 20-hour life on just six AA batteries.

This two-Watt amp has seven COSM guitar amp models, six DSP effects, and a tuner, known as the ‘Digital Tuning Fork’  – this is a button which you push for a reference tone (the harder you hit it, the louder the tone) and it can support flat tunings up to two semitones.

Marshall

The amp king is not too proud to go into the area of practice amps – and why should it be? Those who insist on Marshall on stage will very likely insist on it in the dressing room, too – and those aspiring to those who use Marshall on stage… You get the picture.

Anyway, the MG series of amps, just like the Laneys, goes from a ten-Watt, pure practice model up to a budget 100-Watt, two by 12 combo.

Solid state, but with an awful lot of Marshall sound on board.
In terms of micros, Marshall might well have been the first to put its name badge on the tiniest of all practice amps. The MS-2 and MS-4 micros are just 14cms high, but has clean and overdrive channels, tone and volume controls (the MS-4 is 25cm high and has a gain control as well) and pack out all of one Watt through the tiny speaker. Not the best sound you will ever get from an amp, but way cool at the dinner table.

Orange

As the Orange range grows – in size as well as from strength to strength – the day is surely approaching where a small, distinctively Orange sounding practice amp will appear – but in the meantime, keeping up with the cool of the micros, there is always the Micro Crush. Standing at five inches tall, the Micro Crush’s small design belies an impressive, full-bodied tone from such a small unit. Tone and volume controls allow some flexibility, and the overdrive switch adds more. Despite its diminutive proportions, the Micro Crush has a fully functional chromatic tuner. The amp and its four-inch speaker run on a standard nine Volt battery.

Dean Markley

And bringing up a delightful rear is the new Dean Markley GT-1000 Micro, which, the designers insist “knocks out the competition”. The exciteable crew at Dean Markley continues: "We gave them a high efficiency three-inch speaker and a ported cabinet to let 'em breath freely. We peaked the power at three Watts to give them more volume, and an overdrive switch to really let 'em rip.” And so they do. While suffering a little from the looks of the Orange and Marshall competition in this area, this has a really good sound – and at £21.99 has as much potential of an impulse buy as anything on the market.