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Marshall MG15CD Guitar Amp
by thatshitcray
I play electric guitar and bass, and I've had this amp for about 4 or 5 years now. Even to this day it still produces a brilliant sound, surprising from something so small and easy to transport.
I has everything you need- dials to fiddle about with the bass, contour and treble etc, and obviously volume control. The amp is so ... simple and easy to use, and beginner guitarists buying their first amp will get on great with this one. It's not got anything too confusing on it like some of the more hi-tech amps do, and it sounds really good for just messing about on the guitar.
If you were more serious about playing guitar and wanted something with perfect quality and loads of different control dials, I wouldn't recommend this. Even though it works excellently for its size and its price, it's not as hi-tech as the more expensive amps.
But overall, it is a brilliant amp and I'd recommend it to anyone!
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Vox AC30
by Danscomp
Rock out in solitude
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If you play electronic or electro acoustic guitar, you need an amp. Trouble is, even an excellent practice amp like my Fender G-Dec jr needs to be at a certain volume to be effective, and even though it does have a headphone jack, it doesn't seem very compatible with any headphones ... (even my Sennheiser) not specifically designed to be used through a standard guitar amp.
If you're playing at a certain volume, you can get away with it for awhile. But if it's later at night, or the family are watching telly. What does an aspiring guitarist do when they just want to practice? You have two choices. If you have a guitar with great natural intonation, or one with a semi-hollow body, you can still play. But you can't make any use of the pickups or tone knobs on your guitar.
The other choice, and one I made lately is to get a headphone guitar amplifier. This little beauty plugs in to your jack and has a headphone socket that my Sennheiser came immediately in use with. The result is the ability to play when I want, at a reasonable level without involving anyone else.
Vox in a box
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Vox is a name that many musicians will be very familiar with. This originally English company is known for making amplifiers from their base in Dartford, Kent. Since 1992, they are now Japanese owned. Although it's always a bit disheartening to see a great British company owned overseas, without it, it is inlikely that these great headphone amplifiers would ever have been created.
Vox's most famous amplifier without a shadow of a doubt is the AC30. This is seriously an iconic amp, first seeing the light of day in 1958. Guitarists love it. If you've read my Fender amp review, you'll know that guitar amps are either solid state or tube amps. Tubes are generally more expensive, but felt to be more versatile than solid state. I won't go into detail here, but I will say that Jimmy Page used only AC30s for Led Zeppelin. Brian May of Queen loves them. As does virtually all the best guitarists from Richie Blackamore through Tom Petty to The Beatles.
A new AC30 will set you back around £330. For one tenth of that price, you can have a device that will faithfully recreate the sound as well as you can reasonably expect something that size to do. It does this through a Japanese made analog circuit created specifically for the task. The device weighs 41 grams and sits securely in the jack so you know it's not going to fall out if you go for a duck walk!
The AC30 guitar amp is made of black plastic, but feels fairly robust. There are three wheels for your fingertip that control distortion, tone and volume respectively. If you whack everything up to ten (no eleven, I'm afraid) you will get a fair amount of background hiss. But you don't really need to, so it's not too much of an issue.
I got some great settings out of this. Including ones suitable for Stones, Nirvana, Deep purple and Led Zep. All were achievable quickly, and it's particularly gratifying that the headphone amp picks up pitch well enough that the angle and strength of picking is represented well. Other techniques like palm muting and harmonics sound as they should.
Ahead, groove factor 10
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Two triple a batteries are supplied, with the manufacturer claiming up to 15 hours of battery life. Even ten hours would be ok, particularly if you are using rechargeable ones. The wheels are easily accessible. The headphone jack is placed so that the flex will interfere as little as possible. There's even an auxiliary input which allows you to play music through the device so that you can jam directly along with your favourite tracks.
This is (groan) a sound investment. I used an Amazon voucher earned through Dooyoo so that this great tool only cost me a fiver. Vox do other headphone amps. There's one for classic rock, one for acoustic and another for metal. But the AC30 is the most consistently highest scoring headphone amp out of all of them. I'm glad I chose what I did. One day I may even get the "real deal" ...!
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Fender 235100 G-DEC Jr
by Danscomp
Overview
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If you're going to learn to play electric Guitar, you need a Guitar amplifier. Unlike an acoustic guitar, the sound that an electric makes requires amplification. Whether you're playing to yourself in your front room or in front of thousands.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of Guitar ... amplifiers. Solid state and tube amplifiers. The first type is cheaper to make and represents the bulk of the low and middle range markets. Tube amplifiers are usually expensive, though hybrid amps do also exist.
An electric guitar has pickups. Devices which capture the vibration of the strings and converts them to an electrical signal. It is this signal which is passed through the lead between the electric guitar and the amplifier. Additional devices can be brought into play, normally through a whole host of electric pedals, but this review is going to concentrate on the amp that I have.
Design and functionality
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My Fender G-Dec Junior is (unsurprisingly) a solid state amplifier. Although Electric guitars will produce principal sounds based on their construction and the type of pickups they have, any amp will have a number of ways in which they can provide greater ranges of tones by further modifying the electrical signal passed through to them.
It has one channel and provides an output of up to 15 watts. If you are wondering how powerful that is, your neighbour would shortly be calling the police. In terms of a first practice amp, you will not need to turn the knob to 10, let alone 11.
The amp has a number of control knobs, namely Gain, Volume, Tone, Amp Type and Effects Select. Backing: Volume, Tempo, Key, Loop Select, Start/Stop. All very confusing, right? Here's the thing. You don't have to know what every button and widget does.
I used just the first four for a long time. Gain controls the level of distortion, Tone adds "cleanness" to the sound. Amp type is incredibly useful as it will imitate the sound of a number of historical Amplifiers. It won't do them as well as the originals, but it will give you the facility to dial in something that sounds a damn sight like your favourite artist.
It will imitate 16 Amp Types, including Tweed, Blackface, British, Hot Rod, Metal, Jazz, and Acoustic. This does include several settings on the same type; i.e. British 1 and British 2. The first setting is typically a softer sound of that type, the second louder and harsher.
Moving onto special effects. There are 15 Presets that will add a further dimension to what comes out of that front speaker, things like Flange and Tremolo, Reverb or Delay. The best thing to do is experiment. You will have that "click" when you recall a song you've heard that uses one of these.
There are also a number of loops available. These are drum or bass accompaniments. Sound patterns for Rock or Jazz or Blues, Latin, Hip-hop, metal. As an example, the drum pattern for rock will provide something you can happily jam along to.
You will also find an electronic metronome that can be set to different timings to help you improve your picking timings (plucking strings) which is very, very useful as different tracks will be written specifically for those tempos (i.e. 119 Beats Per Minute).
There is an electronic tuner that's actually the only function on here that's not very good. I would recommend buying a dedicated headstock tuner separately. Output is very good. This is a proper Fender amp, though there is sone hum and harshness at the high end. Considering the price, it is certainly acceptable.
Lastly, the amp itself is well built with a solidity that is very reassuring. I got mine as part of a pack with my strat, but these amps can be bought separately for as little as £99. I can think of few better choices to find your way around your first amp than this one.
Technical gumpf
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Model Name: G-DEC® Junior
Series: G-DEC®
Amplifier Type: Solid State
Electronics Inputs: One
Auxiliary Input: AUX input for CD or MP3 play-along capability
Headphone Jack: 1/8" Headphone Jack
Channels: One Channel
Power Handling: 15 Watts
Hardware Cabinet Material: Black textured vinyl covering
Handle: Molded Black Handle
Amplifier Depth: 7.25" (18.41 cm)
Amplifier Width: 13.25" (33.65 cm)
Amplifier Height: 12.5" (31.8 cm)
Amplifier Weight: 15 lbs (6.80 kg)
Effects: Digital amp modeling & DSP effects
Speakers Speaker: 1-8" Fender® Special Design Speaker
Impedance: 8 Ohm
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