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o_bunnyMaybe they'll offer me a pony, too...
Brightness
Today, The Armstrong and I went out in search of enlightenment. We achieved that.
Breakfast
Obviously, a celebration was in order, so off we sped (well, lumbered) to Studebaker's, a local diner, in a positive sense of the word diner. Bacon and two scrambled for me, jumbo hot dog and fries for him, and fine conversation. There's something about vinyl and chrome that begets discussions of all sorts of things.
Battery-Powered Guitar Amps
The food led to our ongoing discussion of battery-powered guitar amplifiers. The Armstrong has an interest in these for a few reasons:
- they're portable
- they're fairly low cost
- they're not very loud
I'm interested because I'm an unabashed guitar gear geek. As well, it would be useful to have something that might amplify my baritone guitar at acoustic music practices without having to haul my large amp along.
So we paused at my place to pick up the baritone, and at his soon-to not-be place to pick up his guitar (an older Taylor guitar, named, of course, Liz.
We tried out four amps:
My thoughts on them:Fender Amp-Can
This one sounded the best to me, except that it rattled really badly. The rattle seemed to come from the control panel mounting, and I wasn't about to start rebuilding a brand-new amp in a possibly vain attempt to fix what appears to be a manufacturing problem. It was the most expensive of the lot, selling for about $230 Cdn.
It has two inputs, labeled Guitar and Mic/Line, each with a separate volume and tone control; the Guitar input also has a distortion on/off switch. It has an internal rechargeable battery that the manual says will last 4 to 6 hours.
Roland Micro-Cube
This was the smallest and lightest of them all. It was also lowest volume, which really put it out of the running for our purposes. It sounded good, had a large variety of effects built in (reverb, chorus, various amplifier type simulations).
The manufacturer says it can run for up to 20 hours on 6 AA alkaline batteries, not included; it does come with a wall-wart adapter. It sells for about $160 Cdn.
Traynor TVM-10
Kind of industrial chic with its textured black finish and black metal grille, it was the biggest and heaviest of the bunch. This was my favorite for the baritone guitar, it reproduced the low frequencies best. I found it a little noisy, with a constant low-level hiss, but the sound quality was very clear.
It has no built-in effects, but does have a 4-band EQ. Its built-in battery is supposed to be good for up to 8 hours playing time. It's also the least expensive, at $130 Cdn.
Vox DA5
This wee beastie was definitely coolest looking, with a green vinyl covering and black speaker grille. For regular guitar, it was my favorite of the bunch as well. Good sounding effects, and very quiet operation.
It uses an included adapter, or it can run on 6 C-cell batteries, not included. The manufacturer doesn't suggest how long the batteries last, but at a stated consumption of 390 mA, I think you should be able to get around 12 or so hours from a set of alkalines (not included). It sells for $155 Cdn.
The Conclusions
Neither of us bought anything today. My opinion is that the Vox might be best for the sorts of things that The Armstrong does, while the Traynor would suit my needs best. The Fender was a nice sounding amp plagued by a mechanical problem, and the Roland would sound great as a bedroom practice amp (you can get absolutely screaming rock sounds out of it, just not very loud).
There are other amps in the general arena that we didn't investigate. Alesis, Crate, and Pignose all have contenders, while AER makes a battery-powered amp that is apparently stunning, but sells for around $1350 US.
