Love for mini amps

Foster

Admission here, but it's rare I use my valve amp. The amp I use the most is a Fender mini twin, it sounds brilliantly disgusting especially when the 9v battery is on its arse!

I've recently picked up a Danelectro HoneyTone which is pretty fun, it doesn't quite have the 'angry wasps in a tin can' sound that the fender has but it's a fair bit louder.

Anyone else here have a soft spot for these terrible, obviously a toy/crap christmas stocking filler, amps? Any you'd recommend to get if you saw one for sale cheap enough?

JezWynd

I used to get fantastic tones from a Marshall mini stack when its battery was dying.

fretmeister

The Hotone Thunder Bass.

5W mini amp. It genuinely sounds like a proper Ampeg SVT, without the bleeding ears. It's actually really loud into an efficient cab.

I bought it because it was on special offer at about £60 and because I thought it would be a laugh.
It turns out it is the best lounge bass amp ever.

Apparently some of the guitar versions are equally good.

munckee

I got my nephew the mini orange amp which looks great and sounded okay. I bought my daughter a blackstar fly3 and probably better sound. Both fun. THR5 a much better option really.  

LionAquaLooper

Boss Katana Mini.
I even use it as a preamp and hook it up to the Power amp section of my Marshall Valvestate and it's even better. Katana Mini on steroids. 

Foster

munckee said:

I got my nephew the mini orange amp which looks great and sounded okay. I bought my daughter a blackstar fly3 and probably better sound. Both fun. THR5 a much better option really.  

I'm sure i used to own an Orange mini amp, i'll have to rummage around to see if it still exists!

Musical_Mystery_Tour

I bought my Caline Lorcan out of curiosity; turns out they are great.

Sesh

JezWynd said:

I used to get fantastic tones from a Marshall mini stack when its battery was dying.

Yes, that was my finding with that too. 
I also have a Laney Lionheart ST, which is cute and rather good. 

BluesLover

Boss katana mini. Sounds crap (in my opinion, like a cheap transistor radio) but I fitted a switching jack socket and connected it to an old 12in cabinet. Sounded fantastic, my nephew borrowed it.... won't see that again haha!

slacker

I'm not sure if I qualify as I have a zvex nano. If it helps it sounds horrible with the internal speaker.

thermionic

I have a Vox AC-1, one of the original plastic toy amps. Years ago I used to work for a telecoms manufacturer and I found a 1” Alnico speaker (for a phone handset) being thrown out… I desperately searched for a second one to no avail. I would have painted them blue!

p90fool

The Honeytone is fantastic into a big cab. 

BillDL

BluesLover said:

Boss katana mini. Sounds crap (in my opinion, like a cheap transistor radio) but I fitted a switching jack socket and connected it to an old 12in cabinet. Sounded fantastic, my nephew borrowed it.... won't see that again haha!

That's what I did, but use a 30W 1x10.  It sounds enormous.  It's the small speakers in these amps that can either make them sound "interesting" or just buzzy, tinny and crap even with some kind of built-in cab simulation to increase bass response.  I've had the novelty micro versions of the Fender (mini twin), Marshall (micro-stack) and Orange Crush mini, but after the novelty stage wore off I just found the sounds to be unusable unless I was specifically looking for a tinny lo-fi sound to record.

I had a little Ibanez IBZ10A 1 x 6.5" acoustic combo with chorus that sounded terrible through the speaker, but with speaker output redirected to my Laney acoustic combo with 2x6" full range drivers and ported closed cab it sounds really good.  The same is true of the little Ashdown Tourbus 10W bass practice amp with 1 x 6.5" speaker.  It was terrible with the internal speaker, but chopped down into a micro head and fed into 1x12 cab it is excellent as a guitar amp.  A Vox AmPlug AC-30 headphone amp (haven't tried the various copies) sounds really good into the power section of a large combo.  This all defeats the purpose of having a mini amp though.

The best mini amp (not "micro" and not battery powered though) I've ever owned is a Piggy PS-30T (made by Prince Tsushinkogyo, Nagoya, Japan and marketed under the "Prince Amplifier" brand) I bought as my practice amp in 1980 or 81.  5W closed-back with a 5" speaker.  It sounds really good through the internal speaker, but fantastic through a 1x10 or 1x12.

While not exactly "mini" in context with this question, I love my Boss Dual Cube LX for playing in the livingroom.  No tinniness with that and it sounds huge.  My cheap Vox Pathfinder 10 (modern solid state not the older Pathfinder valve range) is a larger amp overall despite only having a 6.5" speaker but the bass response in its open-backed cabinet is surprisingly good.

In the early 80s I owned one of those Hofner Shorty guitars with the very basic built-in amp and the speaker under the scratchplate in front of the pickup.  That sounded exactly like what it was, i.e. a novelty travel guitar, but the sound was intriguing and nasally, subject to feedback, and it did what it was designed to do quite well.

darthed1981

Blackstar Fly 3 is a great little mini amp.

Sassafras

Pignose. Crank the volume and use the lid as a tone control.
I know ICBM hates them but what does he know

Sporky

I had a Smokey - it was dreadful, but it did inspire a MonkeyFX pedal.

ICBM

Sassafras said:

Pignose. Crank the volume and use the lid as a tone control.
I know ICBM hates them but what does he know

I don’t hate them… I own one . But they do sound terrible! If there was a way of making it not turn your guitar into a comedy toy saxophone I would probably love it. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the circuit and an oscilloscope trying to work out why it sounds so honky and distorted, but with only limited success - it’s quite baffling. I don’t think mine is faulty because all the ones I’ve had before have sounded at least similar, although this one is probably the worst.

Interestingly the circuit is derived from the same original source as Brian May’s ‘Deacy’ amp which John Deacon made from a scrap radio power amp.

BillDL

I've been racking my brain trying to remember a pedal I had back around 1981 or 1982 that had a built-in speaker.  I seem to have MXR stuck in my head but looking back at old MXR pedals I can't see such a thing by them.  It was orange, was in pedal format, and was an overdrive or distortion type effect.  It was something of a novelty that didn't work very well as a micro amp nor as an effects pedal, so I hardly used it and I can't even remember where it disappeared to.  I can't recall if the speaker was facing upwards or out one of the sides, nor can I remember how it was switched on and off, but I'm positive it had the clicky kind of footswitch rather than the "Boss" type.  Does anybody remember such a thing, or am I imagining it?

normula1

The Spark Go isn't too bad, it took a but I managed to dial in a JTM 45 tone that's clean with single coils and the guitar vol rolled back, crunches nicely when flipped to a bridge humbucker and quite nice lead on full vol. Still a "tiny" sound in the room but good enough for a quick noodle. Much better through headphones.

p90fool

ICBM said:

Sassafras said:

Pignose. Crank the volume and use the lid as a tone control.
I know ICBM hates them but what does he know

I don’t hate them… I own one . But they do sound terrible! If there was a way of making it not turn your guitar into a comedy toy saxophone I would probably love it. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the circuit and an oscilloscope trying to work out why it sounds so honky and distorted, but with only limited success - it’s quite baffling. I don’t think mine is faulty because all the ones I’ve had before have sounded at least similar, although this one is probably the worst.

Interestingly the circuit is derived from the same original source as Brian May’s ‘Deacy’ amp which John Deacon made from a scrap radio power amp.

And that's probably its best use, run it into a big amp that's just breaking up and it's glorious. 

Foster

BillDL said:

I've been racking my brain trying to remember a pedal I had back around 1981 or 1982 that had a built-in speaker.  I seem to have MXR stuck in my head but looking back at old MXR pedals I can't see such a thing by them.  It was orange, was in pedal format, and was an overdrive or distortion type effect.  It was something of a novelty that didn't work very well as a micro amp nor as an effects pedal, so I hardly used it and I can't even remember where it disappeared to.  I can't recall if the speaker was facing upwards or out one of the sides, nor can I remember how it was switched on and off, but I'm positive it had the clicky kind of footswitch rather than the "Boss" type.  Does anybody remember such a thing, or am I imagining it?

That's a point, i've got the Danelectro Bacon 'n' Eggs pedal amp from the early 2000s which is beyond dire, but can also be used as a distortion pedal.

In good news I found my old Orange Micro Crush amp! It looks to be working but there's no sound, upon inspection it doesn't have a speaker... Now to find out what 20 year old me nabbed it for...