B
uying my first amp
as a teenager in the
early ‘90s, a 50- or
100-watt half-stack
was the amp to have.
Of course, one needed a certain
amount of money for such an
amp and that amount of money
was something I did not have.
So, I learned to make do with
“lesser” amps. First, it was a ‘60s
Fender Pro Reverb (oh the cash
that thing would have been worth
if I held onto it) and then it was
a 50-watt Peavey Pro Reverb.
For a time period, we associated
with the word “grunge,” and
so the mid-‘90s required a fair
amount of clean headroom. We
needed it for the clean parts in
our soft chorus-loud verse songs
and we especially needed that
clean headroom for ska, funk, and
swing revival jams.
Nowadays, I don’t need all of that
clean headroom and I don’t need
big amps to make me feel like
a big man. As the saying goes,
variety is the spice of life. And
a mix of amps—big and small,
cheap and expensive—adds a
lot of spice to my guitar playing
and recording. We’ve covered a
lot of amps in these virtual pages
before. Today, I’m going to write
about four miniature (in some
cases nano-sized) amps that rock
my world. None of these amps
can be my only amp, at least
not when playing in a band that
has to compete with a drummer.
However, they do provide a ton
of fun and inspiration and can
be extremely effective when
recorded.
For the sake of