With a small guitar amp you can get great clean tones and beautiful overdriven tones, but only at lower volumes. The same is not true for small guitar amps. You can also alter your tone with the use of different guitar pedals, should you so wish. With a large guitar amp you can get beautiful clean tones, as well as killer overdriven tones, and you can achieve both of these tones at volume. In this sense, a small guitar amp is more limited than a larger one. If you take a small guitar amp and play it loudly, your tone will start to break up and overdrive. The same is not true of small guitar amps. This means that you can play them loudly and do so with a clean tone. Large, powerful guitar amps like those used by early blues guitarists have a lot of headroom. Headroom refers to how much power an amp can provide before the sound starts to break up and overdrive. The key downside to using small guitar amps,is that they lack headroom. ![]() So if you have to be conscious of the volume you play at, but you want to dial in a beautiful and slightly overdriven blues tone, then adding a small guitar amp to your setup could be a brilliant choice. In fact the majority of non-professional guitarists do most of their playing at home, with the occasional small gig here and there. Additionally, most guitarists are not playing in large venues. Most blues guitarists are looking for slightly overdriven tones, most of the time. Lower watt amps are less powerful, so you can overload the tubes within them more easily.Īs a result, you can push a small guitar amp into that beautiful bluesy breakup at a lower volume. They are just too loud to be played at home or in a small studio.Ĭonversely, with a small guitar amp you can get a better tone at a lower volume. It is this question which in part has led to the surge in the popularity of small guitar amps.Īs mentioned above, unless you are consistently playing in big venues where you can crank your amp, you will never be able to get the most out of a big guitar amp like a Fender Quad Reverb or a Marshall Bluesbreaker. This then leads to the question – where do you begin in your search for a new guitar amp? The benefit of small guitar amps In other words, a 100 watt amp set at volume ‘1’ will sound very different to a 10 watt amp set at volume 10. ![]() This is because guitar amps respond very differently depending on how far you push them relative to their total capacity. The amp will sound thin and stifled, and you will never get close to pushing it into a beautiful and bluesy sounding overdrive. ![]() If you take one of these big guitar amps and play it at a low volume, you will struggle to get a good tone. Unfortunately though it isn’t quite so straight forward. If you use the same gear as your favourite guitarists, you will be able to get similar tones. Traditionally, guitarists bought the same amps as their blues guitar heroes. It is that cranking a huge Fender combo or Marshall stack is not an option for most players, who typically have family and neighbours to consider.Ī less obvious challenge though, is that playing one of these amps at a low volume also doesn’t really work. There were no decent PA systems and guitarists needed to play loud to be heard.įreddie King played a 100 watt Fender Quad Reverb that he cranked to 10.įellow Texas bluesman Albert Collins did the same, and Eric Clapton achieved his early tones by playing a Marshall 1962 ‘Bluesbreaker’ amp at full volume.Īlmost all early electric blues guitarists used powerful amps and played them at high volumes.įor non-professional guitarists wanting to dial in great blues tones, this fact presents an obvious challenge. When tube amps were initially introduced, the majority of them were big and powerful. To do so, we need to look at the biggest challenge that most guitarists face when they try to create beautiful blues tones. Here is everything that you need to know about small guitar amps: Why have small guitar amps become so popular?īefore we look at the specifics of small guitar amps and their different models, it is helpful to understand why there has been such a surge in their popularity in recent years. So without further ado, let’s get into it!
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