So you’ve purchased your first electric guitar, but no-one likes to rock out in silence, so now buying your first guitar amp awaits you. Which one to go for strongly depends on why you play guitar, there are some amps optimized for playing along to songs by yourself, whereas if you’re in a band and gig regular, you’ll want to consider a more heavy duty, and more importantly a louder one.
The bedroom player.
Look no higher than a 15w amp, anything more powerful will be unnecessarily loud for your surroundings. Look for amps that either have an input jack for headphones so you can use your amp and still be silent, or an auxiliary input so you can plug an audio cable into a laptop or iPod and play songs through your amp.
Suggestion – Fender Frontman 10G.
Image Courtesy – Fender
Starting to play in a band.
It is key when buying amplifiers as a band to look at the power (w) of what you are buying, for instance, having a rhythm guitar amp 10w louder than the lead guitar one is far from ideal.
If like most 4 piece bands starting out, you are unsure what product to buy, do some research first. Try not to get tricked into buying because of fancy features, such as multiple kinds of echo, and a variety of different distortion channels. These can sometimes hide a poorly manufactured amplifier. To play along with a band and not be drowned out, your first amp should be around 15 – 20w, have a solid sound on both clean and distorted channels and be able to handle the wear and tear of being carried/transported around.
Suggestion – Orange Crush PiX CR20L.
Image Courtesy – Orange.
The Experienced Player.
Now you will have moved past combo amplifiers, and are probably looking at mastering your sound. Both combo amps ranging from 50w+ and ‘stack’ amplifiers consisting of a head and cabinet are what most experienced players choose from. Popular brands for stack amps include Marshall, Fender, Blackstar and more.The best advice would be to go to a music store and see for yourself what suits and sounds the best for you, these kind of amplifiers can extremely expensive and an investment that needs to be researched!
Image Courtesy – Marshall.
For new players, check out the video below from Free Guitar Videos to get to grips with terms such as gain, channels, distortion and more. Or if you’ve already bought an amplifier and you’re looking for a guitar to go with it, read our guitar guide.