G R O U P T E S T M I C R O G U I TA R A M P S
3 OF THE BEST
Just add wired headphones (plus a guitar) and these tiny but talented rock monsters will turn bedtime into shred-time BEST FOR EFFECTS GALORE
TES T WIN NER
BEST FOR RAW ROCK
BEST FOR LIFELIKE TONES
Fender Mustang Micro
Boss Pocket GT
Blackstar AmPlug2 Fly
What’s the story?
What’s the story?
What’s the story?
Is it any good?
Is it any good?
Is it any good?
Price R2300 / amazon.com
Price R5600 / takealot.com
Price R1150 / amazon.com
Stuff says ★★★★★
Stuff says ★★★★✩
Stuff says ★★★★✩
Rock and roll ain’t noise pollution? It is the way we play it. So Fender’s dinky dongle lets you cut out the whole loudness part and send the sound of your clumsy noodling straight to your ears. Loaded with 12 amps and 12 FX combinations, it also has Bluetooth for jamming along to your phone, while the USB-C charging port doubles as a direct recording output. Considering it’s a sub-R2500 practice tool, the audio quality coming out of this thing is really quite spectacular. Navigating via buttons and coloured LEDs is hardly ideal – and neither is 4hrs of battery life – but there’s a 3D realism to both clean and overdriven tones that’ll make you forget all that, especially with a dash of tasteful tape delay or harmonic tremolo.
Proper amp tones and quality effects in a device the size of a biscuit – it’s a winner
Looking like an extra-chunky smartphone, or the remote control for that nuclear missile silo you’ve been building in the loft, Boss’s silent amp doesn’t have a jack plug so you’ll need to use a guitar lead. But it does have a screen for scrolling through presets and playback buttons for following YouTube lessons on a paired device. Best of all, you can load up unlimited sounds from the Tone Studio app. First up, forget the YouTube controls – you might as well use the ones on your phone or tablet screen. But you can bank on Boss for solid tones, and this gadget gives you easy access to 99 factory presets that cover a huge amount of stylistic ground. Battery life is again just 4hrs, but there is a built-in tuner so even your off notes should sound tolerable.
YouTube gimmickry aside, this is a fine practice amp with loads of great effects
Everything about Blackstar’s dongle is basic… but at this price, frankly we’re happy it’s not made of cardboard. You’re getting three amp models (clean, crunch and lead) and three effects (chorus, delay and reverb), and somehow all of this is controlled via three knobs and two tiny buttons. It runs on a pair of AAA batteries, and there’s a mini-jack aux input for playing along to your… iPod? If rock music is supposed to be rough and ragged, the AmPlug2 Fly is true to the spirit of punk: it’s a noisy operator and the clean tones are nothing more than OK… but actually, you can get some pretty smooth overdrive on the two hotter channels. For no-nonsense strummers on the go, this is a simple utility device at a can’t-go-wrong price.
It’s the cheap option, but it might be the only headphone amp you really need 57
