Best guitar amps

BOSS publishes 50 W into a single 12-inch speaker, six amp characters — Acoustic, Clean, Pushed, Crunch, Lead and Brown — each with one selectable variation, which BOSS counts as 12 tones, and five simultaneous effects sections with three variations each. The Power Control switch is a four-position output-stage control: Standby, 0.5 W, Half and Max.

The connectivity is what makes it more than a practice amp: a Power Amp In jack that bypasses the preamp, a Stereo Phones jack, an expression pedal jack, a CTL CH1/CH2 SOLO jack, Aux In, USB-C and a slot for BOSS's Bluetooth adaptor. You can run a modeler into its power amp and switch it with a footswitch.

The cons are specific to this generation. There is no effects loop and no line or Rec Out — the only ways off the amp are the Stereo Phones jack and USB-C, so a sound engineer gets nothing without a microphone. No XLR and no IR loading. And the footswitch, the expression pedal and the Bluetooth adaptor are all sold separately; the box holds the amp, a manual and a power cord.

Fender publishes 15 W, three 12AX7 preamp tubes, two EL84 power tubes and a 12-inch Celestion A-Type speaker. That is a proper valve power section driving a proper speaker, which is what the money is for.

The FAT switch is a mid boost with an included one-button footswitch, not a second channel. There is no channel switching and no effects loop.

15 W of EL84 is loud. Loud enough to be genuinely difficult in a small room, and there is no power reduction — which is why the attenuator page exists.

Marshall publishes 20 W with a half-power setting, three ECC83 preamp tubes and two EL34 power tubes into a 12-inch Celestion Seventy-80. EL34s are the British mid-forward voice and they are the reason to choose this over an EL84 or 6L6 amp.

Two channels — Classic Gain and Ultra Gain — with independent gain and volume, plus a Resonance control and a genuine effects loop. That loop is the practical advantage over the Blues Junior: time-based effects have somewhere to go.

The half-power switch takes it to 10 W, which is about 3 dB. That is a real reduction and it is not bedroom volume. The reverb is digital and there is one level per channel.

Vox publishes 10 W RMS, two 12AX7s and two EL84s into a 10-inch Celestion VX10, with Gain, Volume, Bass, Treble and Reverb.

The master volume is the practical feature. It lets you drive the preamp without the power section at full output, which is how you get any of this amp's character at a manageable level.

No effects loop, no channel switching, and no attenuator. The 10-inch speaker is a genuinely different instrument from a 12 — tighter, less low-end weight, more upper-mid presence.

We are not picking this as a general-purpose amp. Positive Grid publishes 40 W class D into two 4-inch speakers, 33 amp models, 43 effects, Bluetooth audio and a USB recording interface. For practicing at a desk it is genuinely very good.

The specification that decides it is the speakers. Two 4-inch drivers cannot move the air a 12-inch does, and no amount of wattage changes that — a class-D 40 W into 4-inch cones is not comparable to 15 W of valve power into a 12.

Buy it as a practice and songwriting tool, which is what it is designed to be. If it needs to compete with a drummer, buy something in this list with a 12-inch speaker.