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Chapter 15: Choosing Your Amp and Effects
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loudness. (Many music stores have a separate room for just such highvolume
noise-making.) Try to keep the time where you’re cranking out maximum
decibels short, but you do need to perform this loudness check to
evaluate and compare amps.
After you determine the loudness factor, consider the amp’s features. These
features include
How many knobs and switches it has
How extensive the effects section is
How many sockets, or jacks, it sports
One very handy jack is a headphone output, which allows you to practice in
silence, but still enjoy all the tonal-shaping properties of the amp.
But you have to decide if having an extensive effects section (reverb, delay,
chorus) is important to you or if you’d rather see more control in the tone
section (bass, midrange, treble) of the amp. Some amps are designed to accept
more than one instrument simultaneously and may not have as many controls
over, say, the tone, but allow you to plug in both your acoustic and electric
guitar simultaneously (handy for quick changes in a performance setting).
Even though all practice amps are low-powered, many are endowed with
fairly sophisticated electronic circuitry that still makes them sound good. In
fact, you can often find a practice amp that has almost the same features and
tonal flexibility as larger amps. But in amplifier design, power equals cost,
so if you stay in the low-power arena, you’ll have more money left in your
pocket.
Playing with a practice amp
The advantage of a practice amp is that it gets you familiar with amps in general,
which includes plugging in and out, adjusting controls, and hearing your
sound through a speaker. (You make the same adjustments when you move
up to a larger amp — only the sound is better and louder, and you have greater
control.) They’re good for practicing by yourself, or with one other person.
But if you want to play with a group of musicians, or you want to project your
sound in a space larger than a bedroom, you should get a larger amp.
The amp has a set of controls, called the front panel, where you make all your
adjustments. Figure 15-1 shows a typical practice amp. This one is small,
although amps can be larger or smaller.
TEAM LinG