Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I got my Vox 15R Pathfinder late last month. It is not an expensive amplifier at all, qualifying as a “cheapie”. I was looking for something that would be small, portable, and not too good that I could use as my harmonica amplifier. A lot of crummy guitar amps are great harmonica amps. Being too muddy, too grunty, etc can be really nice for harmonica. I looked for something inexpensive and saw that the 15R had both tremolo and reverb, so I thought I could muddy it up really good.

My first use was to hook up my Shure “green bullet” mic and blow a bit. I found that the reverb was pretty strong, so I needed to keep it turned down. Once I found my (moderately slow) tremolo rate, I cranked the depth up all the way. I turned up the bass and turned down the treble a bit, gave it rather more gain than volume, and kept the overdrive button off. It sounds great.

Not only did it sound great, it sounded too good. It had more crispness and bottom than I even considered a 15-watt bottom-end cheapie amp to have. I experimented to get it muddied up and ugly enough. It really is a good harp amp.

Since it sounded so good, I plugged in my strat. I have an HSS American Strat (not a cheapie) and played with the pickup combinations and settings. You would be very hard pressed to tell that this is a cheap solid-state amp. It’s amazingly warm and clear and chimey and all the things you would want for your strat. Well, if you weren’t looking to fill a large venue with sound pressure. It’s even pretty loud. I never play my amps cranked out all the way, so I don’t know if it breaks up badly at high volume or gets noisy, but it’s nice.

So this week for worship I used my cheapie 15-watt box instead of my very nice all-tube 50-watt classic amp. I played the ovation solidbody (breadwinner) that I outfitted with Seymour Duncans earlier this year. I could not have been happier with the rich, creamy sounds I got out of this rig. I had the gain up a bit, and the volume pretty severely cut. I had the bass toned down and the treble up a bit (around 6 or 7). The tremolo I eliminated, turning the depth all the way down. I didn’t touch the boost button even once. I had to turn the amp down because it was still loud and bouncing off the back wall. I really only need enough volume to feed signal to the mic and to act as a monitor, I don’t need the whole platform awash in noise.

I could not be happier with this little amp. It is small, light, and portable. It has a big sound for a little amp. Power doesn’t matter so much to me because I always mic my cab, and don’t try to fill a room with my little combo. It does not sound like a solid-state toy amp. I wonder how Vox can get away with this, and if it’s going to eat into the sales of their larger and more expensive line. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still love an AC30 or AC50. I just think that this little Pathfinder is unreasonably good for the size, cost, etc.

Now, I don’t know how rugged it is. It doesn’t have corner protectors and is light as a feather, so it might be vulnerable to physical damage, but I am also not anticipating throwing it around or hauling it in a trailer. It may be more than fine even in this regard.

It’s one incredible little amp. If you were thinking about buying one, don’t spend too long thinking. It is probably one of the amps you’re looking for.