Best Lightweight Guitar Amps

hi I’m Mitch Gallagher from Sweetwater you know as guitar players we love big amplifiers they sound fantastic full Stacks big combo amps I mean they just have power they have tone that’s just wonderful the problem is they’re also very heavy and I’ve hauled my share of stacks around I’ve carried my share of heavy combo amps and I’ve been looking for a great grab-and-go solution by that I mean a lightweight compact amplifier that can cover low volume gigs rehearsals those sorts of things where you just want to walk in walk out one trip from the car gig bag on your back with guitar small pedal board lightweight amplifier and you’re good to go so today we’re going to look at six amplifiers that meet one major criteria they all weigh 25 pounds or less lightweight amplifiers that still produce a lot of tone let’s check out our six candidates by the way be sure to stick around because we’re going to be putting these amplifiers to a real world test later in this video first up we have the Marshall mg30 gfx this is a 30 watt solid state amplifier with a single 10 inch speaker but it has four channels four programmable channels actually and these range from sparkling clean to heavy overdrive we have onboard effects with tap Tempo a speaker emulated output we’ve even got a built-in tuner on board and best of all this amplifier comes in at just 24 pounds from Orange we have the crush 35 RT this is a 35 watt solid state amplifier with a single 12 inch speaker oranges custom voice of the world speaker is in that amplifier we have two channels so you can easily set up a sparkling clean tone as well as an overdrive tone we’ve got built-in Reverb and effects Loop and a built-in tuner the amplifier has a headphone output with cab SIM for private monitoring and it comes in right at 25 pounds The Aviator cup from quilter is a 50 watt solid state amp amplifier with a single Channel but that channel has three available voicings Tweed blonde and black that give you those American tones that range from the 50s through the 60s we have a 1 by 12 speaker that was special designed for quilter by Eminence and we’ve got onboard Reverb and effects Loop and a line output it’s the lightest amplifier in our Roundup at 21.5 pounds Fender’s tone Master Deluxe Reverb is designed to exactly replicate the tone of a tube driven Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier one of the most popular amplifiers of all time it’s 100 watt amplifier with two channels built in vibrato and Reverb on the second Channel we’ve got a 1 by 12 design here with a Jensen n12k speaker and additional features include a mute switch a five-way attenuator switch for dropping the power down for much quieter operation we’ve also got a cabinet emulated output it comes in at about half the weight of the tube version at 23 pounds the first tube amplifier in our Roundup is the Saint James from Black Star it’s a 50 watt amplifier that uses a 6l6 power tubes the St James is loaded with a celestion g12 z70 zephyr speaker that’s a 1 by 12 speaker we’ve got two channels onboard Reverb and effects Loop and a built-in cab rig output we’ve got a built-in USB port with cabinet emulation that you can use for direct recording into your DAW and we also have a power reduction or attenuator feature it weighs just 24 pounds last but absolutely not least we have the mark 5 25 from mesobugi The Mark 525 is a 25 watt amplifier you can switch it down to 10 watts as well and it features a celestion 10-inch speaker a G10 cream back we’ve got two channels a built-in graphic equalizer as well as an all tube driven spring reverb and you can set the level of the Reverb on each Channel independently there’s an effects Loop a headphone output as well as Boogie’s cab clone feature that allows you to send a signal directly into your PA system or directly into a recorder with cabinet emulation the mark 525 comes in at just 24 pounds so that’s our six amplifiers now a big question that comes up besides the weight of the amplifiers of course is can they really keep up with a band so what we’re going to do is we’re going to set up with a drum set and a bass player and we’re going to play these amplifiers live in the studio and see if they can keep up [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] kill me [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Laughter] [Music] thank you so there you have it a look at how all six of these amplifiers perform in a more real world type of situation we tried to line them up and be as accurate as we could this wasn’t a scientific test of course but we ran them all right at the verge of breaking up and that let us sort of get a feel for the clean Headroom and the amount of volume that they could push out before they went into compression before they started distorting and they all did well they kept up with Nick de virgilio on drums and Jacob Duprey on bass they all came in surprisingly at about the same DB level the same SPL level somewhere between 84 DB and 85 DB for the Peaks now some of them I felt like they were a little punchier I felt like the leads jumped out had a little bit more Dynamics which to me indicates a little bit more Headroom available than some of the others but again they all kept up just fine and I’d have no problem taking any one of these amplifiers to a rehearsal to a low volume gig they’d perform perfectly well if you have any questions about these amplifiers or any other lightweight amplifiers that are going to make a great grab it and go solution for you contact the Sweetwater sales engineer or visit sweetwater.com thanks for joining me today I’m Mitch Gallagher thanks for watching be sure to like comment and subscribe click here for more videos like this or start at sweetwater.com for all your music instrument and pro audio needs

source