Small amp with jazz tone for home use suggestion

[dkstott]

I tend to bounce between a few rooms in our small house depending on availability and noise 😝

So small & easily portable is best for me. Especially with my wife working at home during the pandemic and for the foreseeable future.

One thought is to take my guitar to GC and try out the small 10-20W amps. Line 6, Cube, fender, etc in order to get a decent jazz tone.

[raysachs]

10-20 watts is a lot for lower volume home playing. I'm a home player these days too and my wife is generally around and I try not to bother her too much, so I like to keep my electric volume down to or below the volume of my acoustics. I have two amps. My main amp is a Roland Blues Cube Hot that has 30 watts (solid state), but also attenuates down to 15, 5, and 0.5 watts. I do most of my home playing at 5 or 0.5 watts. I also have a little 1 watt Blackstar HT1R (tube) that I mostly use at a smaller place we rent in the winter. And frankly even with 1 watt, it can get entirely too loud if I want it to, but it sounds good at the volumes I tend to play at. Years ago, when we lived in a much larger place, I had a Blues Jr, which is a 15 watt amp and somewhere between 2 and 2.1 on the volume knob it went from barely audible to waaaaaaaaay too loud, kind of all at once. Not a great home amp.

But I'm not really going for a jazz tone, so I can't make any recommendations on that front, although the Blues Cube strikes me as being very serviceable as a jazz amp. It's got a really nice clean tone, pretty mellow and can be made just as dark as you want...

-Ray

[Tom60]

IME the best low volume amp for jazz tone (or any great tone) is 5E3 tweed Deluxe.. until you turn it over 3 or so...
the older deluxes with octal preamp tubes sound even better.. fatter

the loudness is not all about the watts... but also speaker efficiency

(but the 5E3 sounds best with Alnico Blue - and dimed, no doubt )

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by dkstott

I tend to bounce between a few rooms in our small house depending on availability and noise ��

So small & easily portable is best for me. Especially with my wife working at home during the pandemic and for the foreseeable future.

One thought is to take my guitar to GC and try out the small 10-20W amps. Line 6, Cube, fender, etc in order to get a decent jazz tone.

Steve DeRosa will be here with a recommendation I don't have any personal experience with.

"Jazz Tone" is somewhat in the beholder. As Steve may likely point out, some headroom is sometimes desired, while higher gain rock players often love pushing a low watt amp with less robust speakers more. But at real low volumes even a Fender Champ can serve.

Your idea of trying a few amps for your own appreciation of jazz tone is a good idea.

I'm a bad jazz player (can't do jazz comping at all, to my shame), but I like mid 20th century jazz guitarists sound as one color. Sometimes it's odd what works. Most Fender sound Fender amps can work for some of it, though for some people "Jazz tone" means something dark and a bit wooly. When I want what I think of a clean Jazz tone I'll use a Hot Rod Deluxe (hard to get quiet, not light), a Fender Princeton (not cheap, but I love the sound and not big or overly heavy), or a Fender Super Champ modeling amp. an easy to use "modeling amp" that works simply* and has a tube power section. Light and can be quiet.

For very quiet, headphone amps or amp sims on a laptop or tablet would be another option.

*You turn a regular old Fender top-hat knob for a new model and adjust tone and gain with the same kind of vintage knob. There's even a channel with no choice of "modeling" character. Power amp side is tube driven.

[Steve DeRosa]

Frank pretty much covered the points I would have made (thanks, Frank... ), and I agree with you that the best way to find your preferred tone is to get out there and do some hands-on auditioning. About the only thing I'll add is that, since you're seeking what amounts to one or two clean high-headroom tones, IMO it would be best to go with an old-school (tube or analog solid-state) combo with simple WYSIWYG controls and a minimum of bells-&-whistles (built-in reverb/trem are OK) rather than a modeling rig with a whole bunch of stuff you'll never need or use; in addition, while there are some solid-state mini-amps that are popular with dedicated jazz players (Henriksen et al.), IME it's easier to achieve a traditional jazz tone with a 12" speaker - until the late-60's Ampeg products were pitched predominantly to club/studio players, and throughout his tenure founder Everett Hull wouldn't allow anything smaller in any of his amps, regardless of price...

Good luck...

[Bushleague]

Originally Posted by dkstott

I tend to bounce between a few rooms in our small house depending on availability and noise ��

So small & easily portable is best for me. Especially with my wife working at home during the pandemic and for the foreseeable future.

One thought is to take my guitar to GC and try out the small 10-20W amps. Line 6, Cube, fender, etc in order to get a decent jazz tone.

A few months back I somehow ended up playing a Godin 5th ave through a Fender Rumble 40 bass amp. Its got a couple different tone switches, a 4 band EQ, an overdrive chanel that blends nicely, and I could get all kinds of great guitar tone out of that little thing, really warm clean sounds. Though a little unconventional I would encourage you to give one a try.

Light like a feather, cheap as dirt, and loud enough for some low key practice jamming, cant beat it IMO. As an added bonus you can run a bass through it, and it even running an acoustic through that amp sounds surprizingly good. Even though I dont need one I'm pretty sure I'm going to get one just to keep around the house.

[dkstott]

Thanks all for your input and suggestions.

This Mooer Hornet amp with modeling features has caught my eye. Seems like nice tone option with savable custom settings, it's small, priced just over $100.

🤔🤔

https://youtu.be/CvvXMbJZ0fs

[mr. beaumont]

Yamaha THR.

Every video i do is pretty much with that amp. Great jazz tones in there.

[guitarwebguy]

If you find an older polytone amp you might give it a try

[Winkyplayer]

I tend to think of "jazz tones" as being fairly clean. I like the clean tones I get through a little Marshall MG10 10W amp I bought for my son. Cheap as chips.

[Dave Hicks]

I like a 5E3 clone or an old Gretsch 6150. The latter is maybe 5 W. Unfortunately, not so cheap any more.

D.H.

[Petespix]

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=611815

[GCWaters]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

Yamaha THR.

Every video i do is pretty much with that amp. Great jazz tones in there.

I'll second this...if you're just playing at home, the clean channel on this is hard to beat...you can go from low to loud without losing your fundamental tone....and if you decide you want to go for some Billy Gibbons tones, they're on there too!

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by Petespix

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=611815

Good choice - very lightweight for an all-tube amp of this type, enough clean power for small-/medium-size club work if you dime the Volume/use the Gain to set your overall level, and that Tone knob can take some of the EL84 brashness off the highs - but that Celestion Seventy-80 is strictly a rock speaker, so figure the cost of an appropriate replacement into the mix; FYI the Eminence Cannabis Rex is a popular upgrade for this amp (BTW Fender uses them in some of their similarly-powered FSR limited-edition Blues Junior combos), and for around $100 should give you the smooth low-breakup response you need in a jazz speaker...

[Backcountry]

Killer deal on this: EVANS AE 100