Electric Guitar Today

Suppose you are only beginning and not certain to play for years or even be in a band, there is no need for huge, overly-loud and costly amps. “Thunder” can easily get us evicted with his 45 watt Marshall.

What is important to check is how many channels does the amp have? A clean and a distortion channel is what gives a hard rock tone that sounds good with power chords and soloing. You want two separate channels with their own volume and tone controls. Having this will let you switch between them at will with a foot switch.

Does it have any effects like, Chorus, Flange, Delay, and Reverb?

Turn it around and look at how many watts it has, I recommend 45 since 10–30 watts is really not much and you wont really be able to resell it if you ever get a new one or give up the guitar.

Finally I would check to see if it’s powered by Tubes or is it Solid State? Most beginner amps are solid state and that’s ok. Tube amplifiers are almost always more expensive but offer a better warmer sound.

A good small, yet powerful amp for a beginner is Marshall MG Series. That’s what we use in the apartment and it’s plenty to annoy the neighbors event hough we don’t turn it up…that often. Thunder got it second hand but in excellent quality for 100$ with a pedal and cables.

Adjusting Your Amp

There are tones of different ways to adjust your amp depending on what style of music you play. The following is a suggestion for beginners.

• Adjust the bass and treble to set the basic sound for your guitar.
• Turn the drive down to zero to hear what it’s like then turn the drive up to five or seven.
• Turn the reverb down to zero and listen to the sound of your guitar, then turn up the reverb to what pleases you. Reverb was designed to sound like old spring-type amplifiers of the early electric blues period. If your playing blues you can turn it up to seven.

Don’t miss Must Have Amp Settings

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