ANAHEIM, California — Want tasty tones in a small, affordable package? Pack a lunchbox.
Guitar-amp manufacturers are responding to the practical and economic wishes of musicians by rolling out a slew of “lunchbox” style amplifiers, so called because they’re about the size of a school lunchbox, complete with handle.
Lunchboxes are compact vacuum-tube amps, usually carrying between two and six tubes inside. They run at low power, usually between 5 and 15 watts. Priced between $400 and $800, they are far less expensive than most tube amps. Just plug one into a speaker cabinet (or two, or four) and you’ve got a full guitar rig capable of producing a wide variety of sounds and tones.
The amp credited with kicking off the lunchbox craze is the Tiny Terror, a 15-watt amp made by British manufacturer Orange that debuted about two years ago.
The sparks generated by the Tiny Terror have grown into a raging brush fire. The expo floor at NAMM, the musician’s trade show which took place here this past weekend, was packed with more lunchboxes than a grade-school cafeteria.
Dozens of manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon. Big names like Mesa, Vox and Blackheart have put out their own models, as have smaller companies like Hayden and VHT and boutique manufacturers like Burriss.
Lunchboxes produce a sparkling, lively tone even when cranked up. Dialing in some dirtier sounds give things a menacing and hugely satisfying edge.
“It sounds awesome,” says Derek Mather, a 14-year-old phenom from the Santa Cruz, California, band Almost Chaos who was picking some guitar licks (.mp3) on a Tiny Terror at the Orange booth (pictured at top). “It has a really amazing sound for such a small amp — way better than my big Mesa Boogie.”
The best way to get the warm, beefy tone of players like Hendrix, Slash or Clapton is by pushing an amp to its limits. But playing big, fancy amps cranked all the way up is hardly a practical solution for the bedroom.
Low-powered amplifiers reach their limits at much lower volumes, and when they get loud (and make no mistake, these things can get loud enough to cause genuine pain) they maintain the rich and full sound of a much more powerful — and more expensive — amp.
The lunchbox is perfect for the player who wants to be able to sound like AC/DC or Hound Dog Taylor or anyone in between at any volume — all with one low-priced amp.
“In most situations, all you really need is a 15- or 30-Watt amp,” says David Jenkins of True Tone Music, a vintage guitar store in Santa Monica, California. It’s especially true in bars or smaller venues where most musicians play, or even in bigger places where the amps are properly miked, he says.
One of the best-sounding lunchboxes of the dozen we played is being made by Bob Burriss of Lexington, Kentucky. His company, Burriss Amps, makes two models, both around $1,000. The Dirty Red is made for crunchy, distorted lead sounds, and the Royal Bluesman produces glassy, warm blues tones.
Burriss’s amps are hand-wired, meaning all the interior connections are soldered by hand. It’s what the famous British amp companies of the 1960s did, and among amp connoisseurs, its a term synonymous with superior workmanship. Most of the lunchboxes we played at NAMM are hand-wired.
Hand-wiring is more expensive than using machine-printed circuit boards, but factories in China and Korea have been quickly training their workers to hand-wire. As a result, companies have been able to turn out Asian-built hand-wired lunchboxes at the cost of last year’s machine-built amp. VHT, which manufactures its amps in a factory near Shanghai, sells its two-tube, 6-watt lunchbox for only $260.
VHT recognized the trend building midyear and brought its own lunchbox from design to production in only three months.
Lunchboxes do have some drawbacks. For one, they are just the head unit — the speakers are separate. Touring musicians sometimes just carry heads and arrange to have speaker cabinets supplied by the venue, and some prefer to use different speakers for different song styles. Still, that’s not very helpful for guitarists stuck in the basement.
But if you want a low-powered amp with a speaker built in, talk to amp designer Steve Carr of Carr Amplifiers in Pittsboro, North Carolina. A dealer first approached him about building a small, low-powered amp in 2002.
“I originally thought it was a bad idea,” he says.
But he went ahead with it, debuting the Carr Mercury in 2003. It was one of the first amps that came with a built-in attenuator, so you could switch between four settings — 8 watts, 2 watts, one-half and one-tenth of a watt — as you moved from the rowdy gig to your apartment with the baby sleeping in the next room.
The Mercury, which costs $2,100, has since become his biggest seller. He now also makes the 3-watt Raleigh.
He has no plans to build a lunchbox, but he maintains a positive attitude about the craze he helped ignite.
“They’re versatile, reliable and they give you a wide range of sounds,” he says. “Those little guys are great.”
See also:
- NAMM: A Mad Professor of the Stompbox Goes Open Source
- NAMM: Korg’s Wavedrum Adds a New Beat to Your Next Hippie Jam
- NAMM: This Ain’t Your Brother’s Portastudio
- Class D Amplifiers Are Shrinking and Greening Your Electronics
Photos: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
