Best Electro Harmonix 15 Watt Howitzer Pedal Amp/Pre Alternatives

Based on 7 reviews

I have had the Kemper Powerhead for just under a week and already I am selling my Engl Powerball, Diezel and TC Electronic G System. I have profiled them, tweaked them within the Kemper itself, taken it to practice and simply amazed the rest of the band with the sound coming out of this beautiful little toaster. I have good ears and a high end studio at home and have listened critically to the results of my profiling and it is stunning. This really is the best thing I have ever bought. My flight rig is a Kemper and a midi-moose...that's it. Kemper in the Thon flightcase is about 11kg...so that's pretty much hand luggage, even with the budget airlines. FOH will be straight out of the Kemper and use foldback to monitor or for smaller venues use the built in power amp to run a cab and mic...

Based on 5 reviews

Ideal for touring bands. The Kemper has allowed us to do a sound check, all on and off stage in 15mins! We have 2 Kempers and have the line and cab level de-linked, so the stage volume is independent of what is going to the desk. This was a very complicated setup with tube amps previously, as fantastically as they sound and look, this made life hellish for setting up quickly. For recording, it's fab to lay down tracks and send profiles to our mixing engineer, with a very close the idea of the sound we're after. My only con is the 44.1kHz sampling rate, and would like it to have the options for higher rates; as I'm a stickler for high sample rates, like to have "air" in my recordings, and that many audio interfaces are now offering up to 192kHz and over.

Based on 3 reviews

This seems expensive, but I've now had this a couple of years and have probably saved as much money in valves, amp servicing, patch leads, power blocks, batteries, velcro, hinges... chiropractor (I ain't joking). I have also sold a few of my pedals. As well as playing semi pro, I also engineer and often take my Kemper for guitarists to use because its so much easier and sounds better than rigging multiple cabs. They always look a little scared at all the lights and knobs but always and the gig by saying they wish they had one. Serious kit. Serious fun. Seriously do not regret a penny.

Based on 3 reviews

What a great purchase! Diezel sound in a small package ready to be connected to your cab. I bought this as a backup amp, but I like it quite a bit and been playing with it more than I would have imagined it. Sometimes it's easier to just play with it than my rectifier and it turns out I also really like the Diezel sound. The volume taper is very good so you can play very quiet as a practice amp but it also goes plenty loud. The dynamics are ok, it cleans up nicely with the guitar's volume and it's tight enough for me without needing a boost . The only little drawback is it has enormous amounts of gain even at 9-10 o'clock. It doesn't really have a clean sound but that is to be expected as it's based on the 3rd channel of the vh4. For the money it's a very good amp, but don't sell...

Based on 2 reviews

This will be a longer one. First of all i played orange amps for couple of years now. Had Dark Terror for about 2-3 years, which i loved, then upgraded to Thunderverb 50 which i had for about 4 years now. I love orange amps, there is just something about the sound, look and general feeling of awesomeness. Bought SC100 because my playing changed and I needed something more versatile with clean channel (as much as i love thunderverb sound, i just couldn't dial in the sound i need now). And i messed up my back so the TH50 started killing me. Now for SC100 love the clean channel, it's bright, crispy, everything about it sounds good and it takes pedals really well. For dirty channel i expected gain knob to be bit more aggressive, but putting gain to 11 really brings out the specific crackle...

Based on 1 reviews

I bought this amp as a backup for my tube amps but it became my main amp. It sounds indeed very similar to the tube amps like a Twin '65 that I owned some years ago. The behaviour is different though than a tube amp: whereas a tube amp may break up after a while with the same volume, which gives the tube amp its own flavor, the BJF keeps the same sound as initially set-up all the way. This is exactly what I was seeking: I am more into clean or slightly overdriven but "controllable" sound, whatever the volume is. The headroom is huge. With low output pickups, you hardly bring the amp to distortion even on the high gain channel... like on a blackface! For that purpose, you need to add a pedal. Sounds huge and gives the same tone with my Eminence Ramrod 10" speaker as well as...

Based on 1 reviews

Really excellent little amp that is quite loud, Don't be fooled. I have this, the Zombie and the BlueJay - all good but the Tweedy floats my boat the most. Great prices on these amps and very versatile. I have changed the tube but didn't really notice any effect. They have an led in the middle of the tube socket holder to simulate heater glow. Very funny. Looks good. The amp looks good too and sounds brilliant. My friend has a Blues Jnr. that blew up so he took out the amp and put 2 (!) BlueJays in it's place - one for backup! Sounds like the original. These are a best buy.

Based on 8 reviews

After much research I finally took the plunge and purchased the power rack version of the Kemper profiling amp and I have to say that I'm totally thrilled with it. I play bass guitar in a busy cover band and I wanted to use this exactly as I would a standard bass guitar head into a pair of RS TC Electronic bass cabs. I had concerns initially as the manual says that it's to be used with cabs rated at 8 and 16 ohm and as mentioned above I wanted to run it with two 8 ohm cabs which means it would be running at a 4 ohm load, potentially causing damage to the power amp. I was assured that it would be ok though, as there is a large online resource, WIKPA and a user forum that will basically tell you anything you need to know and more. The forum also has a rig exchange section that contains...

Based on 8 reviews

HoTone Nano Legacy Mojo Diamond I bought this little amp for home use together with the palmer greenback cabinet. First impressions; I seems surprisingly sturdy built, and has a nice weight to it. Housing is all metal. Good rubber feets that attach very well to the surface you put it on. Pot-meters has a nice resistance and feels tight when you turn them. In the package there is labels you can put on the pots for easy locations of them, because the labels underneath is really small and hard to read. However you don’t need them. All you have to remember is that Gain is on the left, Volume on the right, tone is the ones left in the middle. It will look way better without the stickers. Ok, so then I plugged it in and fired it up. As I am mainly interested the clean sounds. I put the...

Based on 4 reviews

Needed something next to my tube amp for practicing without disturbing neighbors and family. Also to test and play around with dual amp setup. It works very nicely, headphone out is great for late night practice. Furthermore dialing in crunch without the volume is also a nice addition. Recording without a mic is one of the future use-cases. Like: - I like the build-in reverb, nice to always dial in a bit, without using a dedicated slot on pedal board. - Pedals play really well with the amp, distortion pedals don't get as muddy as with my other amp, clear note distinction when playing chords. -EQ works very well, I like this better than the tone controls on previous Quilter models. Simple enough to get to a good tone, though you might spend a lot of time fine-tuning, just because you...