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Vox Pathfinder 10
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Vox Pathfinder 10
YuriW YuriW

« Great for practicing and small gigs »

Published on 07/21/14 at 06:29
This little Vox is a transistor amp with 15W (according to the label at the back of the amp, but some people say it's 10W...), one input, and one 6.5' speaker. The nice looking chicken head knobs are gain, treble, bass and volume, plus the overdrive button and a line/headphones out. No reverb, no fx, no fx loop, no footswitch... a very simple amp, straight to the point.

UTILIZATION

Plug and play, man. Bought it used, so I've never even seen the manual. I like chicken head knobs, they are easy to grab and it's easy to see where they're pointing to. This amp is a little bigger and a little heavier than other ones with the same power, but not a big deal. Looks and finishing are pretty good too.

SOUNDS

Talking about rock here: it actually sounds like a Vox amp, which is a good thing. The clean tone is nice and full, the drive can go from a little crunch to heavy enough for Black Sabbath, and you can use the guitar volume knob to bring the dirt down a little when you want to.
Few knobs, few options, but you either don't need any tweaking to get good sounds, or don't get them at all. It is loud enough to play with a drummer if the drummer is not insane, and, as many other guitar amps, it sounds better whith the volume knob between 60%, 65% and... I would say 75% at most. More than that and 1) sound gets worse - dirtier, but not in a good way) 2) It doesn't really get any louder.

Talking about other styles here: tone wise, you can play many different things with this guy. I would say that you canNOT get tones like those really bright-roland-jazz-chorus stuff and the really heavy-mesa-boogie stuff (at least not without a drive pedal).

OVERALL OPINION

Comparing this one to other small amps in the same price range I personally like it better for rock n' roll, it crunches nicer than the little fender champs but the clean tones are better than the marshalls. Its sound is not going to blow your mind, but for an amplifier this small and this cheap, it's certainly really good.

Not having a mid frequency knob is a bad point. This amp likes my guitars and works fine with them, but I can see that situation happening where you want a certain tone and can't find it... and, well, you never will with only treble and bass, sorry.

So in the end what I say is: if you like rock n' roll and need a small amp to study and to play small gigs, plug your guitar straight into one of these and play it for 5 minutes. If you don't like the sound, no tweaking will fix it. But if you like it, look no further.