What are the best guitar amps for beginners?

Are cheap amps good? Do you even need amps anymore?

Once upon a time, guitar amplifiers were broadly divided into three groups:

1. Awful

2. Adequate

3. Good

Generally, the Awful amps were the small cubes you could buy for £40. Their tonal output resembled something akin to hitting a tin can. As with beginner guitars, the tragedy of these amps is that they’re almost guaranteed to make you sound terrible, yet are played by the one group of players who need decent sound to know if they’re improving (i.e., beginners).

The Adequate amps is a much broader group, filled with amps from big-name manufacturers like Marshall, Fender, Peavey, and Laney. They were usually solid state amps and often had a few effects built in, like chorus and delay. These amps were, and continue to be, used by gigging bands and are perfectly adequate for rehearsals and small gigs. Their main downfall was that when pushed to higher volumes, the sound could lose clarity. But they’re a noticeable improvement over the Awful amps, and if you were to purchase one of the better ones (at a higher price) you can expect a decent amp that you may never see a need to upgrade. Also, it’s a common misconception that gigging requires loud amps - more often than not, a venue will put a microphone in front of the amp and control the overall volume from the sound desk, which removes the problem these amps can have with losing clarity at higher volume.

Then there were the Good amps. These were valve amps (or tube, for my American readers), used by professional musicians on stage and in the studio. They were also used by small and local bands who wanted the sound or image - somehow, I managed to persuade my parents that 14 year old me absolutely needed a 100w Marshall amp with a 4x12 speaker cabinet, for bedroom use. Don’t ask me how. Valve amps are the holy grail for guitar amp tone, with unrivalled clarity at any volume, and a wide range of dynamics ready to be tapped into thanks to a wonderful relationship with the guitar in your hand. For example, if you’ve set the amp up with a dirty, overdriven sound, you can roll the volume back on your guitar and get a much cleaner sound.

Over the years, these three categories have blended somewhat; some amps, such as the Marshall Valvestate line, combine solid state and valves, while solid state technology has also improved significantly. And more recently, we’ve seen the introduction of digital options at every price point, from the Marshall Code at the low end to Kemper at the high end.

Still, you can bet that the £40 cube in the beginner bundles are still an abomination and best avoided if at all possible.

With those discarded, let’s look at the other options.

Should you buy a valve amp or solid state amp?

I’m going to base the answer to this question on two assumptions:

1. You’re a beginner, or almost a beginner

2. Your budget is limited

If both assumptions are correct, then the answer is solid state.

If you’re a beginner with a larger budget and you want the very best and don’t mind growing into the equipment, you still might want a solid state amp.

Why?

Because solid state amps in 2023 can be very good. Truthfully, the gap between valve and solid state has never been smaller, and if you’re playing a show you can be sure nobody in the audience will be able to tell. That’s not to say valve amps aren’t worth considering, rather they’re an option if you really want one, rather than being the only option for an amp that sounds good.

Valve amps sound great and they’re a lot of fun, but they also have some drawbacks:

1. They require maintenance and servicing, including replacing the valves. Valves don’t warn you that they’re about to stop working, either - they can simply stop making sound. Backups at rehearsals and gigs are therefore strongly advised.

2. Valves are expensive. Valve amps are very expensive, but replacement valves are as well. Amp Valves sells a replacement kit of 8 valves for the Orange OR100H, at a price of £223. Sure, they won’t need replacing very often but it’s a consideration to bear in mind.

3. Valve amps are heavy, with a capital H. How heavy? The Marshall TSL 60 - a 60w combo amp - weighs over 30kg. The Orange Rockerverb 50w head is about 21kg. That’s fine if it’s sitting in your studio corner, but it gets very old very fast when you’re lugging it up and down venue steps.

4. Valves are fragile. That’s not to suggest you need to baby them, but at the end of the day valves are made of glass. You’ll want to consider this when loading your amp into the car, taking care to minimise the risk of accidental breakage.

Solid state amps don’t have any of these drawbacks. They’re substantially lighter, they’re not as fragile (though, of course, take care of them!), and don’t require the same maintenance.

More importantly, solid state amps can produce excellent tones - especially if you’re prepared to spend some time to learn the amp and dial in the sound you want.

As a final word on solid state vs valve amps, bear in mind that most of the adoration of valve amps comes from the sounds of very large, impactful bands. And there’s much, much more that goes into the sound you hear through your stereo speakers than the guitar and amp - the studio’s microphones will have an impact on what you hear, as will your own speakers or headphones. There will be studio effects you may or may not be aware of, and the producer is there for a reason.

In other words, you can get Eric Clapton’s original valve amp and use his settings, but you won’t sound exactly like he did. And if you sat people down in a room with you, blindfolded them so they couldn’t see your equipment, most people couldn’t accurately determine which amp was valve and which was a good quality solid state. There is a difference, yes, but it’s not night and day.

Are digital guitar amps good?

The guitar playing community has a large and vocal subset who are purist by nature.

What I mean by that is, they prefer the original way of doing things. And by extension, they’re often wary of newer ways of approaching things.

There’s nothing wrong with that - I am, to an extent, part of this group myself. But I mention it because it’s an important consideration when you’re weighing up what the best guitar amp is.

To some of these people, a 1970s 100w Plexi is the best thing - and that’s fine, except this is a monster of an amp that requires cranking, so you’ll want an attenuator to keep the volume manageable.

Others in this group will recommend any valve amp as being fine.

And others, especially in the current age, will say any “real” amp is fine, but avoid the digital stuff.

That’s because these days, you don’t strictly need an amp. Your phone has apps that simulate amps. Your computer can run bonafide studio software, and all you need to do is plug your guitar into the computer with an audio interface. If you use an Apple computer (or iPad, or iPhone), you have GarageBand bundled it with it!

And believe it or not, there are literally bands playing shows today who turn up with a laptop, plug it into the PA, and don’t use amps.

Then there are digital amps, or modelling amps. Like most things, early versions weren’t too good. They certainly weren’t rivalling true amps.

In recent years, that’s changed.

Marshall made waves when it releases its Code model - a digital amp promising to give access to Marshall’s legendary tones, controlled with on-amp knobs or with its phone app, connected to the amp by Bluetooth. I owned one of these amps and it was a lot of fun. The app let you store countless presets, each with varying levels of effects, distortion, and their own EQ. You can save the presets in the app and it instantly updates the amp. And the footswitch lets you choose your presets during a show without your phone.

But the Code is firmly at the budget end of the spectrum.

At the opposite end, you have brands like Kemper - and its artist gallery tells a compelling picture.

Along with Helix and AxeFX, Kemper makes extremely good, high-end audio equipment that professional musicians use - both instead of and alongside “real” amps.

All digital amps are particularly compelling for players who need to cover a lot of ground, tonally. If you’re in a covers band, play in a musical stage show, or are the backing player to a pop singer whose albums have different players and producers, your sound can change from one song to the next. Clearly, a digital amp with multiple presets is a huge advantage.

The same is true when you’re learning guitar too - you’re probably learning songs from your favourite bands, which might mean covering Oasis and Megadeth, with Taylor Swift thrown in. It’s a nice feature to have a preset for each one, instead of manually dialling-in your tone for each song you want to practice.

So you’ve got amps like Marshall Code at one end, and Kemper and AxeFX at the other. What about the middle ground?

Enter: Boss Katana.

(The Katana isn’t the only amp in this price bracket, there are others such as the Fender Mustang and brands like Peavey Vyper, but I’ll focus on Katana here as it’s the one I have most experience with.)

Boss Katana amp is budget-friendly, available from just a couple of hundred pounds. It works like a traditional amp - there is a panel of knobs allowing you to set the EQ as you want it, without the need for an app. Unlike some digital amps, the Katana takes pedals extremely well - so if you like the amp’s sound out of the box, you can use it as a regular amp and plug your pedals in for your custom sound.

But, there’s a world of opportunity if you plug the Katana into your computer. You can download “patches” online, giving you specific sounds like Hendrix or Frusciante or Friedman or Slash.

Katana has almost all of Boss’s effect pedals built in too, and you can create your own digital board. Not only can you choose which pedals, but also their order in the chain! You can even assign specific pedals to the amp itself - the knobs on the amp include options to turn on effects like overdrive, delay and reverb, and you can set your favourite ones here.

As the technology progresses, the gap continues to shrink between digital and valve. And if you don’t believe me, watch this short video from The Studio Rats where they try to mimic a Marshall Plexi on a Katana:

What amps do I use?

I’ve used a lot of amps over the years, starting with a 10w combo.

That was replaced by various solid state amps, which sounded great in my bedroom but turned muddy at band practice when they needed to be turned up over 5.

Then came my Marshall TSL 100 with a 4x12 cab. Needless to say, that sounded fantastic and had no problem reaching the required volume (the 25w mode was extremely useful).

There have been other valve amps, including 1x12 combos that sounded great and were much easier to transport than the half stack - but were still heavy.

I briefly owned a TSL 60 combo, but returned it because it was obscenely heavy with only a top handle to carry it.

I owned a Marshall Code 50 (1 speaker combo) for a while, and generally enjoyed it. This amp was used at multiple gigs including outdoors, and never struggled. I eventually realised I wasn’t totally sold on the tone though, and looked for a replacement.

That’s when I discovered the Boss Katana, and I purchased a 2x12 100w model.

Today, the Katana is my only amp. I no longer own any others, including the valve amps.

And let me assure you, I don’t miss them. Tone-wise, the Katana does everything I could ask. It comfortably replaced the valve amps in my current band. It means I don’t need anything on my pedal board except a wah and tuner. It’s more than loud enough for every show I’ve taken it to, and that says something in a 4-piece rock band who has played loud enough to set off car alarms!

Summary

Valve amps can be tremendous fun, they sound amazing, and are extremely responsive to changes you make using the tone and volume knobs on your guitar. But they’re heavy, expensive, and require maintenance.

Solid state amps are significantly better than they used to be and are perfectly suitable to be used in gigging bands. Just make sure to read reviews and pick a good one, because “solid state” is a broad umbrella term, with good and bad models.

Finally, digital and modelling amps have truly arrived. Giving you a combination of excellent tone and convenience, they’re my preference.