What does the practice-hungry, aspiring guitar player take on their travels when they don’t wish to be encumbered by a collection of amps/leads/wireless transmitters and other gubbins and need to be sympathetic to the prevailing ambient noise level (or, lack of)? An acoustic, played fingerstyle so as not to disturb the natives when a hotel practice session at 5am beckons? An electric guitar played completely naked?
Neither of the above. At least not since I picked up one of these beauties a few weeks ago:
Most of my practice time right now is spent sight-reading solo pieces and practising new chords and progressions, so I’m nearly always playing on a clean channel on my amp – mainly so I can hear when my finger placement or timing isn’t quite there (which is annoyingly frequent given that I’m still a rank amateur!)
Having read favourable reviews of these tiny headphone amplifiers in various places and having had some brief experience with a Vox MV50 clean amp-head in a local guitar shop (and liking the sound very much), I took the plunge and ordered one, despite there being cheaper alternatives available from names I wasn’t really familiar with.
I’m pleased to report that this little gadget works wonderfully with both my Sennheiser IE-60 earbuds and my Sony MDR-CD470 closed-cup headphones and the battery life so far has been very impressive indeed (more than two hours of playtime in and I haven’t had to recharge the two 700mah Energizer AAAs I put in when I first opened it -and it does come with two alkaline AAA batteries in the pack). For the record, manufacturer reported battery life is 11 hours with alkaline batteries and 17 hours if no effects are selected – I can’t confirm these figures yet but if so, that’s very, very impressive indeed.
There are three core sounds to choose from on the AP-CL2, accessed in cyclical fashion via a short press of the power switch (hold same to power on/off): Pure Clean, Twin Clean and Boutique OD. The first two are very much classic clean tones for digital amps with the Twin Clean channel offering a little more depth and warmth than the Pure version. Both sound great in combination with my Mexican Telecaster, especially when combined with a little delay or reverb. The three rotary dials on the top of the unit control Gain, Tone and Volume respectively and after a little experimentation (and for reference, my Telecaster is pretty much always locked at maximum volume), I found that setting the Gain to maximum (10) and the Volume to halfway (5) gave me a largely hiss-free sound-stage and more than enough volume for practice with the first two voices. Any hiss encountered when I ventured beyond these settings was far more evident through my little earbuds than through bigger cans.
Switching to the Boutique voice immediately introduces a noticeable spike in output volume and hiss, however, and strumming a chord with the above settings results in hugely excessive distortion especially if like me, your guitar might as well only have the one output volume: maximum – so it’s time to reach for that gain dial and turn things down to a more suitable level for this particular voice – around 5 or 6 worked for me with the earbuds. Still quite a noisy voice, but nonetheless a pleasing heavy crunch sound if that’s your thing.
On the top of the unit is another little button that chooses an optional digital effect to apply – chorus, delay and reverb are offered. Three styles for each of the effects give nine options in total, though note that they cannot be combined and their parameters are not user-configurable. The delay and reverb effects are nicely done and a worthy inclusion – the more pronounced third selections of both delay and reverb are especially pleasing when playing a lead voice. The chorus effects aren’t quite so nice, at least not to my ears: a little too much sickness-inducing phasing going on to make me wish to play them for too long in isolation – and of course you don’t get any choice in that regard.
Out of interest I also connected the unit to my 40W Blackstar practice amp’s line-in socket to see how the Vox would sound through a moderately-sized external speaker system and I was pleasantly surprised how full it sounded when I did.
The additional 3.5mm stereo line-in is very welcome and works beautifully well with an external source – in my case my Android phone and the Poweramp music app.
The 6mm instrument jack has five possible positions selected in increments of 45 degrees from fully-folded zero degrees (picture 2), through 90 degrees perpendicular to the unit (picture 1) to 180 degrees with the jack protruding around two inches from the left side of the unit and parallel to it. One small concern is whether the unit would snag the tremolo arm on a Stratocaster due to the position of the output socket – I have a wireless transmitter that has this very problem despite advertising itself as suitable for all guitars – but as I’ve yet to try my Stratocaster with the Vox I can’t report on it. I’m hopeful the 180 degree configuration would negate my slight worry in that regard and I’m pretty sure a company like Vox wouldn’t let something like that get through the design stage without being swiftly corrected anyway.
In summary, then – a nicely constructed and surprisingly impressive sounding little amplifier that will take no more space in your gig-bag than a Swiss Army Knife and weighing far less than the latter even with batteries in. Mine is already an ever-present on my travels.
Update – July ’22
I forgot to pop back and mention that this amp does snag the tremolo arm on a Stratocaster somewhat, so worth considering if that’s your setup -try before you buy, perhaps? Despite that small hassle, I continue to be delighted with this amp every time I use it and I was perhaps a little harsh on the chorus effects in my initial review as I’ve grown to really rather like the first one.