Vox AmPlug Bass headphone amp

[Hagar]

I recently bought a new Canadian made 'Earwig' headphone amp for £22 inc postage on fleabay. Took a while to arrive but thankfully no customs duty. With my cheapo Panasonic 40ohm full sized, closed back phones there was a bit of background hiss, but my Prosebass certainly sounded wonderful. I emailed Enea, the guy who custom builds the Earwig about the hiss. He said the amp design was rather sensitive to headphone impedence and suggested 65 ohm or greater. The 70 ohm JVC phones I've just bought have cured the hiss.

A budget priced best buy, but if you can afford it, just order an sfx Micro H.

[Silvia Bluejay]

Thanks for that! Note taken

[Sid Fang]

I've had one of these for the past few years, and have used it for practice while travelling. It doesn't sound anywhere close to as good as my EBS rig, but then again, my EBS rig doesn't fit in the accessory compartment of my bass case. My principal point of comparison is with the old Dunlop/Rockman "Bass Ace", which didn't sound much better, but which is 20 times bigger and doesn't fit in any of my instrument cases. It's really easy to make the AmPlug sound like crap, but without the stupid "boost/compress" mode - which I think is there simply because the little switch exists for all the guitar models and the Vox engineers thought that they had to do *something* with it - there's a range, albeit narrow, of gain settings that are perfectly acceptable for practicing electric bass. Lord knows I'd never record through the thing, but that's not what I bought it for!

[Silvia Bluejay]

Good to know you find the Vox useful. It appears to be incompatible with my MEC pickups, as I haven't found any setting that sounds acceptable on my bass guitars. However, the Vox works OK on my uprights.