The Top 10 Guitar Amps, According to Guitarists
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We asked our trusted audience of guitarists one simple question: what is your favorite amp?
Like every good amp debate, it went pretty much where you’d expect with vintage Fenders, British chime, and a few boutique Mesa rigs.
If you’re in market for a new amp, here are the ten amps that got the most love, counted down to the #1 recommendation.
10. Fender Super Reverb
The Super Reverb is a blackface Fender with four ten-inch speakers, and it’s a holy grail for a lot of blues and roots players. A mid-60s example in good shape is one of the best clean amps Fender ever built, and those four tens give it a tighter, punchier low end than the bigger single-speaker amps.
The catch is that a real vintage one costs serious money now, and they aren’t getting any cheaper. If you can find one and can afford it, there isn’t much to argue with.
9. Mesa/Boogie (various models)
Mesa more or less invented the high-gain amp. They built its first models in California around 1970. They did it by hot-rodding little Fender Princetons.
The name came from Carlos Santana, who reportedly played one and said that it really boogied.
These are amps players hold onto for life, whether it’s their Mark series, Rectifiers, etc. Players love how tight and controlled the gain stays even when you push it hard.
8. Marshall JCM800
If you grew up on ’80s rock, the JCM800 is probably the tone living in your head. It started in 1981 and quickly became the amp behind a huge chunk of hard rock and metal, from Slash to Zakk Wylde.
The name JCM stands for Jim Marshall’s initials and the 800 came from his car’s license plate. It’s a basic single-channel amp, but when you crank it and play a power chord, you’ll see why so many love it.
7. Roland Blues Cube
The Blues Cube was a surprise to us. It’s a solid-state amp, which usually gets some negativity. But Roland built it around a circuit called Tube Logic which is meant to mimic how a real tube amp sounds.
The people who own one tend to swear by it. They say it gives you the responsive, tube-like feel but without the weight, heat, or maintenance. If you’ve written off solid-state amps entirely, this is the one that might change your mind.
6. Orange OR15
The OR15 is a little 15-watt British head that’s way more powerful than the wattage suggests. It’s a single-channel amp with the thick Orange grind, and 15 watts goes plenty loud for what most people need.
It works with just about any guitar you plug in, which is likely why so many guitarists suggest it. It’s a small amp with a lot of power, and it doesn’t cost much for the tone you get.
5. Orange (various)
Beyond the OR15, plenty of you just love Orange amps in general. Understandable.
Orange has been around since 1968 when it started as a little London shop. The amps are known for a thick, midrange-heavy sound, and of course for the fact that they are orange.
Jimmy Page leaned on Orange in the early ’70s, and these days the brand is all over heavy music. Once you get used to an Orange amp, it’s hard to play through anything else.
4. Fender Hot Rod Deluxe
The Hot Rod Deluxe is a 40-watt 1×12 that’s loud, dependable, and built around the classic Fender clean. For gigging guitarists, this is exactly what they need.
The clean channel is the reason to buy it. The built-in overdrive has always been a bit fizzy, so most players skip it and run a pedal instead, and once you do that you’ve got a reliable amp to take to gigs.
3. Marshall
Sometimes you don’t need a specific model, you just need to say Marshall, which is basically synonymous for loud electric guitar 😂
Jim Marshall started out running a drum shop in London in the early ’60s, and got into building amps because the guitarists hanging around kept asking for something louder than what Fender offered.
The towering Marshall stack came soon after, partly because players like Pete Townshend wanted more volume and more wall behind them.
2. Vox AC15
The AC15 is the one that made the Vox sound famous. It’s also an amp that many players go to first. It sounds gorgeous and it’s packed into a size you can carry around casually.
For a quick fun history story.. the bigger AC30 only exists because the AC15 wasn’t loud enough for bands like the Shadows, so Vox doubled it up. For most rooms, though, the AC15 is all you need. That way you won’t piss off your neighbors (as much).
1. Fender Twin Reverb
The Twin Reverb is the loudest, cleanest amp in the Fender lineup, and it tied for the most votes for good reason. With 85 watts pushing two twelve-inch speakers, it has so much headroom that you can play at serious volume and still stay perfectly clean.
That clean is the Fender clean. The same pristine, sparkling tone that defined country, surf, and a thousand session records.
It has also become the go-to pedal platform, because an amp this strong and this clean takes whatever you put in front of it and stays out of the way.
A Final Note
So there you have it. We had hundreds of guitar players vote on this and the top 10 leans on Fender, Vox, and Marshall grind, which is about the most predictable and correct result an amp poll could have.
