Fender's foray into the guitar practice amp market continues to be met with positive reviews. The LT 25 is one of their more popular offerings in the sub $200 price range. This amp is rated at 25-Watts and has an 8 speaker, housed in a modern and sleek-looking cabinet.
Being part of Fender's Mustang line, the LT 25 is unapologetically a full-on amp modeler, with 25 digital effects, 50 presets, and 20 amp models. These are more than enough to cover a wide variety of musical styles.
As expected, its best voicings are ones that emulate classic Fender tube amps. They get the sparkle down nicely, albeit lacking a bit in the low end, because of its smaller speaker. Low to mid-gain amp models also sound quite good, with enough sensitivity to reproduce the nuances of your playing, great for fine-tuning your technique.
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While it can cross over to high-gain territory, the result is not as good, mostly because the small speaker gives it a trebly voicing, and lacks the heavy bass that modern metal tones need.
For an amp modeler, Fender was able to keep the control panel intuitive, and they did so by assigning more complex parameter control to be done via USB using a software editor. You can also use the USB connection to record your playing in DAW software.
Other features include built-in tuner, color display, aux input, and headphone out. It also helps that the LT25 feels solid and its sleek modern design looks nice.
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With so many feature-packed amps available in this price range, it's interesting how guitarists continue to give high ratings to something as simplistic as the Orange Crush 20RT. This amp is as old school as it gets, with just two channels and a digital spring reverb. There is no amp modeling, presets, or multiple effects, just a straightforward 2 channel clean / dirty configuration. It is very similar to the Orange Crush 20, the main difference being the built in reverb and tuner.
Nothing about it will confuse any guitar player, regardless of skill level, making it very suitable for practice and for quickly plugging in to capture and develop musical ideas. The Crush 20RT's 20W solid state amp section drives a single 8 speaker, but it also comes with headphones out with speaker emulation in case you want to practice quietly.
The dirty channel in particular is what makes the Crush 20RT a consistent top contender in this price range. It goes from low to mid-gain and does a good job of reproducing Orange' characteristically loose and open vintage style overdrive voicing. This type of voicing fits classic blues and rock styles really well. And it can be tweaked to be a bit tighter for more modern applications.
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Speaking of tweaking, another good quality of this amp is how responsive the 3-band EQ controls are, allowing for a bit more flexibility that you don't really expect from its straightforward design.
The clean channel is OK but not as good as the dirty channel. It has a flat almost neutral sound that seems stale compared to other amps with good clean tone. It is still usable though, especially as a platform for pedals. And it also works well for those who prefer warmer clean tones that are prevalent in jazz.
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use practice amp with great distortion tone, the Orange Crush 20RT may be your best bet. Ironically, its main strength is also its weakness, if you want more effects and voicings, then this is not for you.
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The Spark 40 is pitched as a home practice amp for electric guitar, bass guitar, and acoustic guitar which is a lot to pack into one unit. If that's not enough it's also a pretty capable Bluetooth speaker as well. It's intended to be used with PG's Spark Amp app via Bluetooth which is available on the Android and IOS app stores.
Positive Grid started off making effects and amp modeling apps and their experience shows here. The app has great ratings in both app stores, a rarity in the world of musical equipment whose apps are normally flooded with user complaints.
It really is a smooth and polished experience that 'just works' while offering a ton of useful options. This is a good thing because there's no PC or Mac software available to control the amp via USB (apart from firmware updates). If you're uncomfortable about relying on a mobile app for much of the amp's functionality then this isn't for you.
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Pairing to the app via the Bluetooth is fairly simple and thankfully doesn't require any sort of registration. It seems to be happy to pair with new devices so if you've got the amp in your hands you can do it. Once paired you can connect at any time which takes a few seconds. I found the connection to be solid while you're using the app but if you put it in the background things can get a little glitchy and you may need to reconnect.
Controlling the amp models and effects in the app is fairly straightforward. The signal chain is laid out as a virtual pedalboard with 6 effect pedal type slots and one amp model as below:
You can't change the order but each pedal type slot (apart from the Noisegate) has various modeled pedals available. This offers a reasonable number of options without things getting too overwhelming. I count a total of 42 pedal effects, 25 Guitar amps, and 4 amps each for acoustic and bass guitar not including the optional Jimi Hendrix expansion pack.
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There's a great list of the effects pedals here and the amp models here. It's not the 'everything plus the kitchen sink' approach that you can get in more expensive units or PG's software modeling apps but there's a pretty good selection. They did a good job emulating the preamp and power amps of popular amp models.
The effects and amps are more or less fixed apart from firmware updates. They have added new effects and amps in a couple of firmware updates, some for free as well as the Jimi Hendrix expansion pack that's available for $20. I'm all in favor of being able to access new paid options via a store section but they add these as selectable options in the main interface which is annoying.
The fact that you've loaded them on the amp, taking up memory that could be used for other effects doesn't sit well with me either. I'd really like to see the capability to download new effects/amps on the fly via the app in future iterations like PG does in their BIAS apps.
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On the other hand the Spark ToneCloud provides over 10k Amp-and-FX presets for Guitar and Bass covering all manner of styles, artists, and songs from Metallica to Dire Straits, 'Dirty Flexi' to 'Acoustic Ambience'. You can easily download these to your phone and amp but you do need to create an account for this. You can also share your own patches via Tonecloud and they rank the most liked and downloaded in a variety of categories.
At the time of writing the number 1 patch is in fact Metallica with over 155k downloads. It's a great heavy patch that had me playing those Locrian style riffs for longer than I'd planned. They can be a great source of inspiration or distraction but more importantly, they can help players find the tone they're looking for without having to tweak all those parameters themselves.
The models themselves are quite good and the amps and effects are realistic but there is an issue that we'll get to in a moment. Positive Grid were previously known for their excellent 'BIAS' software modeling apps and that experience shines through here. Apart from realistic amps, the effect that blew me away the most was the stereo reverb which really can make it sound like the reverberations are coming from the room you are in rather than the amp.
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On one patch I could swear there was an actual reverb spring sitting several meters from the amp. I don't know how they achieve this and it's a bit uncanny. For some patches, you may actually want to tone it down a bit.
When it comes to sound though there is an issue that we need to talk about. It has divided users between those that don't hear it, those that don't mind and those that think there's a problem. For me, the moment I started playing through the amp the sound coming from the speakers was overly 'bassey' for electric guitar. You won't have to look far to find many others experiencing the same, describing it as 'Muddy', 'Muffled', 'Boxy', 'Wooley', and complaining about the lack of brightness.
It's surprising for such small speakers really but they do put out a lot of low end and that can obscure the high end, particularly the high midrange that's so important for guitar. Personally, I can still hear and appreciate the tones which do sound good themselves but alongside a certain 'rumble'. I found myself using the bridge pickup to get
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