Lately I’ve been writing about some amplifier heads that have pushed the size boundaries of my amplifier head goal. They’ve been bigger in physical size and bigger in wattage. This week I thought I’d go back to basics. I’m not sure they come more basic than the Z.Vex Amps Nano Head. This is one tiny little one-half watt tube amp!
It might be a tiny amplifier head, but it doesn’t seem to be low on tone options or features to be honest. I’ve been really surprised—pleasantly—by this little amplifier. If I was able to convince my wife that I needed a second amplifier head at any stage I’d consider this. I’m a hobby guitarist. This seems to be very much a hobby guitarist’s dream amplifier head.
Features. They always let you know what’s going to make or break an amplifier.
- 1/2 watt
- 8 ohm and 16 ohm speaker output options
- Output power is 0.5 watt dirty and 0.1 watt clean
- Internal speaker
- Bright switch
- Volume control
- Thickness switch
- Mellow switch
- Cooling fan
That’s a fair amount for such a tiny amplifier head. There is a rather cool little video that showcases the tones available through this head. You can get some interesting clean tones as well as some seriously impressive distortions. That’s probably what has surprised and impressed me the most with this amplifier head.
What didn’t surprise me was the sound quality from the internal speaker. I didn’t expect perfection and I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear anything terrible though. It would do me just fine if I wanted to play guitar very quickly while I worked out a riff idea.
It’s not the cheapest amplifier head I’ve come across, but for a bedroom guitar player I’d have to say this is pretty cool. I could play guitar and put this in a shoe box when I was finished. Storage won’t be a problem. Not playing guitar every night might be though.
Disclaimer: I’ve not played through this head. I have not experienced the sound or tone of this head other than through video. That doesn’t matter. It looks awesome, it’s obviously played by winners and I want one.