Shootout + Opinion: 12 MINI AMPS (Fender, Orange, Boss, Marshall, Blackstar, Yuer, Joyo, and more!) 

You accomplished an incredible and really useful work for all the gearheads out there : a heartfelt thank you Miike!!

definitely agree with blackstar winning, hearing all the fender amps was surprising as i expected them to be better, blackstar delivered such a beautiful clean tone!

Finally, someone that tests it right. With the same riff and different priced amp as well as a good breakdown! Well done!

Very glad you picked the Blackstar as I own a couple. I added an ext speaker and love the sound you get.

Here are my favourite sounds. I really surprised: Sample 1 (Clean): Marshall MS-2. Sample 2 (Clean headphones out): Marshall MS-2 Marshall MS-4 Danelectro HONEYTONE YUER YS-10E JOYO MA-10E Sample 3 (Crunchy, mics): FENDER Mini Tonemaster Sample 4 (Distorted) where possible, mics: Danelectro HONEYTONE Sample 5 (max, Distortion), mics: Danelectro HONEYTONE Sample 6 (max, Distortion), headphones output: YUER YS-10E JOYO MA-10E This really feed my curiosity very well. Thank you.

I thought I was trippin' when I read the comments, because MY ear was LOVING that Yuer amp just as much as the Blackstar, so the ending of this video was very validating for me. haha Great work, mate!

The fender 57s and mini deluxe' distorted tones are brutal!

The Fenders take me back to the golden age of 60s rock, trying to listen with a a cheap handheld transistor AM radio. Authentic!!! No computer processing then.

This is what I've been looking for! Thanks a lot mate!

Mike, you helped me a lot! I listened carefully to all the tests and, believe it or not, my order of preference was exactly the same as yours! I was just unsure between Joyo and Yuer, because I thought their sound was very similar. And while the Yuer has Bluetooth, the Joyo has the charm of the luminous front logo... I'll end up opting for Yuer, because the Joyo costs almost twice as much, while Blackstar, despite the great sound and delicious reverb, costs more than 3x that Yuer's price... Thank you very much! Sucess!

Awesome video! Such an in-depth and useful comparison. This is exactly the kind of video we need when we're in the market for something. Great work.

I was planning to buy a marshall ms 4, after hearing this I changed my mind and ordered the joyo much cheaper sounds great also. Thank you for the video

Thanks for taking the time to do this. It is really helpful. Here’s my opinion, subjective. Yes, it differs somewhat from yours and that’s fine as you said. I agree with your no. 1 as the Blackstar really surprised me. #2 is the Tonemaster mini and #3 is the orange for slight crunch. Yuor and Joyo sounds very artificial and they are to the bottom for me.

Good review and opinion. I would say though that Fender 57 tweed must have had something wrong with the speakers (rattling and just not clean). I have one (since 2012) and it sounds great on clean setting and with just a little bit of gain for breakup. Wouldn't say it would be in the top five of your picks but better than what that one sounded like. Wish they made the Roland micro cube again. I also have an original of those too (from 2011) and that even today has such awesome clear sound.

Thank you for another thorough review! This is a great service, very appreciated. I currently use the Spark Mini for my living room amp, but seek something not tied to an app. I bought the Fender Mini Twin 18ish years ago, and it has been a decoration. I recently discovered that it is good for a fuzztone with p90 neck pickup, so one trick pony. Actually impressed with the Danelectro considering the price. Definitely agree with you on 1,2/3.

I've owned the FLY 3 since it was released and I agree on all your points, but for thrash metal I like my Katana mini more, because it has more gain, more compression and I can dial the EQ for a good metal tone better. For all other lighter and more dynamic styles of music the FLY 3 wins like you said, but for tight palm muted metal riffs the Katana is much better.

Great review! Thank you for this. Came here to hear the cleans. The Yuer & Joyo sounded OK, the Boss is good, the Blackstar outstanding. I have owned the Honeytone & the Orange. Both were poor & I gave them away. Now I have a Lekato JA-02 II on order. It's also badged as Joyo. Great cleans & rechargeable too.

I actually liked the Joyo, Boss and Blackstar the best for drives.

Amazing job done 👏👏👍 I wholeheartedly agree with your results 😂❤

I'm mostly a hobby guitarist, and I live in an apartment. I bought the Boss mini katana and it is just what I needed. I don't need a lot of effects. I'm more focused on musicianship than gear. I can input my phone and play along with all my favorites. Boss mini is a great buy. Almost fits in your pocket.

very useful video, i have a blackstar fly with the extention cab, can't compare to my actual rig but for when i'm giving a lesson and need a second amp without plugging the student into a 100 watt valvestate(not a lot of space for that and it's totally overkill for the purpose) I plug my sound into my computer and use this for the student, it has enough gain for the chuggy chuggs and beautiful clean sound.

I absolutely looooooooooved what you've acomplished here, but disagree with the results in every possible way. Like you said, nothing that will tear us apart, life goes on, however, I'd love to point out my top 5 here (from those you've tested out here in this video): 1. Fender Mini Tonemaster 2. Fender Mini Deluxe (my fave) 3. Orange Crush Mini 4. Danelegro Honeytone 5. Blackstar Fly 3 P.S.: I've made use of a spreadsheet with points to help me out with who'd be the winner. Last, but not least: thank you very much for gifting this video to YT, you deff rock Miike!

The Trick to get the best gainy sound out of those Mini Fenders (i have the Tweet Mini twin i asume this works with the others?) Is to actually not use the drive. Put the drive and tone in zero and the volume on full. Then very slowly turn up the drive until you have the right amount of gain and fiddle with the the tone knob. Also watch for feedback! Now thats not an amazing tone but its better than the actual drive and kinda cool in a lofi way.

I was surprised at how bad the fenders were. I would have rated the Orange lower and the Danelectro higher. Agree with the Blackstar rating and surprised at how good the Joyo and Yuer were. Great review...thank you

Boss Katana Mini FTW

Well your the third person i have seen reviewing mini amps all of you had the blackstar all made it there number 1 So i guess i'd agree with you nice looking amps but not to much practical use Maybe yeah sittin around etc I did once have one of the marshalls sound more like an old transistor radio and not much power. Nice to look at though lol. Good show

I cant believe you picked the black star 😯😳how could you do that ? You have ruined my life 😭 😢 now i must travel into the jungle and find a cave to live in... My life is over 😭 i liked the joyo so much im order it. Great review 👍🎵🎶🙂

thanks .. I like clean but one earphone is what I like and a different one for speaker. thanks for all the good work.

EXCELLENT VIDEO! HONEYTONE RULES! People who say the Dan Electro Honey tone sucks are stupid. What's true is the speaker is crappy. The amp itself is a good sounding circuit

Blackstar Fly3 has an awesome sound. The only negative aspect is that you need to separately purchase the electric power adapter....unless you want to use batteries only (6 AA).

I agree the Darkstar sounds fantastic! Did you try the Positive Grid Spark?

I like the black star the best' I have two of them' I run each one into a 4/10 cabinet and play them in stereo.

I genuinely think that if they just put a speaker out for all mini amps, they'd become 100x more useful. Why do manufacturers refuse to do it? I've modded both a Honeytone and a MD-20 with such an output and both sounded a lot better. Changing the speaker for something that can handle more power than the amp puts out also helps a ton with the sound, especially cleans.

Yeah, you did hurt my feelings, lol, because I got the Fender Mini '57 Twin for it's really nice simulated vintage quality construction complete with steel chrome plate, leather handle, and cool mini chickenhead knobs. It's neat! It's like really mini-sized.

All of them sound boxy and shallow. I would like to see how they sound against Neural DSP plugins + similar size JBL speaker.

I have the Blackstar with extension cab and the Orange. I like them both, I like the Blackstar better. You pay more for the Boss but you get the reputation of gear that doesn't break.

Am I the only one that noticed that he never switched on the overdrive on the Marshalls? The third knob on the right says "Off On OD" You have to turn the knob one more click. These little amps put out a lot of distortion for their size, but you have to turn on the "OD"

The Orange didn't disappoint. Hard to argue against the Blackstar, but the Orange just sounds more authentic and less artificial. Not an easy decision.

Interesting. Must of the plastic amps are just toys. The speakers are too small (2" or3") and the wattage is ridiculously low ( 1w, 3w). They put wood in speaker cabinets for resonance that you will not get with plastic. I was guessing the blackstar and the Boss/roland amp were going to be better. With all that said, I have purchased something similar for practicing on batteries without headphones. I don't expect much from it.

BOSS or Blackstar 1 or 2

Ice comparison video, pitty you did not include the Laney mini series, you would possibly ranked it those on 1…

I still like my micro cube. Simple, cheap, sounds good

The biggest surprises are the Yuer and Joyo. The biggest disappointment is the Katana. It completely wimped out on the last three samples.

1－7 sound is fine, the other i will say they are just bad. appreciate for having a rank of these amp from someone perspective with clear explaination. btw i prefer katana mini. but blackstar fly 3 is impresive also

What…no Spark Mini or Spark GO?????😢

Besides for amplifier, which good for playing mp3 player (listening music)? And its can use for bass?? Thx

Not really representative... i mean whats going on with the Marshalls? I owned the MS-4 once and there was definitely waaaay more distortion possible.

For me the Katana Mini is the best mini amp of all time...

Very Nice vídeo tannnnnnkkkkkkssssss👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👍👍👍👍👍

My mini Marshall broke at the input jack..when I looked inside it's covered by a black box so 😢

Can you also try to compare the blackstar vs positive grid spark mini or spark go. Thanks

i play my fender mini 57 twin through a speaker cab ( 2-6" speakers ) and it sounds like a real amp......mic it up at gigs and it would work

For me, katana is the winner. Fender tone master also great. But that blackstar really a shocker aint it?

totally agree, the blackstar was clearly the best sound (to me)…our rankings were very close, i love fender amps but the mini’s do not sound good at all.

Kinda wonder about the Danelectro, whether that's better suited for a Danelectro's lipstick single coils and the semi hollow construction of the Danelectro guitars, which is more like plywood & the clipboard material top & bottom ? My gut feeling is anyone buying the Fender & Danelectro minis are probably walking out of the store with their guitars at the most basic of their guitar product lines. Squier Bullet/Sonic/Affinity for the Fender mini. Oy thought with the power outputs & tiny speakers, these amps just don't have the clean headroom or speaker that even the 5-10W practice amp combos. I've noticed that even the Fender has added watts to the Frontman 10g, 15g to get to a 20g. I have a 12W Orange Crush with the 6.5 inch speaker & while it's not a bad amp, simply doesn't have any clean headroom that a more gig-able amp would need/have. Low expectations of all of them, and when they approach $ 70 & more, might as well just get a practice amp combo and put the $ 100 into that up front. The weakest amp I have is a VHT Redline Micro 6 pedal amp and I plug that into a passive cab speaker or a modded combo speaker that is modded to be a passive cab. These minis are headphone amps really, glorified pedals amp in a plastic box. In that regard, probably just as well to go into a DI & computer to record with. That way the micro speaker isn't sandbagging what tone stack any of them have. Ultimately, pairing the tone stack with a 6.5, 8, 10 or even 12 inch passive speaker with a boost pedal in the signal chain is going to get bigger sound out of a mini/micro amp. Not certain, but the Orange is the only one of them bunch that has a wood cabinet for a mini/micro amp. That's relatively impressive that they don't bother to use a plastic combo for that combo. I get why the other products use molded plastic cabs, it's inexpensive & cheaper to manufacture for an mini amp that's going to be relatively disappointing & uninspiring out f the box. That's why I would suggest buying a preowned Frontman or Crush 12 instead. Chances are the seller is moving on from something that was relatively disappointing & uninspiring in those combos with more watts & larger speakers as 20, 30, 40, 50, 60W solid state analog/digital combos. I've found even with the pedal & combo amps that I have the smallest of form factors simply disappoints stacked up against the next size & power output combo. A preowned 20W Fender Mustang I V2 is actually quite a solid practice amp with it's options of arrays of amp & cab sims, there are even built in effects.

The blackstar just doesn't belong in this line up at all.. the rest are fun toys, but still toys.. small as it may be. The fly 3 is a real amp..

Gene Wilder would rock the Fender amps and Richard Pryor would rock the Blackstar. And you officially rock if you understood that reference .

Compare test No.5: Joyo beats Blackstar badly, IMAO.

It`s funny how our ears are different, the Boss Katana sounded bad for me in many ways, also the Orange was bad besides the distortion, like really bad.

2:57 1:58

I was given an MS2 as a present. Has anyone figured out whether it's possible to play the MS2 through a cabinet? I tried connecting my MS2 to an Orange PPC108 but the headphone socket doesn't produce enough power to drive the speaker. I have connected it to a PA system. The clean channel was okay but the OD channel produced a lot of hum.

8:08

Blackstar, Joyo and Boss all others sound like sh*t, the fender amps are ridiculous...

Joyo

No Yamaha

Most of these "amps" are shelf toys that should never have a guitar plugged into them. The Blackstar seems like it might be a cut above from the sounds in this video but I haven't played one myself. I have owned the Mini Orange Crush which is a tiny bit better than the Fender 57 which my wife bought and is just totally awful. Spend more for an actual practice amp with at least a 10" speaker or go the route of of the Positive Grid Spark or Yamaha THR. Yes, all of these solutions cost a bunch more but the mini amps are just throwing money away that could buy you at least part of an amp that sounds decent and is actually useful for practicing.

Joyo-Yuer win. No competition. These things cost 35-40 bucks. Katana costs 4 times that, does it sound 4 times better? Fuck no. The rest are kids toys, don't even.