3 Best Guitar Amps for Beginner Guitar Students
So you’ve just bought your child an awesome electric guitar and they’re more excited than a golden retriever at mealtime to get started playing their new guitar. They grab their brand new electric guitar out of the box and go to play their favourite riff, expecting a big guitar sound but when they pluck a string, it sounds super quiet..even more quiet than their nylon string acoustic guitar that they’ve practiced on up until now. Why is that? That’s because they need a GUITAR AMP for their electric guitar!
Electric guitars are quite different from acoustic guitars in that to hear an electric guitar with its full sound, you must connect it to a guitar amp via a guitar cable/lead. Only then, will your child get a loud rock guitar sound like Angus Young or the mysterious and grungy guitar sound of Kurt Kobain. When your child starts playing the electric guitar coupled with a versatile guitar amp, expect them to spend hours playing fun songs that they’ve learned in their Level Up guitar lessons and be late to the dinner table because they're experimenting with cool guitar sounds in their bedroom.
But which amp should you get for your child? There are so many different brands and models out there!
A stack of Marshall guitar amps.
When choosing a guitar amp for a beginner guitar student, we need to select an amp that meets the following criteria.
Includes a number of different Guitar amp sounds and settings that allows guitar students to play the guitar sounds that are featured in a lot of musical genres (Pop, Rock, Grunge, Metal, Country, etc.)
Includes a bunch of guitar effects (Distortion, Reverb, Chorus, Delay) that add a professional sound and style to your child’s guitar playing
Has a headphone port for quiet practice (in case you’d prefer not to hear the Intro to ‘Sweet Child O Mine’ 486 times per week)
Relatively portable - battery-powered ones are awesome!
Relatively budget friendly
The amps that I’m going to recommend all meet the same criteria AND they are what we call Modelling Amps. Modelling amps refer to amps that basically have multiple amp sounds in the one amp that we can easily switch between. For example, you can switch the amp to a ‘Metal’ preset and you can sound like a Heavy metal guitarist or you can switch the amp to a ‘Brit Rock’ preset and you can get the exact guitar sound that the ‘Rolling Stones’ use to play the riff from ‘Satisfaction’.
These amps are the funnest guitar amps to practice with as guitar students aren’t limited to just using a ‘rock’ setting but they can easily switch between the different sounds and play a whole range of guitar songs with wide-ranging guitar sounds!
These are my top 3 guitar amps for beginner guitar students.
Nux Mighty 20BT 20 Watt Guitar Amp - $249
The NUX Mighty 20BT 20 Watt guitar amp appears to be the PERFECT practice amp for beginner guitarists. Due to the stack of features that I’m going to go into below and the breathtaking price point, it comes out on top for being the best and most affordable guitar amp for beginner students. The amp boasts multiple high-quality amp presets, ranging from crunchy, powerful ‘Metal’ sounds to shimmering ‘Clean’ sounds. It also features a myriad of effects like delay, chorus, and reverb, as well as Bluetooth capability, a headphone port, USB port, in built tuner, and much more. Also, being a 20 Watt amp, it packs plenty of punch and can produce a very loud guitar sound if needed. Let’s be honest - it’s always needed! ;)
This SUPER versatile guitar amp is great value for money coming in at only $249! You can pick this guitar amp up from Australian online stores such as Artist Guitars, Swamp Industries or Belfield Music.
Boss Katana 50 MkII - $398
The Boss Katana 50 Mk2 is another super versatile amp that is perfect for beginners, intermediate and even advanced guitarists. It’s a little bit more pricey than the NUX amp, but the price point is totally justified by the high-quality guitar tones and highly versatile effect presets.
Like the NUX Mighty 20BT guitar amp, it has a huge range of guitar effects and tones, making it the ideal practice amp, whether you want to play Pop, Blues, Heavy Metal or pretty much any genre that you can think of - except for Icelandic Ectofolk… actually it could probably do that too!!
Being a 50-watt amp, it is more powerful than the 20-watt NUX Mighty 20BT and can blow the roof off your house if you would like it to (not recommended by Level Up Guitar School…but do it). As an added bonus, you can also plug in your semi-acoustic guitar into the Katana amp and get a beautiful, crisp acoustic guitar tone which is quite a rare feature of electric guitar amps.
You can pick this amazing amp from Vivace Music Underwood (only 7 min drive from the Springwood Level Up Guitar School!) for only $398. For all of the effects and world-class guitar tones that are packed into this amp, it is totally worth it.
Roland MicroCube GX 10 Watt Guitar Amp - $240
The last cab off the rank is the practice amp that I own and love to play guitar on. It is named the Roland MICROCube GX Amp. I’ve been using this amp for 2 years now and it makes practicing the guitar so fun and easy. Due to its small size, it can be powered by six ‘AA’ batteries and is super light to carry, making it the perfect amp for guitar students to bring along to their Level Up guitar lessons.
The guitar amp preset sounds on this amp are totally amazing. Within seconds you can change between the ‘Brit Rock’ preset to the ‘Rectifier’ heavy metal preset to the clean ‘Acoustic’ setting. It also includes a few more effects than the NUX Mighty 20BT amp such as the Octave function. I have spent countless hours playing riffs using this effect!
Although the MicroCube is only small, it certainly packs a punch and is more than capable to play any genre of music that our guitar students attempt. Due to its small size, it is super portable and is so easy for students to take to classes or take it over to a friend’s place to jam.
The only downside to this amp is that it’s quite difficult to buy in Australia. I believe that the Roland brand has stopped making these so your best bet is to pick one up on eBay or Facebook Marketplace. Although it’s a little bit harder to get your hands on a MICROCube GX Amp, it is so worth it and I couldn’t leave it out of this list of the best guitar amps for beginners. Highly recommend!
I hope that has narrowed down your guitar amp search for your child. It doesn’t really matter which of these three amps that you end up purchasing, they are guaranteed to cover all bases, last for many, many years and ultimately allow your child to fall in love with playing guitar!
About the Author
Meet Alex, the Head Teacher of Level Up Guitar School. Alex has been a guitar teacher based in the Springwood area for 10 years and absolutely loves changing people’s lives through music. If you’re looking for a fun and engaging guitar teacher in Springwood, QLD you can book a free trial guitar lesson with Alex here.