Hotone Heart Attack Mini Guitar Amplifier Head, 5 Watt

I love it! This little beast is perfect for practice. I’m using professional headphones and the sound is great. I streamed drum tracks through my iPad and was able to mix with the iPad volume and gain control. It’s a great practice tool (I can play plugged in without bugging the family!). AND I plugged it into a 2x10 4ohm cabinet and it pushed that too!! 5w won’t blow the ceiling off but it can be heard! Pros: SIZE: It’s the size of a guitar pedal! Hand in pic for scale. Now instead of a huge amp on the floor, I have this on my bookcase. TONE: the eq works great! SOUND: clear and I can tell the difference from bass to bass. AUX IN & HEADPHONE JACK: 3.5mm! No adaptors necessary! Cons: Size: gets crowded quick with all the cables, and the knobs are small, so if you have thick fingers, be aware! A little “hissy”, but that could be my cable, house wiring, or any myriad of reasons. Cord: a little short, but it is a grounded 18v adaptor and it’s pretty compact. Side note- product picture has tan knobs and mine were black. A little nit-picky, but I do like the tan. Summary: if you want a compact practice amp that has great tone, this is great!! I showed it to my friend who’s a pro bass player and he ordered one too. Great features, great sound, great price. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

I’ve been curious about these little Hotone amps for some time, and the combination of a sale price and the arrival of my Prime dividend convinced me to finally buy one. I ordered the Mojo Diamond as I’m not interested in metal tones, and I am a big fan of classic Fender sounds. I connected it to three different cabinets for test: Two homemade reflex cabinets with 8” Eminence Beta speakers, and a Mojotone with a 12” Eminence guitar speaker. My impression? This is an awesome little amp. I expected a flimsy little plastic and sheet metal box, but this is a really solid unit, built on a cast aluminum box. It’s got some mass, and doesn’t slide around. The gain and tone controls have a lot of range. Gain and volume interact much like the original- and you crank down the volume, the tone rolls off. My favorite settings were with the volume at 3 o’clock or higher, and the gain between noon and max. That gives you a great clean tone with crunch that rolls on in a very controllable way, using my Hahn tele. There’s plenty of volume, and you could almost gig with this in a very small setting with an efficient cabinet. I think it’s great for jamming, home practice, and recording. Noise level isn’t super low, but with the amp cranked, it’s low enough. I think I’ll be keeping this one for a long time.

I have a small home studio and I wanted to have the ability to swap out amp tones without having to lug out a big head or a combo. i needed to be able to plug into my I/O and on to my DAW. I like heavy bass tones and wanted something that would be clean but deep with an option to overdrive like tubes might. Digital often sounds lacking to me and before the days of digital we tried to get that tube sound with solid state. Rectifiers took the place of tubes and had much of the warmth of tubes and could be made more portable, lighter, and cheaper, even with shipping from Japan! That’s what we have here, solid state, and while it’s not tubes, it’s also not digital. The Thunder bass amp has good tone, simple operation, converts to line impedance (via the headphone output), is capable of driving a decent speaker cabinet and sounds pretty damned descent while doing so. I currently own this and The British Vox clone they make and i would highly recommend each of them. I myself will be purchasing others that they also make. great for rehearsal, apt dwellers, studios with limited space, pretty much anywhere you might use a practice amp. i could see this being a viable option for small club gigs also. It’s only 5 watts but honestly you don’t always need more. this will still make your wife or mom tell you to turn it down.

So I am in the club of those that love what Mesa Rectifiers can do, but can't bring themselves to spend the money (Or even budget) for one. Furthermore, to get the tones and abilities of one requires a bit higher volume. After a bit of research, I came across this little bad boy and pulled the trigger for one. This little banger is such a joy to have. I play it through a single 15" Mesa Angled cab, and it sounds so darn good! It has a great crunch, rich tone and will totally put you in the zone when playing it. Also, the features take it to another level! An effects poop, aux in, headphone out, 3 band eq (bass, mid, treble). Combine all this its price AND compact size make this a MUST HAVE! NOW keep in mind, it's a single channel 5 watt, so you may hit a limit pushing a 4x12, I honestly don't know, as I don't have a 4x12, but ai imagine it would at least push a 2x12. Also, being single channel means even with gain all the way down, it's gonna have grit to it, which isn't bad, just something to bare in mind. I happen to also own the MOJO Diamond and THAT is a killer clean amp, but this review isn't FOR that amp, this is a Heart Attack review. If you'd like to hear BOTH amps in a review video, I have the 15min review video posted on my YouTube, just search Ezra Paco Hotone and the video will come up. All in all, you gotta get one of these little bangers of you want that Rectifier ability without the price and bulk of a Mesa Head.

Sounds a lot like a Fender, but it has annoying hum.

Picked the Thunder Bass amp up on a whim because it was down to $50. I had considered it a while ago and opted to get the Valeton TAR-20B (which was the same price at the time), taking a chance on the lesser known option because it claimed 20W vice the Hotone's 5W. I just spent an hour doing A/B comparisons and I frankly can't tell any difference, aside from the form factor and the Valeton's chorus knob. Controls and inputs/outputs are all identical; even the included power adapter is the same make and model. The Valeton certainly isn't any louder. The Hotone wins on style points, though both feel very solid. The Valeton has a blinding bright blue power LED that makes it hard to read any of the knob labels in less than full lighting conditions; the Hotone's power LED is a much more subtle amber. For a cabinet, I am currently using a repurposed Altec Lansing 6.5" driver subwoofer; I ripped out the electronics and wired in a 1/4" jack. This sits under an end table and gives me easily accessible, unobtrusive power for living room practice. I can play along with an acoustic instrument or two if I push it a bit, but this is not something you're going to use to keep up with a drummer or anything too ambitious. My children assure me it produces plenty of power to annoy them when they're playing games online. One thing to note: plugging in headphones does not disconnect the speaker output. Headphone listening is pretty clean; no particular hiss or buzz. Having used both, I would recommend whichever is cheaper unless the Valeton's chorus feature is a deciding factor. At current pricing (with the Valeton over $120), it's no contest.

Awesome little amp that is a convincing metal monster

I'm building a small combo just for fun summer project; this amp was recommended by friend. The very 1st youtube review, guy with ALOT of followers, is super negative; he totally slams this amp. He hooks it up to a 4x12 cabinet to test 🤦‍♂️ I found a review vid where someone put the time effort into getting the most out of this amp and its really really great for the size and solid state. When you consider the price thats even better. This amp is a two-trick pony; clean, and crunch. In my opinion that's it; the super high distortion doesn't sound good at all. BUT... the clean and crunch sound ridiculously good for what this amp is, AND it takes OD pedals extremely well! I'm going to pair this with an eminence 6.5" driver in an open back cab that i'm building. When i tested it i hooked it up to celestion 12T-100 and eminence "special design" (for fender); both 1x12 open back cabs. When trying pedals i had it going direct to board and out through studio monitors. Clean with verb and delay is fantastic (for what the amp is) thru fx loop. At one point with klon clone and SC strat, probably an hour just jammin; sounds really good. Surprisingly decent guitar vol rolloff response for a modeler imo. Personally i like OD into input; not through fx loop. But i did test and i think most people would think its fine. This doesn't compare to an actual tube amp. If you want a tube amp then get one. I don't know who this is marketed toward (probably people way younger than me); i guess it might be useful on the floor board, but i just don't know how.