With effects engaged, particularly the reverb, there's a crucial sense of spaciousness and warmth to the proceedings that a dry sound in headphones can lack. Playing through the amPhones is a rewarding experience, with an amp sound that is nicely sensitive to your playing dynamics. "Playing through the amPhones is a rewarding experience" The Bass version of the amPhones eschews the effects for a compressor, with the dial adjusting its sensitivity. In practice, it's a little fiddly reaching behind your ear all the time to adjust a dial, but chances are you'll find an effect you like and not need to touch the dial again. After that, the dial increases the reverb amount. Advancing the dial further adds more chorus until you hear another beep and you get delay, the amount of which you can increase until you hear the next beep. The effects dial offers no effects at its zero position, but if you advance it a little you hear an audible 'beep', which means you have some chorus effect. The left earcup is also home to a set of four thumbwheel-style rotary dials controlling the output volume, amp gain, amp tone and effects added to the signal. The amPhones will work like any set of headphones until you turn on the battery powered amp simulation with a red LED-equipped switch on the left earcup. The connection is via a straight 1.3m cable, which is just right for connecting to your guitar without getting in the way, although those who favour a low-slung guitar when standing may find the cable a little on the short side. Physically, the amPhones are nicely put together, and easily adjustable for a comfortable fit. But the new amPhones simplify the whole thing by having the amPlug's technology built directly into a set of Audio- Technica headphones, which you can also use as normal 'phones. You may have already twigged that these are an evolution of Vox's existing amPlug amp simulators - you just plug one of those into your guitar and add headphones. Well, that's exactly what some bright spark at Vox must have been thinking when they came up with the concept of the amPhones. How great would it be if you could just plug some 'phones into your guitar output socket, be completely mobile, and still get a decent sound? Now, that may work absolutely fine, but could get a bit messy with the attendant tangle of guitar lead, headphone cable and maybe a power supply - plus the likelihood that you'll be stuck in one place doing it. "How great would it be if you could just plug some 'phones into your guitar output socket and still get a decent sound?" ![]() Okay, so you want to practise your guitar but you want to keep it to yourself - what do you do? Well, the traditional approach would be to use headphones to plug into your chosen sound source, which could be a computer, smart phone/tablet running amp sim software or a perhaps even a hardware amp simulator.
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