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King Loudness « Great practice amp »
Published on 08/31/11 at 13:11The VOX Pathfinder 15R is a small solid state 15 watt 1x8 combo amplifier that is a single channel affair, built in the general style of the older VOX amps. It features gain, volume, treble and bass controls to adjust your core tone. There's also an onboard boost switch, as well as onboard tremolo! How cool is that? The Pathfinder 15R also features a built in reverb. On the back the amp has headphone and line outs as well as an external speaker output for running into a speaker cabinet of your choice (8 ohms).
UTILIZATION
Getting a good tone out of this amp is not difficult. The real problem (and it's to be expected) is the stock speaker. It's only 8 inches so it can't put out the bottom end or low mids that I'd like to hear in an amp. It's surprisingly tubelike in its response too, so I was surprised how awesome it sounded when run through an extension cabinet. I liked the tone of the one that I tried so much I bought one of my own not long after. Dialing it in is fairly simple due to the limited controls. I usually just set everything to noon and then tweaked to taste depending on if I wanted a clean, low gain, or high gain type of sound, or depending on if I was running standalone or through an extension cabinet.
SOUNDS
The sounds out of the VOX Pathfinder 15R are quite surprising for a little practice amp. The general tones are very much like a real tube VOX amplifier. The clean tones have a very nice chime to them that works especially well with single coil or P90 pickups. It can get a little bit too dark with humbuckers at times, especially if you're running through the stock 8" speaker. The drive tones are very brown sounding much like a classic Marshall. I didn't want to believe how good the tones were - it just didn't seem possible for a $150 amp to sound that tube-like, but it's true. Harmonics just leap from the amp and the high end snarl is perfect for that eighties riff rock type tone. The onboard reverb and tremolo are fairly high quality too.
OVERALL OPINION
All in all I think the VOX Pathfinder 15R is a great sounding amplifier that has a shocking tone when run through a good speaker or speakers. It's extremely tube-like in its feel and tone, and for the $100 that I paid I was happy as a lark. I sold mine in one of my gear fluxes, but I will eventually get another one because they do sound that great.
UTILIZATION
Getting a good tone out of this amp is not difficult. The real problem (and it's to be expected) is the stock speaker. It's only 8 inches so it can't put out the bottom end or low mids that I'd like to hear in an amp. It's surprisingly tubelike in its response too, so I was surprised how awesome it sounded when run through an extension cabinet. I liked the tone of the one that I tried so much I bought one of my own not long after. Dialing it in is fairly simple due to the limited controls. I usually just set everything to noon and then tweaked to taste depending on if I wanted a clean, low gain, or high gain type of sound, or depending on if I was running standalone or through an extension cabinet.
SOUNDS
The sounds out of the VOX Pathfinder 15R are quite surprising for a little practice amp. The general tones are very much like a real tube VOX amplifier. The clean tones have a very nice chime to them that works especially well with single coil or P90 pickups. It can get a little bit too dark with humbuckers at times, especially if you're running through the stock 8" speaker. The drive tones are very brown sounding much like a classic Marshall. I didn't want to believe how good the tones were - it just didn't seem possible for a $150 amp to sound that tube-like, but it's true. Harmonics just leap from the amp and the high end snarl is perfect for that eighties riff rock type tone. The onboard reverb and tremolo are fairly high quality too.
OVERALL OPINION
All in all I think the VOX Pathfinder 15R is a great sounding amplifier that has a shocking tone when run through a good speaker or speakers. It's extremely tube-like in its feel and tone, and for the $100 that I paid I was happy as a lark. I sold mine in one of my gear fluxes, but I will eventually get another one because they do sound that great.