You might want to do a bit of poking around on that mini 6505 head.It feels like I came across folks saying that it heats up to an unacceptable degree in at least a couple of places.One other thing, have you just ruled out the Joyo stuff? Seems like at least a couple of folks have mentioned that it was solid.

We have a little lunchbox. Its loud as fuck. I use it with a rusty box an 2 12 cabs and it sounds pretty good. Great for a couch amp. The reverb is the worst I've ever heard

Dr Tony Balls wrote:elisha wiesner wrote:Do other people make this type of thing or is the Zvex the only one?Well.....I would.What kind of volume are we talking about? Even with a little Gibson or a Princeton played clean thru a 12 speaker when I stop playing I notice that my wife upstairs has the TV blasting. Speaking of which, Jeff Beck recorded some album with an orchestra recently and to hear him talk about it, he just blasted away with a tweed Champ in the same room and it kept up.

Also, my dad has one of those Vox Night Trains and it definitely works for what it s supposed to do, but you get that guitar pedal sound that I m having trouble describing but is present in pretty much any amp that has a whole bunch of knobs and switches and power options. It doesn t really sound like a good AC30 but it s in the same ballpark. Still cool though.

So I picked up one of those Zvex heads for $200 and it just showed up. It's cool and super cute but the sound is just ok. The clean tone is meh and when cranked, it's kind of fizzy sounding. Not terrible at all and I'm definitely going to play around with it over the weekend but maybe I was expecting too much from what I've read about them.

So, the Zvex head was a bust but I still wanted a tine amp for my shop. Just got a Wangs micro head. It's a tiny 1W Chinese tube amp and it sounds fantastic! It's exactly what I need out here. A really good sounding amp that just can't get too loud!

I love the sound of my Zvex Nano. I don t find it fizzy at all.

So one thing i've been thinking about a lot lately is what makes a classic amp sound like the enjoyable classic amp that we all love, and can it be repeated in a small format. FM Steve got me started on this a while ago when he brought up the idea of creating an entire amp with subminiature tubes (like the zvex nano). Subminiature or not there's a few things that are different, and perhaps key, in most mini/lunchbox/whatever amps compared to a standard big boy like a tweed Bassman/JTM45:Push-Pull - Most amps that we use regularly are push-pull config, which is necessary to produce more power, but also affects the sound quite a bit. Single-ended amps like a champ, tweed Princeton, AC4, etc have a grindier/fizzier distortion when they're turned up. The ZVEX Nano is an example of this as it is single-ended as well. Push-pull amps tend to have a more crisp, crunchy distortion.Phase Inversion - Phase inverters are necessary for push-pull and contribute to the sound of an amp, and its a big reason why a tweed Bassman sounds different from a tweed Pro. When I do see mini amps that are push pull (like the Wangs amp Elisha posted about) they often have different phase inverters than most common amps. This could affect the overall sound.Pentode/Triode Output - Almost every mini amp I see has triodes as the output tube(s) instead of pentodes, but like *every* major amp ever has pentode outputs for more power and efficiency (EL84, 6V6, 6L6, etc). You see a lot of big amps nowadays that are 30W but have like a "5W" mode and thats when they switch the pentode power tubes to operate as triodes. It makes for a lot less power but it doesnt sound equal. What I need to do is a) stop being so busy, and b) step up and try an experiment where I make a mini Bassman that ticks all of the three boxes above (EF86 outputs?) and see what happens. The goal being can you make a mini version of a normal amp and have it sound the same.