The 9 Best Clean Amp heads (2023 reviews)

The latest orange amps clean amp head is an absolute beast in terms of its features, and rightfully takes the top spot with ease. This thing sounds good with headphones, a single 10" or 12" speaker, and a 4x12" cabinet as well. It has enough versatility to do clean-ish and can dial in good enough blues and jazz. The shape knob has a very useful sweep that gives great tones for recording. There's plenty of gain saturation but not so much as to become fizzy and there's plenty of bottom end. The amp is perfect for inspiring new ideas when practicing or sketching.

You can use it with headphones through the headphone output jack without a speaker cabinet attached. The sound is great, very versatile. It can be used as a signal out to a board. Love the *all* useable gain control, and the single tone shaper really allows a lot of dialing from mushy mids heavy to scooped articulate.

Why We Like This:

Perfect backup head for a tube amp, and a great second guest amp
Sounds great at both ear destroying or bedroom playing levels
Good brand reputation

Best For simple But killer Guitar Tone: Vox Clean Amp Head

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Vox makes beautiful and great head with classic and smartly choosen materials. From warm, natural cleans to dynamic overdrives, this power amp has been engineered to respond to the nuances of your guitar and, of course, your technique. It is equipped with an all-analog pre-amp circuit that features nutube, a revolutionary new vacuum tube that produces authentic tube tone at a fraction of the size. The tone is crisp and chimey, just like the bigger AC30 and the saturation is fantastic. It is plenty loud to use on stage. The manual ohm knob allows some additional manual control of the output of the power amp.

The clean sound isn't as chimey as a Fender. There is a power meter with amber back-lighting that is a cool feature even if it's not necessary. The bass and treble controls allow an amazing range of meaningful adjustment.

Why We Like This:

Good brand reputation
Lot of satisfied buyers

Best For medium sized area: Joyo Clean Amp Head

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The joyo clean amp head is suitable and reliable and fits well with your daily usage. This is a killer cool light weight amp and it can be loud, sounds very close to a real tube amp as well. It powers the speaker very easily, and can get really loud if you desire. It is a great choice for musicians who want to perform live with the bantamp series. The gain structure is thick and fine grained, but theres more of it, than is useful.

The tone control really has a wide range on it. This will definitely get loud enough to make stage volume and depending on your band rehearsal, can keep up with a drummer and bassist. It will BLOW YOUR MIND. The discreet controls for each channel on this XL version are a must for anyone planning to use the amp in a performance situation.

Why We Like This:

Great tube hybrid amp for a small area
A very easy rig to move around
One of the new comers and featured product

Best For home recording: Peavey Clean Amp Head

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We know from years of feedback from readers, customers and amazon sellers, what most people want in a convenient and appropriate head. The peavey clean amp head is exactly that - it's a simple head that hits all the right notes. This 20W mini head has the same monstrous tone that the larger model has. It's a beastly little amp that can deliver on all three wattage settings. It has a 8 or 16 ohm selector switch. The clean and crunch channels sound warm and thick with humbuckers. The wattage can be set to 20, 5, or 1 watt, it’s pre gain can be set to your desired distortion level and the post gain can be turned down for great sound at bedroom levels that will not hurt your ears.

There is a versatile ohm speaker switch to work with either 8 or 16 ohm extension speaker cabinets. The clean is clean, easily does R&R crunch, loves pedals and the lead channel has plenty of gain at less than 1/2 way up. It is easy to get any sound from crunch to a deep distortion.

Why We Like This:

Served well as a great starter tube amp
Great booming cleans with a ton of distortion when needed
Plenty of volume on tap and good for bedroom practice too

Best For buck: Valeton Clean Amp Head

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If you are searching for a satisfactory head for your daily usage, you cannot go wrong with the valeton clean amp head. If you need a small guitar amp, this is the way to go. The Headphone Out Acts as a Cab Simulator for Plugging into Speakers/Headphones, or Recording Interfaces So You Get An Amazing Full Tone. It reacts very naturally to dynamics and cleans up well dialing back the volume. It can do completely clean, crunchy to haywire, and anything from subtle reverb to surf.

The Amp is made of metal, weighs approx 1.8 pounds, and its build quality is excellent. It gets plenty loud enough for small gigs, or band practice, even with a drummer, if your band isn't playing really loud. The cabinet has a removable panel about the size of one rack space that fits an amp.

Why We Like This:

Simple controls easy for beginners to dial in their tone
Tiny metal design is sturdy, and light
Great combination for recording live guitar

Best With windows: Boss Clean Amp Head

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For a low asking price, boss clean amp head has managed to overwhelm their customers by packing as many features as they could. The Boss Katana does nearly everything you'd ever want from an amp and certainly everything you need. It includes compact effects, multi-effects, amplifiers, loopers, guitar synthesizers, tuners, accessories, and more. The 50 watt katana amp has a power consumption listing of 47 watts. It has power scaling up to 1 watt. It's fun to mess around with the effects and hook up to a computer and go even further into the settings and effects it carries.

The Katana really sounds excellent and responds well to dynamics of your play. The 5 inch speaker on board makes it a functional and good sounding small combo amp. It does deliver a more natural, less fizzy distortion and pick attack dynamics.

Why We Like This:

Pedals built into the katana/boss tonestudio are effective
One of the new comers and featured product

Best For Metal music: Marshall Clean Amp Head

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Marshall line of head come in a pretty wide variety of styles, so you can definitely find one that suits your individual preferences and needs. The Origin 50 is a great sound amp, can be very loud if you want it to be, is the best value in tube amps PERIOD, and nails classic Marshall tones. While it doesn't have the gain of the EVH it has plenty for classic rock style music especially with an overdrive pedal. The rubber feet on the bottom of the head sit nicely on the top of the ORI212 cabinet. It doesn't completely nail any of those, but it'll definitely get you in the ballpark.

The 50 watt heads are two inches wider than this cabinet. It can do very reasonable renditions of a JTM, JMP, and JCM. It’s ok for metal, and doesn’t feature a distortion channel. This amp sounds VERY different with volume on. It just has a steeper learning curve than most.

Why We Like This:

50 watt and use four speakers capable of handling 350 watts
Every guitar sounds and feels different through it
Sounds great and no problems with the head or speakers

Best Head: Orange Clean Amp Head

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The orange clean amp head is satisfactory and appropriate and fits well with your regular usage. While it's not as powerful as the Rockerverb series, it's 30 watts packs a lot of punch. It takes pedals very well. It is amps that deliver everything from blissful cleans, to classic bluesy orange crunch all the way through to full-bodied, ultra high gain metal distortion. It cleans, right up to the point of breakup, whilst the dirty channel remains unerringly focussed, steeped in complex harmonic overtones even at maximum gain settings.

The clean channel on this is amazing, rich, creamy tone with huge headroom with a deathly quiet amp noise and takes pedals well, so its masterful just like that. It comes with its simple layout and feature set and its flexible voicing, it packs the potential to deliver that classic fat and bright orange tone, but it also stays punchy and refined without having to be blisteringly loud.

Why We Like This:

You can get everything from a clean crunch to outright filthy distortion
Good brand reputation

Best Metal Amp: Other Clean Amp Head

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We know from years of feedback from readers, customers and amazon sellers, what most people want in a convenient and appropriate head. The other clean amp head is exactly that - it's a simple head that hits all the right notes. This head can produce modern high gain tonality with ease from a v30 celestion 4x12 cabinet. It can work with 4, 8 or 16 ohms, but the ideal and for all its preferable potential of 4ohm, with 8 gives approximately half power. The tone out of the Bill Lawrence 500xl and the pearly gates pickups match what comes out of axe effects for this same rig. That foam configuration tightens up the low end and keeps it from making the "thwack" sound from too much bass reflection.

The amp controls are pretty tweak-able in and of themselves. This provides excellent tonal tweak-ability and a nice tight sound. It has more headroom for volume and has a bit more bite. If you are on a budget and want a good metal amp, this is a good investment for under 300.00 bucks.

Why We Like This:

Solid control shafts, heavy duty appointments
Sounds killer, very convenient and properly made control of the sound
Good brand reputation