The 8 Best solid state Amp heads (2023 reviews)

The orange amps solid state amp head should be able to handle its purpose and duties with ease. This new little tube amp cranks pretty loud and sounds clean and the distortion sounds great too. It has enough versatility to do clean-ish and can dial in good enough blues and jazz. It will work with any speaker cabinet that has an 8 ohm load or higher. It cleans are very warm with lots of headroom at 9 o'clock and below.

Building on the outstanding micro platform, the micro dark comes equipped with a transparent, fully buffered fx loop, so you can use your favorite pedals with ease. It provides great tones for home use. The sound is great, very versatile. Love the *all* useable gain control, and the single tone shaper really allows a lot of dialing from mushy mid heavy to scooped articulate.

Why We Like This:

Perfect for home practicing and/or studio
Sounds great at both ear destroying or bedroom playing levels
Great power and flexibility and sound from an incredibly small and portable box
Great buy, perfect for apts & home studios

Best For ampless setup: Orange solid state Amp Head

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The orange solid state amp head is capable of outshining several other head featured in this list in overall features for the price point. This pedal sounds more like their metal amplifiers. It offers foot switchable master volume controls that give you the terror stamp’s full range of sounds at two different volumes. It works just fine as soon as you turn it on. There's a lot of great tones in the preamp, and dialling any one of them with the control knobs is easy enough.

Breakup in the output section allows the reverb/delay/modulation pedals in your chain to output cleanly over your distorted guitar signal. It's small and has just about everything you need. It provides instant access to a very orange-flavored 4 x 12 speaker emulation. There is a noise floor with any decent gain setting, so the mute is gold, Jerry, it's GOLD.

Why We Like This:

Excellent distortion tones, very lush and full
Great sounds from a tiny package
New and hot release

Best For buck: Valeton solid state Amp Head

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Not everyone likes to purchase head for their regular usage, but the valeton solid state amp head would be an anomoly. The Headphone Out Acts as a Cab Simulator for Plugging into Speakers/Headphones, or Recording Interfaces So You Get An Amazing Full Tone. It is very well built, the controls are smooth and effective and it does not get hot, hum, buzz, or introduce noise in the signal. It can do completely clean, crunchy to haywire, and anything from subtle reverb to surf. It offers great resolution through a decent speaker.

The cabinet has a removable panel about the size of one rack space that fits an amp. The sound is clean and the reverb has a nice chime to it. It is surprisingly good sound though lacking low end frequencies.

Why We Like This:

Great for home use or small club
Lot of satisfied buyers

Best For home recording: Peavey solid state Amp Head

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Not everyone likes to purchase head for their daily purpose, but the peavey solid state amp head would be an anomoly. It is hands down the best mini-head for classic rock. It comes with foot switchable channels, crunch, reverb, and effects loop, and you've got all the flexibility you need with the peavey 6505 mh. The footswitch has 2 buttons, the first switches from clean to lead and the 2nd is the crunch on the clean channel. There are two, two-button footswitch jacks on the back of the amp. There's also a switch for a Marshall voicing on the rhythm channel, which does a good job of imitation.

The reverb and effects loop are footswitchable. They are INCREDIBLY loud, suitable for arenas and big stages.

Why We Like This:

Sounnds claner and tighter, has lots of gain and seperate eq for the channels
Has pre amp tubes and sounds fat with somewhar loose low end
Minimum hardware requirements may be needed for use with recording software

Best practice Amp: Noobecr solid state 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 noobecr solid state amp head is exactly that - it's a simple head that hits all the right notes. The Micro Terror is more than worth the money and should be in every little shredder stable. The single input and single speaker out of the micro dark streamlines your setup. It is surprisingly loud, deffinately loud enough to play with the band. The volume, shape, and gain make it very easy to adjust to your tone.

The Micro Dark's headphone output is equipped with cabsim circuitry, which mimics the sound of a miked orange 4x12" cabinet faithfully. The buffered effects loop lets you insert your fx pedal into a loop between a preamp and power amp without sacrificing your original tone. You can use these picks for strumming acoustic guitars. The included power supply in the orange amp micro dark bundle is a standard 120v plug.

Why We Like This:

You can easily fit it in any gig bag or room
Awesome for playing heavy metal in a bedroom rig
You can achieve a more pronounced brighter tone by pushing the gain level

Best With windows: Boss solid state Amp Head

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Compared with other head in this category, the boss solid state amp head has a convenient design. The Boss Katana does nearly everything you'd ever want from an amp and certainly everything you need. It's light weight, can accept a broad range of ohm speaker resistances, and can go from quiet to quite loud. The fact that it less than half the weight of a 100 watt tube head makes it more easily transportable, especially for 60 + year old backs.

As far as usability, the great thing about the Katana Head is that right out of the box you can plug in your guitar and play on the head without needing to have it plugged into a speaker cabinet. The 5 inch speaker on board makes it a functional and good sounding small combo amp. While not as warm as a true tube amp, it does deliver a more natural, less fizzy distortion and pick attack dynamics. The Katana really sounds excellent and again responds well to dynamics of your play.

Why We Like This:

Definitely keeps the front of the amp simple and sleek
Pedals built into the katana/boss tonestudio are effective
New and hot release

Best For practice: Marshall solid state Amp Head

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The marshall solid state amp head is suitable and reliable and fits well with your daily purpose. This type of low wattage amp is best for apartments and recording studios. It's loud as Fork. It crunches, chugs and grinds as much as you want it to. There is a button on the back of the amp you can lower the voltage for recording with. It looks so cute, until it wants to bite yours off.

This is just an amp head you’ll need a speaker cabinet to plug it into. These are vintage-style interactive EQs, and dialing the treble all the way down actually increases the bass. The level pot is really progressive, as it should. This is a great little amp for practice and sounds like a bigger amp well worth the money.

Why We Like This:

Sounds great thru a 4x12 cabinet
Great value, well built and studio ready
Awesome little amp, perfect for jamming with cranked tone at a low volume

Best Metal Amp: Other solid state Amp Head

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention other solid state amp head for regular usage. This is a great sound head for hard rock and classic metal. It can work with 4, 8 or 16 ohms, but the ideal and for all its preferable potential of 4ohm, with 8 giving 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. It gives you a lot of control over your tone.

The amp controls are pretty tweak-able in and of themselves. 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
Delivers what they promise