Technological advances are making life a lot more interesting for guitarists. The days of dusty Marshall stacks and vast networks of stomp-boxes may be numbered. The recent surge in amps in the form of apps has provided many of the advantages of the old, lumbering kit in a hand-held, software format. All you need to perform at Sunday service is your iPad or iPhone, a lead and your guitar!
AmpKit
This amp was developed with the help of Peavey, and gives you over a hundred amp and pedal presets, as well as the option to create your own. AmpKit is available both for free and in a more feature-laden paid version. This means you have the option of trying out the sound before you part ways with your cash. You can even just buy add-ons if you don’t want everything on the full version.
The free version offers a Peavey ValveKing amp with matching cabinets, an overdrive pedal, a noise gate and two different microphones. In the full version, you get three extra amps: the Peavey 3120, Vintage Brit and Colonel Vintage, and chorus, phaser, flanger, fuzz, distortion, compressor, 10 Band EQ and reverb pedals!
Key Features
- Includes recording functionality.
- Comes with an in-built tuner and metronome.
- Allows you to jam along to your music library.
- Lets you use recordings with other apps.
This app is great for most genres of music, and gives you enough options to keep you sounding cool every time. You’ll need an iPad to realistically use it in a performance setting, of course – unless you have particularly nimble fingers!
PocketAmp
Pocket Lab Works’ app PocketAmp isn’t available for free, but once you buy it, you have all of the features. It has an intuitive user interface and comes with four amps and four cabs to choose from. It also includes a hum-cancelling noise gate feature, like AmpKit. You also get plenty of effects, with three in-built presets and the option create your own.
Key Features
- Rock, Blues, Metal and Clean amps.
- Classic 1960, Metal Signature, Silverface and Tweed 1959 cabs.
- Reverb, rotary, echo, tremolo, chorus and flanger effects.
- Options to control gain, volume, attack and noise gate.
- Feedback control switch – to eliminate unwanted screeching.
If you’re interested in taking your guitar playing to the 21st century, you’ll need an app like PocketAmp or AmpKit (or others such as StompBox) and an adapter. This is a little piece of hardware to connect your iPhone or iPad’s tiny stereo headphone slot to your guitar. After that, you’re ready to go!
Carl Thomas says
I happily don’t use Apple anything but Amplitube has made me consider picking up a used ipod touch or last gen iphone. Surprised it did not make your list.
Bevan Kay says
I was talking about stuff like this to a guy at church yesterday. I’m running a POD HD500 but we were talking about how things are getting smaller and smaller. Amp processors can run on an iPod Touch so how long before the PSU is native to the guitar and you load patches via a USB stick that you plug in next to the *LINE OUT* cable on the guitar. No longer would an amp or another device even be needed. It would all be built into the guitar.