Line 6 Catalyst, Black, 60-Watt, 1x12
First, the Line 6 Catalyst 60-Watt 1x12 Combo Amplifier for $299.99 is a solid pick. It offers versatile tones and is built to handle anything from clean jazz to heavy rock.
MOOER SD30i Practice Guitar Amp Portable Smart Amplifier
For those who enjoy practicing on the go, the MOOER Practice Portable Intelligent Bluetooth Guitar Amplifier at $109.99 offers Bluetooth connectivity, so you can jam wherever you are.
Pyle Multi-Guitar Stand 7 Slot Display Rack
A reliable stand is a must, and the Pyle Guitar Stand at just $30.99 is both sturdy and foldable.
Positive Grid Spark MINI 10W Portable Smart Guitar Amp & Bluetooth Speaker
If you need a portable speaker, the Positive Grid Portable Bluetooth Speaker for $183 packs a punch despite its compact size, making it great for practice sessions and small gigs.
AeroBand Guitar Smart Guitar
For beginners or those looking to try something different, the Stringless Removable Fretboard Guitar for Beginners and Teenagers is a unique, user-friendly option. Designed for learning the basics without the intimidation of traditional strings.
D'addario Nickel Wound Electric Guitar Strings
Beyond Amazon, there are some fantastic deals from other retailers. Sweetwater has the D’Addario EXL110 Regular Light Nickel Wound Electric Strings 10-Pack for $38.49.
PRS Sonzera 20 20-watt 1 x 12-inch Tube Combo Amp
The PRS Sonzera 20 20-Watt 1x12-Inch Tube Combo at $1,099.00 offers those rich, warm tube tones. For a limited time, you can buy any PRS amplifier, and get a free PRS pedal of your choice, a $349.00 value.
Fender American Ultra Stratocaster Maple Fingerboard Electric Guitar Cobra Blue
The Fender American Ultra Stratocaster with a Maple Fingerboard in Cobra Blue at $1,979.99 is a bit pricier but worth every penny for its playability and tone.
Squier Classic Vibe '70s Jaguar Limited-Edition Electric Guitar Daphne Blue
At Guitar Center, the Squier Classic Vibe ‘70s Jaguar Limited Edition Electric Guitar in Daphne Blue for $349.99 is a steal.
Boss DM-101 Delay Machine Pedal
Finally, for pedal enthusiasts, the Boss DM-101 Delay Machine Pedal at $449.99 from ProAudioStar is a must-have. It's a versatile pedal that can add a whole new dimension to your sound
So, whether you’re looking to upgrade your rig or just starting out, these deals are too good to pass up. Happy playing!
The $499 Indonesia-built PRS SE CE 24 Standard Satin does not have the advantage of a flame-maple top to give an upscale aura, like its bolt-on cousin the SE CE 24, but doesn’t need it. Because it takes about a minute of playing the SE CE 24 Standard Satin to feel and hear that it’s guided by the same playability-first design philosophies that make top-shelf PRS instruments coveted. There’s a lot of classic PRS essence in the SE CE 24 Standard Satin, and at 500 bucks in the year 2024, that is no mean feat.
The Best Deal Yet? PRS SE CE 24 Demo
Stirring Up Trouble
One really cool thing about a satin finish PRS is that, rather than compelling you to don kid gloves, it invites you play it hard, like a battered old Les Paul Jr. or Telecaster might. Like those guitars, the SE CE 24 Standard Satin is an elemental instrument. There is little in the way of bells and whistles to distract you from picking. Instead, the straight-ahead nature of the design tends to reinforce the sense of how well-made the SE CE 24 Standard Satin is.
Even with the $499 price in mind, I will surprise exactly no one by mentioning that this PRS is, more or less, flawlessly put together. Look all you want—you won’t find anything misaligned, sloppily cut, or improperly glued anywhere. The bolt-on maple neck sits snugly in its pocket and the fretwork is every bit as nice as what you see on guitars much further up the food chain. There’s no fret buzz, and yet the action is low and slinky. The guitar rings like it’s a living thing, too. Strum a first-position E chord and you’ll feel the resonance in your ribs.
When you examine the SE CE 24 Standard Satin at even closer range, you find details that charm and impress. Where an expensive U.S.-built PRS wouldn’t leave the factory with anything other than a perfectly bookmatched mahogany body, the SE CE 24 Standard Satin’s all-mahogany body is made up of at least three sections which look fairly asymmetric in size. The grain looks pretty different at the joins, too. But that does nothing to detract from the pervading sense of craft. In fact, it heightens the SE CE 24 Standard Satin’s all-business, proletarian essence—a nice thing to see in a guitar from a brand which, historically, is associated with fancy appointments.
Other construction details leave you appreciative of PRS’ commitment to advancing electric guitar design rather than being bound to tradition. The PRS Patented Tremolo vibrato system is as smooth as molasses and stable even under vicious handling (a specialty of mine). Among guitars in this price class, I’ve grown to expect vibratos that fly wildly out of tune if you sneeze, with arms that constantly flop and dangle out of reach. Even on this import version of the system, the ridiculously simple solution of a non-threaded arm that sits in a plastic sleeve works without fail. You can situate it at various heights and swing it into any position that feels comfortable, and it will stay there. It’s a fix for the inexpensive vibrato blues that many manufacturers would be wise to study. The dark-hued rosewood fretboard, too, seems luxurious for a $500 guitar. Most guitars in this price zone pivoted to paler Indian Laurel for fretboards some time ago.
Rowdy, Raw, and Refined
I instinctively get apprehensive when I see uncovered humbuckers in an affordable guitar. Something about encountering decades worth of ghastly, harsh, thin, and nasty entry-level humbuckers will do that to you. The 85/15 “S” pickups in our review guitar go a long way toward alleviating this paranoia. In humbucker mode, the bridge pickup is balanced. There is a midrange bump that can lend just a touch of harmonic clutter and some stridency when you play chords at full volume. But lead lines sing with a heated energy that has a nice touch of silkiness around the edges. Volume and tone attenuation are effective cures, too, if the midrange is too hot for your taste. That midrange emphasis is less flattering in the neck pickup, at least when you play big rock chords. But melodic fingerpicking and a dynamic touch summon a sweet side, and, as with the bridge pickup, single notes from the 1st through 3rd strings in particular have a satisfying, ringing presence that is not at all harsh. Combined pickup tones are especially nice. They’re springy, airy, and at times have an almost-Stratocaster-but-fatter ring.
Speaking of Stratocaster tones, there’s more than a little taste of Straty-ness in the split-coil voices. In the bridge position, the fundamental split-coil tone rings a lot like a hot Strat pickup, but with less bite and muscle than a Telecaster bridge. The neck pickup comes off as a bit rowdy and exhibits more overdrive characteristics than a Strat neck pickup, but is very responsive to a nudge to the volume control if you want clear, less-driven tones. The middle position in split-coil mode, which combines the centermost coils of the two pickups, is the most interesting twist on the instrument’s inner Stratocaster spirit. It generates a thick and muscular but clear and snappy version of a Strat’s out-of-phase tones. That’s not a sound I use a lot, but I love the PRS’s take on that tonality. Each split-coil position, by the way, exhibits very little volume loss when compared to humbucker mode.
The Verdict
We probably sound like a busted record at this point—going on about how PRS tends to overachieve in the affordable price category. But, hey, don’t look at us. It’s PRS’s fault. And until they start building junk we’ll keep on raving. The careful construction, useful and flexible coil-splitting capacity, reliable, smart vibrato, and all-around stability make this instrument an uncommon value. And you could very easily spend a lot more money and fail to get a guitar that does as much, and does it as well, as this straight-ahead, no-frills machine.
Lyle Lovett once told me in an interview, “There’s nothing that sounds better to me than an acoustic guitar played into a microphone or into the air in a room.” That’s an understandable sentiment, and since Lovett and other acoustic guitarists rely primarily on natural sustain, many wrestle with adding electronics to the sonic recipe. Undersaddle pickups, DI boxes, and then, at the end of the signal chain, amplifiers, all pose threats to acoustic fidelity, which purists don’t take lightly. Measuring at 8.1" x 10.4" x 9.5" and weighing in at 9.1 pounds, the bantamweight Fishman Loudbox Micro ($299 street), however, is an affordable and compact option that may put their ears and nerves at ease.
Simple, Set, Go!
The Loudbox Micro is very straightforward. It has instrument and mic channels distinguished by 1/4"and XLR inputs respectively. The instrument channel’s controls include gain, low, mid, high, reverb and chorus intensity, and a phase switch. (The chorus also has two preset voices—one softer and subtler, the other pleasant but intense—that are adjusted from either side of noon on the chorus intensity knob.
I’ve been an almost strictly acoustic player for the past 16 years, until recently, when a switch inexplicably flipped and I shifted my gaze to electric. When I plugged my Washburn Bella Tono Elegante (with an L.R. Baggs Anthem SL undersaddle pickup and preamp) into the 40-watt Loudbox Micro, it had been three and a half months since I’d heard it at all (I almost shed a tear). Amplified, my guitar tends to sound pretty clean and uncompromised, and these characteristics were plainly audible through the Loudbox Micro.
The desired effect of an acoustic amp is to plug in, start playing, and say, “Is it on?” With the master volume at noon, gain at 8 o’clock, and the 3-band EQ controls all at noon, the Loudbox Micro pretty much pulled that off, save for the tiniest bit of speaker hiss. The Washburn is a warm guitar with pretty high end presence. Both attributes can be heard clearly through the 5.25" poly cone woofer and the .8" soft dome tweeter. The Fishman preserves that critical brightness in fingerpicking tunes, and keeps string separation intact when strummed. If anything, the tone from the Fishman was a little bit rounder than when unplugged, but only slightly and certainly not so much so that it weighed down the clean tone.
At lower master volume and higher gain levels (in this case at 8 o’clock and 3 o’clock, respectively) I found that the tone got a little too round and some fidelity was lost. With the higher master volume settings, I was able to turn the gain up to 10 o’clock before I heard feedback. At the lower master volume, I could turn the gain to near-maximum levels. If your ears fail you for some reason, you can also consult the clipping light on the console that indicates when the gain is too high.
I enjoyed hearing the reverb convert my decently sized living room into something like a concert hall. The reverb has relatively low diffusion, and I heard it as subtle and distinctive, with enough decay to achieve a large hall effect. With my recent dive into electric guitar, I’ve become a bigger fan of chorus, so I was a little disappointed to discover that I could only really hear much of it in the mix when turned halfway up on the second, more intense preset. That’s a minor drawback. Heavy chorus is not the most commonly sought-out acoustic color. Still, it’s nice to have a strong voice to experiment with.
The Verdict
The Loudbox Micro is a reliable amp that, with the right settings, will keep your acoustic tones authentic and true. Its diminutive size and 40-watt power make it an ideal companion for gigs in small to medium rooms, and its onboard reverb and chorus are a plus. At $299, it might even keep Lyle Lovett happy.
