Danelectro HoneyTone Mini Amp

I just got one of these brand new (2009) after borrowing one from my mom (who uses it clean to amplify a harmonica), and playing it for awhile. It has a great classic rock/blues tone, with distortion adjustable via a small knob. It has the basic volume/power knob and a tone knob. Just take it easy on the volume level for playing clean, otherwise it WILL distort.

I've been playing my hot-rodded MIM Strat (outfitted with Lace Sensor Hot Golds) through this thing and the combination of that guitar and this amp sounds great. Once upon a time, as a teenager starting out playing, I once loved to play with the distortion up on max, but now in my 20's I find myself not using nearly that amount of distortion or just playing clean altogether, and this little amp suits me well for my current playing habits. Like I said before though, when playing clean, just watch the volume level because it WILL distort if too high. I compensate for this by having the amp volume (clean) up to max, but having the guitar's volume up midway, so when you want distortion, just max out the guitar's volume knob and BAM! A little trick for alternating between clean and dirty without a pedal or turning the distortion knob on the amp.

I wouldn't use this amp for gigs (maybe for solo sidewalk busking) or playing in a band since it's a small, low-powered amp, but for playing around the house, excellent. I currently find myself using this amp more than my "land-line" Fender amp (aka one you plug into an electrical outlet).

Haven't had to deal with customer support, so can't say.

If this amp were lost, stolen or broken, I would easily be compelled to replace it (about $20 at Guitar Center you can't really go wrong). I find it a great amp for a compact, 9v powered machine. Just be sure to watch your volume levels or find a way to compensate to avoid clean channel distortion, and it's very solid.

Simple 1W solid state amp, with only 2 inch speaker as its main feature. It has volume, tone and overdrive knobs, headphone out, 9V battery PP3 and 9V centre negative AC to DC adaptor connectors. It has retro styled plastic chassis, metal belt clip, and tiny leather handle. Available in aqua, burgundy or yellow colour, but it seems aqua is the most popular one. Overall its rather light, but there are no loose parts, and whole amp feels solid. 1W of power is just right for practicing at home, perfect for people who live in flats. Despite small speaker sound character limitations a separate overdrive knob actualy adds a bit versatility when compared to other portable amps. It is definitly made for blues and old rock, so when you are moving around those styles, it seems like best option in its range.

Im using it with single coil pickups only, primarily for blues and old rock. 2 inch speaker construction allows it for a very boxy and noisy sound. Normaly you wouldnt like that, but this amp makes it his trademark for those who search for it. It sounds like an old tape or radio recording, which make even clean settings charactericaly distorted. Suprisingly playing with knobs gives a lot of interesing sounds, but keep in mind it will always be a noisy box. It also adds some kind of echo, which makes it even more characteristic. Perfect for playing with slide. Headphone out has no speaker emulation, but since we talk about already distorted sound it isnt much of issue. The only problem I found is actualy powering it with adaptor. Since its made for usage with standard 9V effect adaptors it lack grounding, and so when used that way it produces typical hum which disappears when strings or some metal parts of guitar are touched. Overall its very hard to rate sound quality of this thing as either 1 or 10 would be true. Its designed to reproduce a certain poor quality sounds, and it does it well. If you are looking for them, its 10.

Cant say anything about it. Feels solid, but still its just a molded plastic. Dont throw it around, and it should be fine.

Havent dealt with them. I like their image, but their website could be better.

Normaly Im practicing on 5W tube Peavey NanoValve amp, but its way too lound for using it in flat, so 1W solid state does the job. Not that it was the main reason I obtained it for. It is for that very characteristic, full of noises sound. There is nothing like it, and I must say of all the gear I owned or used, this small thing gave me the most fun. If something would happen to it I will definitly get another one. And its cheap too.

I don't know anything about this amp. BUT! I bought this as a birthday present for the singer/guitarist in my band.. When she saw it she absolutley adored it.. My girlfriend saw it, and she said that it looks so cute she wishes she had one. So, I guess chicks dig the design of this amp. So, if you got a lady guitarist in your life, get this.. It DOES look "cute", and it looks alot better than the clear non-descript Dean Markley amp and the cigarette box amp, and a hell of alot cheaper then those Marshall and Fender mini-amps, and does the same job..

What do you really want in an amp like this? To be able to play in a band with it? Hell, no.. But if you were in your bedroom or watching TV it sure beats using electricty noodling around, or coming up with new song ideas..

For the $20 price tag, how could you go wrong? if it dies, just buy another one.. If you can't afford to, then get a better job or don't buy a few six packs...

Who knows.. I have never had, or known of Dano equipment to stop working unless you mistreat it, which it is on you, buddy..

nice price for a neat present or just to noodle around on.

Probably this year. It is extremely versatile in the styles I play. I play mostly a mix of classic metal(Deep Purple, etc.) and black metal and it can sound from prestine clean to crunch to near screech with the tweak of the volume and gain knobs. the features i wish it had would be echo/reverb thats featured on the headphone amp but other than that it does its job well.

The distortion is pretty brutal for a small practice amp. the guitar I am using is the Dean Vendetta Xm( the cheapo model everyone talks bad about)and pretty soon a Titan guitar. As far as being noisy it produces alot of feedback on high volume and gain settings but it does not bother me too much.

I can highly depend on this amp for to go playing situations and for practice, as opposed to the Dean Markley mini amp that broke down two weeks after I bought it.

Never dealt with them but seems to be very reliable nevertheless.

if stolen, I would buy another one in a heartbeat. It shines in comparison to the Dean markley and johnson mini amps i have had in the past year or so. i have owned 2 dean markleys, a johnson mini amp and a marshall ms 4(the double mini stack) and only the marshall can compare in value and reliability to the dano mini amp. A fantastic deal.

For a mini amp the fact there is any echo is pretty cool, the distortion has a gain adjustment (seperate from the volume control), which is nice at this price! There is also a dedicated Line out, so you can use it as a preamp to a bigger system if you like the tone that much, or you could plug it into your hifi/computer speakers like I have been...

Oh, can't forget my favourite thing: I got a branded 'Danelectro' battery and headphones included in the price! I haven't found an electrical item with the 'batteries included' sticker EVER! Not counting things including posh rechargeables like mobiles...

Personally I love it! Considering I paid just shy of ??20 for it I ain't complaining. You get a lovely vintage distortion, which sounds great banging out White Stripes and Led Zeppelin, and if you stick the tone control(s) down and switch to the neck pick-up then Kyuss sounds as good as you're gonna get without overdriving a decent quality (??200+) Bass amp!

However, if you play mostly Offspring/ACDC kinda sounds then don't come near, I like to have a bit of a punky fun session every now and then, so I'm planning on buying a mini Marshall, as that's your best option for that kinda sound.

The echo is a nice touch, and if you're like me and get the urge to sound like you're playing in a big, empty barn once in a while it's just what you've been looking for! The clean channel is cool too, tho I'd save the battery and turn it off for that!

Well I've only had it 3 weeks or so, but so far it seems fairly sturdy, obviously it is only made of plastic and so kicking it would be bad... having said that, kicking ??2000 worth of amp ain't gonna domuch good either! (specially if you kick the speaker...). As it's only meant to be a practice amp, no I wouldn't gig with it, unless I couldn'tget the sound I wanted any other way, in which case I reckon it would do the job fine.

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I've been playing for 5 years or so now, my last amp I purchased was an epiphone valve juinor, which got a pathetic amount of play before I had to move to the land of no electricity :'( Can't wait to get to Uni and a power socket! I've been playing my Ibanez JS100 through the honeytone, and it's making me fall back in love with it...

I'm giving it a 10/10 because for what you're paying you get a whole lotta amp! ??20 gets you a perfectly use-able practice amp, which goes to reasonable volume levels (full volume made my ears hurt a bit), and good battery life (haven't played for extended periods of time yet, still getting used to the electric after nearly 6 months enforced acoustic only!)

If it vanished from my life I would go straight back to the eBay shop I got it from and get another! Although like I said above I do intend to get a mini Marshall so I can play a wider variety of sounds.

Simply put: If you want a vintage distortion sound for under ??20 buy this amp now!

Everything you'd reasonably expect in a micro-amp- On-off/volume, tone and drive. Frankly, if you're expecting much more from a product that is just a cheap cheerful travel companion then you've probably forgotten to take the medication again eh?

It'll take a 9 volt battery (buy rechargeables) has a "big" in jack for your guitar lead and a "little" out jack for your headphones. I've taken it abroad with my home-made travel guitar and regularly sit on the sofa and plug my Washburn W165 into it for a bit of tv watching noodling. Perfect. It's a 9 easily because it has everything its competitors have yet I can't quite get excited enough about a micro-amp in order to stretch to a 10.

The sound I completely love. I'm surprised to see some of the comments here but I suppose, like design, colour etc, sound is a subjective thing and there is no single "right" sound out there. Suffice to say I play this thing cleanly about 25% of the time and with varying amounts of overdrive the rest. The overdrive is where it really shines for me. My fave setting twinned with my Seymour Duncan humbuckers on my Washburn Idol is about half volume, tone backed off to about 75% and overdrive hovering around halfway. This delivers superb Black Keys/ Wolfmother style warm dirty blues tones. If you're unsure how this wounds then check out the Black Keys on youtube. The sound has warmth, strength and some interesting break up to the tone as well as being responsive to the hard/softness of your play. Love it. With my self-made mahogany single coil guitar I need to work things harder with more volume and close-to-maximum overdrive to get back into dirty blues land. At maximum volume it can rattle a bit- they all can. If it ever annoys me enough then I'll put some dabs of glue on various parts to solve it.

The previous owner managed (somehow) to snap the "E" off of the Honeytone label. The thing has had a hard life and, being plastic is quite scratched up. Short of making it out of metal or kryptonite I consider that all par for the course.
My one big gripe with the thing is the 9 volt battery compartment. It seems too large for the UK batteries I'm putting into it. Consequently the thing rattles around and generally makes poor contact with the + and - contact points. I've been wedging some card behind the base of the 9 volt to remedy this but recently took the thing apart and pulled forward the contact points for a more permanent fix. It's fine now but this small annoyance loses my "Honeyton" a few points.

Never dealt with them, therefore unfair to comment.

I grabbed an ebay bargain of a Marshall MS2 micro amp recently which I'm going to pull apart and mount inside my travel guitar for an all in one solution. As you can probably guess, I prefer the Danelectro offering to the Marshall and so the little MS2 is the one going under the knife. As I said before, these things are subjective, but I personally love the overdriven sound of the honeytone, particularly with humbuckers. Clean it's, well, clean and will do for such a small little thing. If you want to do any sort of public playing then you need to get yourself a bigger practice amp starting at about 15 watts. Considering the Honeyton(e) is A. not designed for gigging and B. a tiny fraction of that wattage then I think it's a real little champ and does all you could ask of it

Pretty simple amp, sounds pretty wimpy as is.
But, I took the back cover off, drilled a 3/8" hole in the lower side of the amp, installed a 1/4" speaker jack (with internal speaker defeat, so that the internal speaker is 'unhooked' when an external speaker is plugged in). Now it's got a REAL feature (that it should have come with originally), I can plug it into any 8ohm guitar cabinet! The jack-part is about $5 at radio shack, I soldered the existing speaker wires to the new speaker jack, and added two 3" wires from the speaker jack to the existing speaker, -easy-easy mod.

Pretty good clean tones, takes pedals well. Not so good distortion. Volume is adequate for practice, and pretty loud for a battery powered amp. Running this through a V30 in a closed back cab makes all the difference.

I haven't had if very long, so I can't really speak about it's reliability.

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I've been playing about 20 years, I own about 5 tube amps (a couple real neat-o vintage amps), and 15 guitars. I typically go for a clean to slightly warm Fender type tone, and then add a distortion pedal, and often a delay, -no other effects.
I highly recommend this easy mod, it sounds like a real amp now! All you need is a soldering iron (plus flux and solder), a phillips screwdriver, and a 3/8" drill bit.

Bought this amp broken in a pawn shop for $2. Took it home and replaced the 9V battery clips with a nice snap connector, and after some Dremel tool work it went easily back together.

I play harp, and this thing has some very nice tone and distortion control for my old Shure bullet mic. Really loud for the 2W or so it puts out. It has Volume, Tone, and ODrive knobs that give a surprising amount of variation in the tone.

I've just started breaking the surface with this thing.. I haven't found preferred settings yet, but have found several nice combinations. LOUD for its size.

Well, i bought it broken. Based on what I saw, I think a lot of the "broken" examples of this amp are not the electronics, but a really poorly executed battery compartment.

I've been playing harp for a couple years, and play through a variety of amps old and new. I read some reviews of this thing and happened to see it for $20 at the pawn shop, and when it tested bad, offered them $2. For the $35 or so it would take to get a new one, I would replace it, I think.

To be honest. I was shocked at how reliable this amp was. Yeah its a little scratchy but so are some of the more expensive models out there so I won't complain. The overdrive option is really cool because it actually sounds like one. Plus I connected a pedal or two to it and it took it with no problem. For a mini amp it sure took its share of beating. I went from alternative to metal then blues to hardcore and it took it all. Danelectro you guys got my vote on this one.

I used my epiphone les paul jr and it was an awesome combination. It can really throw down the rock especially if you hook it up with pedals. And it was surprisingly less noisy than some acutal amps. It was very versatile. And it worked well at maximum volume with excellent quality. And the overdrive really blended well with the range of tone.

It was definetly something I could rely on. I would take it to a gig if my amp blew out. And to this day it hasn't broken down.

I've been playing guitar for twelve years now. Guitarwise I own-
epiphone les paul jr
carlo robelli semi-hollow

pedals-FAB-flange/metal-the original crybaby wah-Danelectro-frenchtoast

Amp-crate

Features are typical of a battery powered "toy" travel amp. Included are On/Volume, Tone, and O.Drive controls. I have a "mini amp fetich" so I had to buy it. The box stated that it is "louder than other battery amps," and it is. The choice of the engineers to place the 1/4" input on the top of the unit was foolish. The amp tends to fall over all too often. I think I will mod this and make the present input jack a "speaker out" jack and add a new input jack on the back toward the bottom of the unit.

This little amp sounds like a little plastic amp. Frankly, you can't be too critical, after all it is basically a toy or novelty.
The available clean volume is quite good compared to other 9 volt circuits. The overdrive is pretty awful and I avoid it. I play blues, soul, funk, and twang...so that nasty transistor distortion is pure evil.
The case or its contents tend to vibrate at certain frequencies. I suggest opening up the case and hot gluing the pc board and battery leads to avoid noise.

This thing is build pretty well but I wish it were made of more substantial materials. Maybe MDF or pressboard would improve it overall, but likely increase the cost. I have owned several portable battery amps including the $50. Fender Mini Twin which sounded awful....but looked great. It would be nice to take this circuit and put it in the Fender....Then you might have something!

No comment. Never dealt with them.

I would rate this pretty high considering what it is and what it is intended for. It's a great thing to have in your gig back or case...especially when traveling. If you need something on the road to get your "guit" fix, it is perfect. The volume is exceptional compared to other mini amps. If you are able, I suggest adding a speaker out jack. I hooked up a 8" Jensen Vintage and the amp sounded suprisingly robust. I also copied the circuit and I am planning to duplicate it on a breadboard, play with some mods, and build a custom version. (I know what you're thinking...."get a life") Hey, we all need a hobbie.