Vantage VS-10 Combo

I have no idea when this amp was made but it was made in Korea, and I think it is basically the same as the Samick SS10. This is a fun little amp, I keep it in my bedroom with an old tele copy so I can get away from the wife and kids and put the headphones on it and whail away. There are always two ways I see people rate amps and guitars on here. One, is they rate every amp or guitar as if it were a $2,000 piece of equipment. Two, they rate it for what it is supposed to be like for the amount of money spent. I rate the second way. This amp cost me less than $40.00 brand new, so I will rate it like a $40.00 amp. With that in mind, the amp is very versatile for the kind of music I play, which is country, southern rock, classic rock, some blues and some electric folk. Since it has only one volume control I am going to assume it is a single channel amp, however it does have a push button overdrive. It has from left to right, the input, gain for the overdrive, overdrive button, Master Volume, treble, middle and bass for equalization, an input for headphones and the power switch. It is rated at 13 watts and has a 6.5 inch speaker and that is more than enough power for the bedroom. In fact, it is still loud enough to get me in trouble with the neighbors or have my wife come into the bed room asking WTF? It would be nice if it had a reverb, but never saw an amp this cheap with one, and I have a ZOOM 606 pedal anyway so I can put any effect I want through the amp basically. It is a solid state amp, but the way it sounds, actually reminds me of the smaller old Crate tube amps. Definitely has a very close tube amp sound. For the money, it is excellent. Can't give it a 10 because it doesn't have the reverb and isn't two channel, but I can give it a 8, deducting one point for each of those two things.

I normally use this with a Rockstar Telecaster Copy with two single coils, however, I do have two Fender Strats, one made in Mexico and the other made in the US, as well as a Washburn X-21 with one humbucker and two single coils, an Epiphone Les Paul Standard with two humbuckers and an Epiphone Historic 56 Goldtop Les Paul with P-90 pickups. It handles all the guitars very well, but I can only keep one of my guitars in the bedroom, so I keep the cheapest one in there, which is the tele copy, but is a very decent guitar. There is a slight buzz when you push the overdrive button on the single coil guitars but not on the humbuckers. For such a small and inexpensive amp, it is very versatile. I can get anything from country twang, Keith Richards crunch to heavy metal sounds from it and it doesn't sound cheap or tinny like a lot of smaller practice amps do. I had a Marshall MG10CD and this amp sounds much better than it did. The clean channel does distort at around 6 or 7, but it is a cool, Keith Richards, Rolling Stones type distortion, which I actually like, so I won't knock off points for that. The distortion for such a small amp and speaker can be fucking brutal. I give it a 9.

This thing is tough as hell. I sit on it most of the time I'm messing around in the bedroom, I've stood on it (and I weigh 220lbs), I dropped it several times, my kids have played football with it, and it still looks brandnew and hasn't affected the sound a bit. Never broken down.

I am an American living in the Philippines, Filipina wife, half breed kids, been here for 10 years. Buy everything from RJ Lumanog in Angeles City and they are absolutely great.

Been playing 35 years, also have a couple of epiphone acoustics and acoustic electrics, a VOX Pathfinder 15R (Outstanding Amp) and I do gigs with a VOX AC30. I'd get another one if it were stolen or lost. Great little amp. I've had just about every small amp there is and most of the big ones. For big amps, I like VOX, for small amps, I like VOX, I couldn't find a 10 watt Vox or that is what I would have got. I did have a Marshall MG10CD, but I didn't like it as much as this one, even though this one is half as much and I do like the Marshall sound.