So I was looking for an Amplug style headphone amp, and I ended up picking up the item below. This one is branded as “Donner”, though I think this is one of those things where a bunch of different sellers slap their names on the same product. I picked this one largely because it was cheap, placed reasonably high on Amazon bestsellers, and had the features I wanted.
Main question mark for me was how it would sound. Obviously you need to set expectations low with a device like this, but it’s pretty decent. Probably helps that I was raised on crappy transistor practice amps, but as a cheap and portable solution to get a vaguely Marshall-ish high-gain sound through headphones, I’m pretty happy with how it sounds. There is no reverb, so the default sound is very dry, but if you are interested in using it for technique practice, that will help you notice your mistakes more easily. There is a delay, whose parameters you cannot adjust, that is toggled on and off with a switch. It’s a little more than I would probably use myself, but it definitely gets you into the 80s arena sustain kind of sound for when you just want to have fun.
Several amazon reviews claim that Vox’s Amplug2 headphone amps sound way better than this product, but I haven’t heard them to compare.
Unlike the Vox Amplug2, the plug on this is fixed (not on a swivel), but it does seem like it’s designed to be able to fit on the front jack of a strat-style guitar. Also, rather than running on AAA batteries, this has a built in lithium rechargeable battery, and four very bright blue leds to indicate the charge. On a strat, you might get annoyed having those leds staring at you all the time, though I guess if it became an issue you could cover them with tape or something.
I had to roll off the tone control a bit to get a sound I was happy with. Drive is adjustable, though I have it pinned most of the time. Volume control is a little annoying, as it’s not tapered at the low end. It jumps from “unusably quiet” to “way too loud” through a pretty short range at the low end, with tons of extra room past “too loud”. Once I found a volume I liked, I’ve pretty much left it there. There’s a power switch to turn it on and off.
There’s also an aux input if you want to plug into an mp3 player, metronome etc.
Build quality feels pretty cheap, but I’m skeptical whether pricier similar products are built any more robustly. Only question now is whether it will last a decent amount of time, or die suddenly for no apparent reason.
I think I’ve used it about 3 hours total so far, and haven’t used up the full charge it came with out of the package. For now, I’m just leaving it plugged into my main practice guitar that sits on a stand while not in use. Charging is via an older style mini-USB connector (cable provided). It also came with a 3.5mm headphone splitter and a 3.5mm male-to-male cable.
So far I’m pretty happy with it. Main negative is the finnicky volume dial.
https://www.amazon.com/Donner-Headphone-Rechargeable-Practice-Amplifier/dp/B079HVPWZ6/