A long time ago I bought a Crate VC 508, a 5 watt tube amp with an 8″ speaker, an amp that a colleague recently took for a long term unauthorized loan (long story). When I had the amp, I thought it would sound better with a 12″ speaker, so at one point a bought a Carvin tweed extension cabinet at a closeout sale.  I still had the cabinet, so I thought I would buy an amp head for it.  There are lots of little micro amps around these days. I ended up with a Hotone Mojo Diamond (around $100), one of their amps in their legacy series. It is supposed to sound like a Fender tweed amp from the 1950’s. In a way, it does. Here’s a pic:

It’s 5 watts, solid state, and tiny. It has the footprint of cellphone. Even so, it has gain, three band eq, and volume controls. It also has an EFFECTS LOOP. What it doesn’t have is reverb. To go in the effects loop, I also bought a cheap reverb pedal, a Biyang Tri Reverb (around $45). Here is the whole rig:

How loud is it? Not enough to gig with, but fine for practice and recording. It is also very sensitive to pickups. With single coil strat pickups, it doesn’t want to break up, even with the gain all the way up. But with humbuckers, it can sound like an old bluesy tweed amp. Actually it surprised me with a pretty authentic T-Bone Walker kind of tone. Here is a short blues with my Agile LP with humbuckers. Everything is pretty much at 12 o’clock on the rhythm guitar. The lead is with the gain all the way up and the volume backed off. I miced it with a GL-57, a Shure SM-57 clone.

The Biyang reverb pedal also exceeded my expectations. It is really easy to use. It has a blend control which controls the amount of reverb and a time control that controls how long the reverb tails are. Then it has a three-way mini toggle for room, spring and hall reverbs and another toggle for “A” and “B” modes. “B” is basically normal and “A” is crazy mode. Here is a track with my strat going through the Mojo Diamond with the Tri Reverb in the effects loop. I might have gone overboard on the reverb.

I didn’t need another amp, but I already had the cabinet (with a Carvin VL12 in it, a vintage-style speaker made by Eminence) and I will have a lot of fun with this rig.