iRig’s tiny amp is for app-loving axesmiths

A guitar amp? What’s that doing on Stuff.tv? Yawn.

Take another look.

Hang on. That’s tiny! How adorable! Er, I mean: ROCK ON!

Indeed. At least ‘rock on’ as much as you can with a 3W speaker. Still, the dinky battery-powered iRig Nano Amp by IK Multimedia gives electric guitarists a means to make noise pretty much anywhere – at least until angry people start throwing things at them. Possibly including pieces of their very recently smashed-up guitar.

Hey, my solos aren’t that bad. So how does it work?

It’s mostly like any other amp, only in miniature. You power it up (three AAs in this case, since it’s so wee), plug in your guitar, twiddle some knobs, and away you go.

We’re told the British tone circuit “delivers sparkling clean tones” at low gain settings and a “cascading wave of overdrive” when fully cranked up. Hence the likelihood of being beaten by your own instrument if you go for ‘maximum loud’.

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But this is Stuff. You’re all about gadgets. You said “mostly”. There must be more.

There is. This is an iRig after all, and so it’s got an integrated iRig circuit. This means you can connect an iPhone or iPad, run your favourite virtual amp software, and have it output through the iRig Nano Amp’s speaker – or headphones if you’re temporarily being noisy only in private.

Amusingly, the iRig Nano Amp also has a 1/4-inch speaker out jack, which can drive a 4×12-inch cab – the full-size speaker you normally see behind a strutting guitarist. And this can be connected in either ‘amp’ or ‘device’ modes. So this kit’s way more versatile than the average micro amp.

Wow! Anything else? Surely, there must still be more?

Well… there’s a kickstand. But it’s an amp. It’s barely bigger than an iPhone. You can use it to access millions of virtual amp sounds. It’ll drive a bloody great cab. And it’ll only set you back a very reasonable 50 quid.

What more do you want? Blood?

Sorry – can’t hear you. Too busy soloing!

*Fetches axe*