Review: Wangs 5W Mini 5 Tube Amplifier

I traded a friend of mine my new-ish Vox MV50 and its '50s Ampro cab so he'd have something proper to play his Les Paul through -- and boy he sounds good on that kit! Since the MV50 doubled as my "store demo" amp, I needed something on the quieter side out there for folks to test stuff through.

I knew about the Wangs VT-1 mini-amp from reviews around the net -- a 1w tube deal -- but didn't want to have the output so low that you couldn't get a decent clean sound out of it. I then found-out that they made a 5w version -- this "Mini 5" -- and sprung for it when I found one new (and cheap) on Reverb. It'll be paired with a black version of an old '50s/'60s Victor ply cabinet (with 12" Jensen) when that arrives. For the recording you're hearing it through a '60s 10" ceramic Jensen.

For something so absurdly-compact, it has a great, full tone to it. It's kind of like a Champ that verges on Marshall territory. It's weird and tasty! It has three knobs for EQ and a bright/warm switch that's actually pretty useful. It even has choice of rectifier -- tube or solid-state -- and how about that? I barely ever see that on full-size amps.

On the back are jacks for 8 or 16-ohm speakers, a good-sized power switch, and a heavy-duty, 3-prong cable socket. That's something that's sorely lacking on most "mini-amp" designs which usually use the small, pedal-sized sockets that sometimes drive you nuts when you have to pack them up.

Anyhow, at some point I plan to get a spare set of tubes for it, so I may update this review when I have them in the amp. The factory Ruby/Chinese tubes are actually quite good, on average, but it's lovely when you get a nice, old-stock set of tubes installed.