Some of you probably saw my other thread about me looking for a very small and light gigging amp. A little too late P'n'H warned me about the Magnum 44, but I'd ordered one anyway.
So what do I think?
First thing to say is that although the Magnum 44 is the size of a small/medium guitar pedal, it comes with a power supply that is twice as large. No matter, I expected that and it's still small.
Second thing to say is that the instructions state that the amp is 25 watts RMS into 8 ohms. Worth keeping in mind, it's not 44 watts.
Out the box I was very disappointed with the Magnum 44. There was a loud hum. I figured this might be a ground loop, so I switched to using pedals with batteries but it was still there. So probably, I thought it's the cr@ppy power block they supplied. One star out of five - unusable except for cleans.
Checking on google for Magnum 44 power supply showed me several forum threads with people reporting similar problems. The solution people reported was to ground the chassis of the pedal to earth. Actually, this is what most guitar amps do anyway.
I checked with my multimeter and indeed the chassis was not connected to earth. So I proceeded to open the power supply and I soldered a wire from earth to the DC ground, which is connected to the amp chassis.
This reduced the noise level greatly. Not completely, in fact it is still quite noisy compared to my valve amps, but it's not too bad and definitely usable.
The head is certainly loud, I don't doubt the 25w RMS rating. You could definitely do small gigs with it without micing it up.
Tonewise, the unit is rather dark. You need that bright switch on all the time. I have no idea why they have that normal mode. They should make bright the normal and add a brighter setting. 'Normal' is completely unusable unless you are running a bright strat into it clean. Anyway, with the bright switch on its fine.
P'n'H warned me the tone would be undefined without a couple of good pedals to make it acceptable. In fact, I see what he means. I would put it a bit differently though. The tone is definitely undefined unless you use the right pedals into it. It seems to be rather fussy in fact. Some of my favourite pedals and guitars sounded pretty bad through the Magnum 44. But I did find some combinations that really worked. My MI Audio Crunch box plus Cold Sweat loaded Fender Cyclone sounded really good through it for example. I found I had to set most distortions boxes to a bright setting. It refused to work well with my normal Sansamp pedal. It did work well with my Sabbra Cadabra pedal though.
I would definitely you can get good tones out of it, but it needs the right pedal(s) and some experimentation. Don't expect to plug your normal pedals into it, it won't necessarily work out.
Overall, once I finished building their power supply for them, I give the Magnum 44 three stars out of five.
The pedal will fit into a jeans pocket, though you have to have more space for the power supply. You can definitely put the whole setup into a gig bag though - which is good enough in my opinion! And it is loud enough for a small gig. You can get it to sound pretty good with some playing around.
But - I had to modify the power supply! That's really bad in my point of view. It should be earthed out the box like any guitar amp. And yes, it is a bit noisy and fussy about what you plug in.
No denying though - it's small loud and usable. So overall I am happy. But with some caveats.
