Battery powered amp with decent sound & volume????

[Doug Anderson]

What do you recommend for a good battery powered amp that is portable with decent sound and volume for lap steel????

[Pat Briggs]

Roland Mobile Cube

[Glenn Wilde]

Yep, Roland. I have a Street Cube and love it.

[Michael Lester]

Positive Grid Spark Live. 8 hour battery, 150watts, Over 10,000 effects and 16 presets. Most versatile amp I've ever owned.

No connection to Positive Grid except as a customer.

[Dave Grafe]

I have two Roland Cube Street battery-capable amps, they are great for use as recording preamps too. One of them is listed here for sale.

viewtopic.php?t=408353#p3255001

[Mark Evans]

I use a Yamaha THR-10 (AC and battery power). Great sound, patch options. Might not be loud enough in some situations, but it’s held up in most.
Folks I play with also bring Jackery rechargeable power sources to outdoor jams, powering small and medium AC powered amps and pedal boards. We Never run out of juice.

[David Ball]

Here's another vote for the Street Cube. It also has the advantage of having a second channel for a mike or another instrument. It's really made for busking, but has a very decent tone and can get loud. Batteries seem to last a long time (6 AA batteries). I've had mine for years.

Dave

[Douglas Schuch]

Guitar and harmonica players I know are using rechargeable battery-powered PA powered speakers and running through whatever preamp or effects they need as if going straight to the PA. A local guy here in the PH bought one, an Alto Busker (200 watts - $349 on Amazon) and uses it for his restaurant gigs for guitar, vocals, and backing track setup. I'd look into one of those these days instead of the more old-school Roland amp style. You can get rechargeable effect power supplies as well. I've got one that runs off of USB power supply, so you could run it off a standard USB backup for your phone. It was very cheap - like about $5 here in the Philippines (the same one, with a different brand - Azor - is $17 on Amazon).

This solution gives you plenty of power and control over your sound. It should be a great solution for summer outdoor performances.

[Tim Toberer]

Class D amps around 90% efficient. There are a lot of different battery options that will work. Not as neat and tidy as something all put together, but you can customize it however you like. I just ordered one of these for a power amp https://www.amazon.com/Kinter-K3118-2-1 ... B08SL6ZL6Q This model also has 5v USB built in so I can run my audio interface as a preamp.

You can put any preamp pedal you want in front of it. Another cool thing about class D is it will run on any DC voltage up to 24V and usually use any speaker. The lower the ohms the more power you get. The power amp I bought uses a TPA3118 chip, which is a really popular board with guitar pedal builders. I built an amp from the board only which costs about $3. They power up with a laptop charger, but can run on 12V. This provides alot of flexibility. When run on 19V with an 8 ohm speaker, these amps are easily as loud as my Fender Pro style amp. 12v won't be as loud, but battery life should be pretty good. I haven't figured out which battery, but I will mostly just be using this at home with my modeler pedal.

[Gregg TeHennepe]

I'm enjoying the Positive Grid Spark 2 with battery, very portable, 50W and decent volume, all the presets/modeling/etc, and the battery lasts a long time, I haven't run it out yet, and after five hours it's still ~80%. Note there are some good PS presets available from their "ToneCloud" (I'll put a plug in for my own, "Modern Steel" and "Vintage Steel").

[Lee Rider]

I use these little Vox amps. I have a DA-5 which has been discontinued and also this one:

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... deling-amp

I have used the DA-5 for a preamp to my Furlong Split along with just using it stand alone. Found one for $50 on eBay.

[Tim Toberer]

This blog entry has some good insight into battery powered amps https://www.paniquejazz.com/2023/05/06/ ... -and-amps/

[D Schubert]

I've got an old Roland Microbe that still does the job pretty well.

[George Biner]

These are nice

https://www.amazon.com/Fender-Amplifier ... MTC18?th=1