"I've been playing guitar and off for about 10 years and recently went through a very long "off" bout. I'm realizing how much playing guitar kept my mental health stable so I've been trying to get back into it.

I live with my aging parents, who are prone to random naps or TV binges. They're pretty tolerant of me firing up one of my loud amps so long as the amps stay in the basement and I don't crank them. During their TV binges, I can fire up one of my practice amps if they're blasting the TV's volume, since my practice amps can't get loud enough for them to hear over the TV. But for nap times.... I have to keep the guitars in their cases. So I decided to get a couple of headphone amps: This Sonicake and another one from Valeton.

I have a Valeton TAR 20g guitar amp which is currently my favorite all 'round amp, so I really expected to prefer the Valeton headphone amp over this Sonicake unit. It is with mild surprise that I write that I actually find myself reaching for this Sonicake amp for muted playing sessions!

As some readers will likely guess from reading thus far, I have G.A.S. , or Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I have many guitars, many amps and have owned many more in the past. What's my point here, you might ask?

My point is that I've found that I play best- and most, with simple gear. The amp with one channel and a few knobs. The guitar that I haven't modded with pickup-altering configurations. When I play my modded guitars, my feature laden amps, and/or hook up some effects pedals, I spend a lot of time toying with my gear, and I never further my guitar skills.

This nuance is one of two reasons why I favor this Sonicake amp. It's very straightforward to use, and while it's very lacking in features compared to the Valeton, that means I spend more time playing my guitars! Yes, this amp does have a couple of effects, but they can only be switched on or off; there are no controls to adjust them in any way. Plus, this amp costs a fair amount less than the Valeton as well.

The second reason I favor this amp is simple yet complex: Tone. While I have and enjoy a few very nice tube amplifiers, I'm not a tube snob (The Valeton TAR 20g is solid state, case in point) but I expect good tone from my gear. I don't think I set the bar high here; I've got a 10 watt Donner guitar amp that I think sounds fine and am just as willing to play that little amp as I am hooking up my mighty Hughes and Kettner 36 watt Tubemeister and feeling like I might level the house with it's volume.

Unlike many guitarists, I am a stickler for clean tone. It is my belief and experience thus far that it's far easier to overdrive/distort amps than it is to clean them up, so I strongly prefer amps that perform well with clean tones. And this Sonicake does just that. No, it's definitely not Fender clean, but given it's size, and compared to the sorry excuse the Valeton headphone amp has as a clean channel, I find the clean tones this amp puts out agreeable. And true to my statement, rolling up the gain knob easily pulls you into overdrive tone territory. The amp does start to "fart" when you max the gain, but for one, that's just my ears hearing that, and two, this amp is meant for clean and slightly overdriven tone, so maxing out the gain is using it out of intended context.

In closing, I will cover two gripes I have about this amp:

1. It uses a USB Micro jack. WHY? Sorry to sound snobby, but I find USB type C plugs and jacks to be so much more reliable. Please update your headphone amps to use USB type C jacks, SONICAKE!!

2. The "thumbwheel" controls on this amp are quite irritating to use when this amp is plugged in to any of my guitars. At first, I reasoned that the thumbwheel controls were to prevent the controls from getting moved should the amp get bumped, but the Valeton headphone amp has actual raised knobs, and they've never been moved by my accidentally bumping the amp while plugged in.

All in all I'm very satisfied with this amp, and unlike many of my gear purchases, it is conducive to my playing my guitar instead of just fiddling with gear."

"i couldn’t be more happy with this little thing!!! I live in a small shared space and have to leave all of my gear at my bands practice spot so this is perfect for being able to practice at home. The little bit of reverb you can get is so nice and being able to adjust the gain and tone is very nice and you can get a really good sound out of it. Being able to plug my headphones directly into it while it’s plugged into my guitar means i can practice while standing and what not too!!! You can plug it into any speakers as well so i plugged it into a tiny bluetooth speaker i have!! overall if you just need something small to practice on this is 100 percent it. if you’re in a touring band you’d def be able to practice in your van and what not on this too :D"

"For cost and size it works really well, sounds clean and the reverb effect which I thought might be not be noticeable is great also, clean and seems just right not too deep not too shallow."