The Vox Mini Superbeetle… it’s so cute, isn’t it? A scaled down replica of the amps The Beatles toured with. Well, they used a few Vox models in their brief touring years. But this article isn’t a history of their association with Vox and the amps they used. It’s a look at the Mini Superbeetle. And there must have been licensing issues or surely Vox would have called it the “Mini Super Beatle” instead.
I love my AC30 but…
I like Vox. A lot. I even use their Vintage Coiled Cables (VCC) for guitar and bass. They’re the best cables (to my ears) I’ve ever used. And I’ve owned three Vox amps in my life – an AC30CC2X, the Mini Superbeetle and a VX50KB. But of the three only the AC30 “made the grade”. My AC30 is just bloody brilliant, even without engaging the brilliance switch. If it wasn’t so heavy I’d run back into a burning building to save it.
The VX50KB was purchased last month for my wife’s Roland synth and returned right away. It was defective as an amp but it made one hell of white noise machine, sounding like waves on a beach in a storm. Pushing down in the middle of the control panel made the noise go away for a minute or two and what I heard sounded decent but you couldn’t even get through an entire song before the “storm” returned. It either left the factory with a bad connection or took a tumble in transit. I simply returned it. An exchange meant a long wait for another one thanks to the Covid pandemic.
And that brings us to the Mini Superbeetle…
Is the Mini Superbeetle a real amp?
When Covid first reared its ugly head last spring, before we learned to live with varying degrees of lockdowns, curbside this and online that (assuming the inventory is even available) I thought I’d get a second amp as a backup for home use if anything happened to my AC30. Nothing beats a tube amp but tubes tend to go when you’re least prepared and I didn’t like the idea of a lockdown with no amplification while awaiting parts.
I read a lot of reviews and they were mostly stellar. The complaints were mainly that the toggle switch for the power was too small, the blue LED was blinding and a couple said it didn’t like single coil guitars much. Thinking “your mileage may vary” I ordered one. After a year though I concur with those three complaints, with the addition that it doesn’t seem to like any guitars much, not just ones with single coils.
The toggle is really small, to the point where I’d reach for it gingerly, expecting to snap it off. And that blue LED is seriously bright. Honestly, it was the brightest of any device I’ve ever owned – other amps, guitar pedals, phones, tablets, even laser pointers. Vox really knocked it out of park on that one! I inadvertently looked directly at it a couple of times. Damn! After that I made a point each time I turned it on or off of closing my eyes and turning my head, while wearing polarised sunglasses, just in case.
The panel is simple and straightforward – volume, reverb, tremolo, a basic bass and treble two-band EQ and gain. But I never really got a sound out of it that I liked no matter how I tweaked it. And I tried five different electrics through it as well.
It absolutely did not get along well with my old Sheraton II (humbuckers) or my Casino (P90s, both stock and Kent Armstrong’s Vintage Series). It sounded almost tolerable with my Danelectro D59 12-string (single coil NOS lipstick pickups) depending on fiddling with both the amp and the guitar’s settings.
I didn’t mind it with either my Penguin (TV Jones Classics) or Telecaster (’50s voiced single coils) but that was also conditional. The only tones I sort of almost enjoyed were using reverb and tremolo and I found myself just messing about playing songs from the 1950s like Earth Angel. Everyone should play The Penguins’ Earth Angel on a Gretsch LTD Penguin though so that’s alright. If it’s not a thing it should be.
Trying to get any type of grit by playing with the volume and gain gave me the auditory equivalent of listening to some classic ’70s FM hard rock on a tiny, tinny little AM transistor radio. And it didn’t pair well with my pedalboard either.
The marketing copy for the amp claims that the NuTube technology gives you authentic Vox AC tube tones. I didn’t hear it so I thought “Well, I guess NuTube just isn’t for me”. However, in talking with other guitarists that also had a Mini Superbeetle they said NuTube wasn’t the issue. The head apparently can sound pretty good when using a different cabinet and that the stock 10″ speaker is the problem.
But I didn’t buy the amp to use it as a head for a separate cabinet. And I didn’t buy it to use as a platform for trying different speakers. I bought it as a backup amp that I hoped would provide some decent tones. Maybe it’d even be usable as a second amp for jamming and recording if/when we get the pandemic under control and the on again/off again lockdowns end and we’re allowed to have people over. Sadly, it didn’t meet either my hopes or my expectations.
Is the Mini Superbeetle really just décor?
I think the first line of the marketing copy for the amp really sums it up, at least in my opinion.
Was this amp actually meant to be anything other than décor, a collector’s piece that looks cute but sounds like a toy? I always take reviews with a grain of salt. The major sites and magazines (and yes, there are still print magazines out there) will almost always give a primarily positive review. That’s the game you play if you want to build a relationship with a company and get them to give you things, whether that’s an exclusive sneak peak or free gear. So you weigh the professional reviews with the customer reviews and decide whether to give a given product a chance.
I really wanted to like this little amp, especially with my love of British bands, my British heritage and my British wife. Hell, that’s why I bought the model in British Racing Green. But it didn’t work out. I bought it on April 22nd, 2020 for $479.99 CDN (plus tax) and on May 4th, 2021 I traded in towards a pedal. I got $265.34 CDN for the trade so not even 50% of what I originally paid in total a year ago. Damned disappointing. I guess the $277.05 CDN lesson I learned is… um… I should have returned it straight away instead being caught up in its cuteness and thinking “Well, at least the reverb and tremolo are ok”.
I blame Star Trek for that.
(Star Trek 1966-2005 RIP)
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I like the look of the amp and cab. I changed out the VOX 10″ speaker for a 200 W bass speaker and am planning to gut the head and put a 200 W miniature bass amp inside.