Vox VT20X 1x8" 20-watt Modeling Combo Amp Reviews

Works and sound great, love all of the options

Took me a little time to learn, but this is really a great sounding little amp.

I would definitely recommend this amp,as the more time I have spent with it, the more I like it

This is a great sounding small combo amp. The tube in the pre-amp gives the sound a liveliness that I don't get from my all-solid-state amps. The 8-inch speaker provides an impressive kick that sounds like a bigger cone. The on-board tones are really nice, and they are useful, not the far-out sounds that others offer that I'll never use. I like that I can get high-gain tones at reasonable volume levels, much easier than I can with my solid-state amps. And if I turn it up, I can rattle everything on the nearby bookshelves before I get near max volume; it is surprisingly loud.

I bought this on Black Friday. This is a fantastic amp at this price point.

Love the amp. Great tone with the Tube.
And the tone room allows you to customize
What you are looking for and save them

I've been playing a long time, and I've played a ton of amps. This one is right up there with the best I've used. Very versatile, tube amp with a plethora of good tones. Don't be fooled by the small size either, this thing will crank. I would highly recommend this to players of any level, and style.

So I bought this amp on sale and figured I'd finally try a Vox. We much to my surprise this thing ROCKS. The Vox tones are incredible! The pedal selection is unique to say the least and it interfaces with my DAW. You really need to use the amp with a Laptop to get the most out of it.

It's a super little amp with tons of features that will blow you away!

I am relatively new to the guitar and amp world with only three years of experience. I purchased it because it looks sharp and my brother liked Vox equipment back in the late 60s and 70s. I took it to show my guitar instructor so we could go over some of the features. I could tell from the look on his face that really liked it. He was taken with the quality of the various modeled amplifiers and the many effects. Just from his reaction I knew I purchased a versatile quality product. He finally ask what I paid for it and when I told him he said "Very Impressive".

It's very nice! Just get to know it a little and it's knobs and you will be set!

I almost never do reviews - mostly because I'm a casual player. But I have lots of experience with high end gear, and this amp is such a fine product for getting a myriad of quality tones at manageable volumes. One thing I learned is that the 1x8 speaker in an engineered ported cab is a different beast than a basic 1x8 combo cab. In short, this amp is my go to for practice vs a 74 Princeton reverb and a bunch of pedals. It's that good.

Never ventured into the VOX world but after receiving this amp I am glad I dd. I was looking for a small combo to use at home. I researched the Bugera V5 Infinium and the Line 6 Spider. Not wanting to pay a ton of coin, I was pleasantly surprised at the $... price tag for the Vox.

Let me tell you, the modeling in this amp is awesome. I am still learning the in's and out's of the app "Tone Room" as the documentation is a little lacking. There are a few good youtube videos out there to help.

The amp is packed with different amps of all colors. The effects are a bit limited but enough choices to make it fun, like delays, flanger/chorus, phaser, tremolo, reverb and some boost and distortion. So in reality once you list them all there ARE a bunch of effects

I took a stock amp and tone and crafted a very useful and inspiring sound right away. I was a bit worried that the small 8" speaker would sound a little thin and not have enough bottom end. Not at all. The way they seal the cabinet gives this amp a very effective low end.

I highly recommend this amp and for $... it's a no brainer....

Vox amps are amazing! The cleans, distortion, everything is amazing. The distortion is very warm, the tubes make it sound great. The clean is the classic chimy sound that Vox amps are known for. Pick one up, you will not be disappointed.

Had marshall before there a bit limited on efects.vox has it all.love the quality of sounds keeps me busy for hours highly recommended

This is a little amp! It's actually bigger than I expected!! I almost bought the 40 watt version thinking this would be too small. I was pleasantly surprised, and this amp gives me more than enough power for practice. The effects are Awesome! They do not sound like some other 'modeling amps' (in the same price range). This amp with built-in effects is everything I wanted, and then some! Very happy with this purchase! I also highly recommend buying the footswitch (sold separately, well worth the money)! Vox has a great reputation, they've been around for a long time, and I wouldn't have purchased this without a great deal of research! This amp does it's job! Thank you Jozy (my sales engineer) and Sweetwater! Customer for life, and I've already ordered soo much, and will continue to. Great company and service!

This amp has surprisingly great tone for its size. It actually even has a real tube preamp. The built in effects are good quality and very easy to adjust. Overall, it's a great amp for the price. But I have purchased other Vox products and was quite satisfied with them as well.

Many years ago, when the Beatles fist appeared on Ed Sullivan show, I would have done anything to score a box amp but at 16 it just was not to be. This year I bought this for my 16 year old grandson and he loves it! I am so glad I could do this for him hope he always plays

The amp does everything advertised. Many different sounds with this one. Plugged my iPhone in and right away I had 36 more settings to choose from. You will not be diaaapointed with this one !

Read the rest of the positive reviews. They are telling the truth. I bought the VT20X about a year ago, and have yet to exhaust all it's possibilities. I finally took it out of my studio for a LOUD practice session with an OG punk band, and it cut right through the mix drummer, bass, rhythm and all set for high gain with a clean blues tone, volume dimmed and master at just 1/2 of full.

I previously had a 25 watt 12" Bugera combo tube amp. When I A/Bed it against the VOX, their volume was identical when dimmed, and the tones very similar. The Bugera had maybe a little fuller bass and smoother mids, but it was negligible. It was also a 50lb tube beast, while the VOX is light as a feather, and contains literally limitless possible combinations of amp and pedal models and settings.

So I sold the Bugera on Craig's list, and haven't looked back. If you are a newish electric player and are trying to find your own sound, THIS is the way to go. Figure out what sort of pedal and amp models sound best to you, and save them as presets on the amp or your computer. Down the road if you want you can spend thousands buying the actual analog gear without spending years buying and selling pedals and amps trying to figure what works best for you - you can simply a/b dozens sitting in front of your computer with your axe.

My favorite amp is based on BB King's Tone, but I also love the Double Rec Mesa clone, and the Dumble Clone, and the Bogner clone. All of amps sound great, and it really does sound like a tube amp, because it IS a tube amp hybridized with solid state and digital comments. You get the best of everything.

I suspect the only way to do better is to go with a really high-dollar Kemper modeling head, but even then, I'm not sure that a live gig setting anyone would be able to tell the difference.

It took my just a couple of hours to really dig in an uncover the potential of this little guy. I got the vt20x so I could play in my living room when I don't feel like locking myself in my music room. I plugged in my phone using the otg adpater that came with my s7 edge back in the day and started messing with the tones from there. It's much easier to do it on your phone or computer.
I found the Brit OR MKII to be the best sounding amp with a Tube OD pushing it.
My sound I landed on was gain 8.5 treble 6 middle 5.3 Bass 7.4 volume 2.2( just for my living room volume levels) presence 4.9 resonance 7.9 and and nr sense 7.8 on abrit or mkii
Tube od drive 0.3 tone 5.9 level 10 treble middle and bass 5.
Add delay and reverb for fun.
This is the metal tone I pulled from this little guy and don't see myself changing it. Have fun out there!

I am amazed at the variety and quality of tones this amp produces. There is a learning curve to the finer controls, but just changing the knob that selects amp models with default settings had me grinning ear to ear. I have the app that Vox provides for remote control, but finding a cable to go from the iPad to the mini USB port on the amp is a challenge. Overall, for the price, this amp covers a tremendous area of sonic bliss for me, and if it failed, I would definitely buy another one.

Wow... I have never owned a VOX; but worked with classic amps like the Fender Twin Reverb and Peavey Classic for many years. Well... this tiny little VT20X has probably the best "tone" of any amp I have ever owned! The tube tones coming out of this gem is nothing short of amazing! VOX has created the first "real tube" characteristics ever. Nothing else even comes close. Even though only the pre-amp is a tube circuit, the tones you can pull out of the VT20X just seem to speak to my soul! Don't let the physical size of the amp or the relatively tiny speaker fool you... VOX/Korg has put some kind of magic into designing this amp. If you have any doubts... look on Sweetwater.com and watch the 10 minute demo video by Mitch Gallagher. I'm glad I took a chance on this after seeing the other 5 star reviews. Stellar amp, this VOX! And all these years I thought it was just a Beatles thing.

I got the 1x8 to replace an older Vox DA15. This thing sounds SO GOOD! The modulation is perfect I think. The Brit 800 and double rectifier are just plain mean! I've had some stuff over my lifetime, nothing spectacular like the Marshalls of old or Hughes and Kettner but I have spent thousands on amps before trying to find the sound I like (before getting out of live gigs) and this amp is by far the best sound and very best bang for the buck I've ever had.

One of my better investments, a whole lotta love inside this combo.

Great sound in a 20 w amp. Loud enough for a bedroom or living room practice. I tried the 40 w and it was too loud for me. Modulation is very close to name brand amps. It feels and sounds very much like a Recto, British head and of course typical Vox combos. I obtained my best sounds by lowering the bass eq all the way down to zero. Very easy to tweak because the quality is excellent. You don't have to be messing with the eq.

This is a great amp for bedroom practise and small gigs. I've had a lot of amps and this thing can sound like any of them. The metal tones are very surprising. Vox seem to have been able to get the sound and feel of a cranked up high gain stack into something quiet enough to not wake the neighbours. The tone room editor is something worth the price on it's own. I've used Line 6 for years in my home but I have to say even though I was skeptical, this little Vox blows them out of the water.

Great sounding Amp in a small package. The Tone Room app. is especially nice as i can control the amp settings from my connected ipad with-out having to lean over or look at amp. A sort of remote control.

We bought this as a second choice purchase;the Guitar Gods were looking out for us! We originally had ordered a Digitech RP360 foot pedal, specifically for the tone editing library software. The Nexus software didn't work for us, so we sent the unit back and replaced it with this and the VOX Tone Lab tone editor. Wow! For $30 more($180), we got a physical amp AND the desired PC software to create pre-sets that fit our needs. The Amp: After using everything from Line6 to the Mustang amp modelers, this one is superior for our needs. EVERY amp model really is a different amp sound entirely. The tube preamp adds some serious tonal mojo, too. Breakup,sustain,tube tone,etc...it is VERY accurate to the original amps. Not 100%, but soooo close. The Editing Librarian: This feature is the sweetest part, exactly what we wanted. The ability to tweak while actually playing the amp works like Guitar Tone Heaven. Saving to user presets is easy and efficient. The additional foot pedal ($60) makes it all come together like an actual pedal board. Also, this particular amp did NOT have the very low level noise that seems to plague VT20+ amps we have played. All in all, this is one fine amp, especially for the price. Fun to play, authentic amps, excellent effects...it's all in one amp. Footswitch recommended.Thanks to VOX for such a fun amp, and to Bob Mondok and Sweetwater for superior service/prices. Now, go get you some TONE!

First, I have had this for a week now. I wanted to fully run it through its paces before just writing the initial impressions. I've tried every setting. I've tried with and without headphones and the foot switch. I will say that it is almost impossible to make this sound bad. Solid State amps sound better with headphones. This sounds better without them. You need to have this true hybrid amp breathe it's sound through its Celestion speaker to get the full effect. I even have the Vox headphones that don't do it justice! I have yet to hear a better sounding amp at any price. Period.

I highly suggest the foot switch with it. It takes a bit to completely learn all the knobs and nuances but you will love it. Tube/Valve sound is spot-on. I've played LPs and Ibanez screamers and as clean to as raunchy and it literally does them all fantastic. Trust me... It's every amp you can search and buy but in one little cabinet. Price - it's worth twice as much and then some, but don't tell Vox! If the footswitch had a Wah/Volume pedal, I'd need nothing else ever.

Adam, you're awesome, Man. This is every tube amp and modeler in one - but better. I'm literally selling all my others right now. Done. Call Adam already. Lastly, the VT40X is the perfect size. If you need more volume, mic it up through a PA or other clean speaker through the line-out. Enjoy. This is the one you've been looking for!!!

This app is totally everything I wanted and more. Easy to use, looks sharp; great cleans, crunch, overdrive, effects- the whole package !...and the tube in the preamp really makes it sound nice! They really got it right with this model !

What a great little amp. It's light weight easy to cart around. Super tone, more than enough power. Lots of different tone available. I'm just a hobbyist. Don't gig just a bedroom player. But I would highly recommend this amp.

I've loved Vox tone for years and finally bought a Vox AC15 to use for my band, but I got tired of hauling it around from gig to gig and then I found this little guy. The tone of this Amp is awesome and when I played on it I had to have it. It's so light weight and the hybrid technology of a Real Tube gives it that warmth of the real thing, but with so many more added amp options, effects and compressors to create a tone that is killer. I use this amp at all my shows and the tone is as good as any Nashville guitarist. If you're going to gig with this I DO suggest that you purchase an extra power supply to have on hand. I've had mine a year or so and the power supply got a sort in the cord after many times of winding and unwinding the cord going to and from gigs. I almost didn't have it come on at a show and it freaked me out, now I have 2 of these amps and I'm going to match up the presets so I'll have a backup ready to go. BADASS AMP and worth the money.

I've used this amp for just about everything when I was 14-19; it currently resides with my keyboard player (he's learning to play guitar). Towards the end though, the ac adapter stopped working during a gig and I had to plug in to a keyboard amp *sigh*.

Love this little amp, it's just the right mix of modeling without being too complicated to just jam with, the 12AX7 preamp tube adds just enough tone without the maintenance and weight of a full tube amp.

The amp models are varied and distinctive, modeled effects sound better than a lot of separate modeling hardware. The high gain distortions are about as good as you get with on-board modeling; while not as good as Positive Grid Bias or Kemper sounds, they're at least not as "fizzy" as most.

I haven't opened the manual or watched a video yet, and figured out the controls, saving presets, adjusting parameters, etc. in just a few minutes, a sign of a well thought out interface. Will eventually play with the computer based modeling software and USB hookup, but it's simple enough to be able to change and preset directly on the amp.

One thing to get used to is the way the amp models and presets are stored by default, so you'll have jumps in volume as you switch between them, the EQ setting will be at whatever the preset was regardless of knob position until you make the first adjustment on that knob. You can fix that by holding the button to the left of the amp model knob until it switches to manual. Just something to experiment with until you decide how you like it.

I did a couple of mods right away, ordered them from Sweetwater with the amp itself. The amp comes with a Ruby Tubes 12AX7C5 HGK, which is a good tube for OEM. I replaced that with a Genalex 12AX7/ECC83 Gold Lion Gold Pins Preamp Tube. The speaker is a solid paper cone OEM non branded model, a bit light on the frame and magnet though. I ordered an Eminence 8" 20W Patriot Series Guitar - 4ohm.

I spent about two hours playing it stock and recorded a few things for reference, really enjoyed it. There's good bite and twang on clean blues/country, the metal end of distortion did pretty well for an 8" 20 watt without a noise gate, and I really liked the in between driven tones. Then I did the swap on the tube and speaker...

BIG improvement on an already great sounding amp. The hemp-cone Eminence has a much heavier basket and bigger magnet, punches like a 10" and sweetens the highs a bit. The Gold Lion Tube really works well with it too. Even though modeling can make almost anything sound the same, there's chime and harmonics that weren't in the OEM setup. It's got a much more dynamic response to changes in attack and tone control settings.

When first plugged in there was a terrible buzz. After reading the instruction manual the unit was then grounded to the electrical outlet which eliminated the buzz. After that the sound was clean.

So far so good. Customer service is excellent. They followed up every step of the way. Thank you!

Sounds better than a Peavy Vypr VIP, but is a little harder to use. For example, the tone control knobs are classic chicken-head (100 bonus cool points for Vox) knobs, but if you load a preset with a scooped mid or something, the position of the knobs will not reflect reality. The knob might be pointed at 12 o'clock. So you go to adjust the knob, and there's a big jump from the tone in the DSP preset to the actual position of the knob you just created. Same goes with the Volume & Gain (but thankfully. not the master volume). The VIP does not do this, and instead uses LED rings to denote the current values. That's much smarter.

The Tone Room software is a bit klunky, too. However, it's immensely powerful, too, and really helps wring the best out of the VT20x. You can have one more active DSP effect than the price-comperable VIP, and once you figure it out, having up to 8 "pedal board configurations" stored in the presets is *huge*. I have one bank of clean, surf, mod & verb tones, and on the other bank I have increasing levels of overdrive, fuzz, and distortion with EQs tailored for either lead or rhythm.

It's also mighty cool that, when using Tone Room, changes to the VT are reflected in realtime. Spin a knob on the VT, and the knob moves on screen, and it goes both way. Fiddle with something on screen, and the sound of the VT changes immediately. No "upload" buttons or such nonsense.

Regarding sound and playability, I wish the VT20X were a little more touch & volume sensitive. On a real tube amp, it's extremely easy to back off the guitar's volume control and clean up the tone. But the Vox stays willfully ignorant and there's a lot of fiddling of the balance between the gain / volume / master in order to get it to behave like a real amp.

My other big complaint is that the extension pedal (which allows you to select across two banks of four presets) is like sixty bucks. That's a lot, and the digital nature of the Vox means that you can't just sub in any old footswitch.

But on the hole, I think this Vox is a stunning value for the money, and I don't foresee myself ever selling it or trading it away. It's just too useful.

For the price you can catch some really beautiful shimmery tones, but there was an overprocessed sound to some models, an issue where switching to a different model without powering off and back on would lead to a weird lag in response, and some pretty gnarly hissing (that in fairness may be from my outlets). I also really dislike that adjusting any setting resets every setting on a model, though I don't know that that is uncommon with modeling amps.

I've had this practice amp for nearly a year and it's a good modeling amp.
The hum is really noisy. I have a high quality cable, and the guitar has been checked out. The hum is from this amp. The plug is ungrounded, which I suspect may be the problem. I intend to add a grounded adapter plug to the amp plug.

It was okay, it got everything that I expected. The sound , size and the weight. Thanks

20w is loud enough .. but it needs more speaker .

There are few problems with this amp. First, it gives off a lot of background noise, and doesn't seem to matter which guitar you play. Second, it also seems to reset itself to a high volume every time you change a preset. A quick touch of the volume button fixes it, but kind of a pain. Third, the Vox Tone Room software works for a few minutes on Apple devices, but then you get a "device not supported" message and then it doesn't work at all. Sent the first one back...the second one isn't any better.

I just received my Vox VT20X and I am immediately disappointed, to the point where I want to return the thing. I misunderstood something about this amp and I want to warn other people who may make the same mistake.

The effects flexibility is EXTREMELY limited. The amp has compression, chorus, treble boost, and 7 other effects assigned to Pedal 1 and you can ONLY USE ONE OF THESE EFFECTS at a time. It's a crippling limitation. Pedal 2 offers another set of 10 effects, like phasers, flangers. and echoes. For my purposes, the Pedal 2 effects are novelties that I would be unlikely to use. (Of course, your mileage may vary.)

If I could use compression and chorus at the same time, I would be much happier. If I could use any one of the effects on either of the pedals, I would be ecstatic. I stupidly ASSUMED the "Tone Room" software would give me that ability. As it is, I would need to use an external pedal to get anything resembling the sound I want.

Also, while the Tone Room software gives you access to 20 amp models, they are mostly just variations on Overdrive, Crunch, HiGain, Distortion, Fuzz, or whatever you want to call it. As a 60's aficionado, I thought a Vox modelling amp would be a good choice to get a clean, chimey sound, but it just doesn't seem to be there. There's an amp model called "Vox Chime", but it's fuzzy even with the gain set to 1. There seem to be only 3 amp models that support a non-overdriven sound. (Std Clean 1 & 2 and Blue Sky)

Clearly, some people are happy with this amplifier. But if you're looking for flexibility, clean sounds and/or 60's pop rock tones, the VT20X is NOT recommended.