I've been playing guitar in various bands from early 80's hair bands to funk rock to my current gigging jazzy rock/blues/folk group. I'm now 50 and took my 60 lb 50w tube amp to the local store and consigned it because I don't want to lug that around anymore (I have kept my Marshall JCM 900 though :-)). I played my first gig with this last night with a full 4 piece band with a heavy handed drummer. This AmpMan had great tone, on both channels (clean and overdrive) and I even had at least another 1/3 volume to spare, and this was with a single 16ohm 1 speaker cabinet which this pedal amp is only rated at 12.5 watts. No more lugging around a heavy amp head and dealing with more connections. You can actually adjust the distortion level on channel 2 to make it more like the AmpMan Classic with a more classic rock distortion, or crank up the adjustments for a new, heavier distortion so If you play many different styles, I'd go with the modern vs. the classic AmpMan.

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I have an H&K Grandmaster 36 with the Shogun Mod as my main amp. I just started using this when out and I can say that most times, I cant tell the difference. This little thing is creamy, responsive and even in tone. That spirit mojo whatever it is works. This will be my gigging amp now. It is really truly is an outstanding little amp.

I was looking mini amp heads by Friedman, Bogner, and Diezel, then decided to look at the H&K Ampman. Those mini amps demos sound amazing but I liked how this came with 2 channels, Redbox DI, and a Noisegate built in. I choosed the modern because that was the high gain tones I was looking for. Amp tones are subjective but this amp can pretty much cover most high gain sounds of those mini amps and more. I can dial in "Plexi" to "Modern High Gain" in spades by tweaking tone controls and using the very usable built in boost switch. Channel 1 can cover a spectrum of clean sounds and breaks up nice when pushed, It took my JHS Bonsai well. There is too many features to mention beyond this but I have no regrets choosing this over the mini amp heads. I threw in my Keeley Omni reverb in the FX Loop and I was set. I left off half a star due to no reverb or delay, that would've made this un-touchable.

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I've been using this amp for two months and I love its sounds.
Talking about features:
- RedBox: it's amazing! I can have the more modern cabinet sounds that I really like, and I can have the more classical cabinet sounds to play songs from KISS, Led Zeppelin, AC DC, etc.
- FX Loop: I've plugged my phaser and reber in this loop. They've never sound better. Those effects are clearer now.
- Two channel switch: amazing idea. Switching from a more silent to a more crunch signal is quite simple, and the quality of the drive in the metal channel makes me in doubt if I should continue using my distortion pedals or not.
- The headphone output is excellent when I just want to sit on the floor and practice. Not big deal. Just the headphone, amp and guitar.
- The boost pedal is great. It gives me the right volume for solos.
- Having the possibility of using the RedBox output or the cabinet output makes me think about getting a Hughes & Kettner cabinet in future.
- This amp gives the possibility to play more modern and classical sounds.
- The size of this amp is right what I was looking for. It fits in my pedalboard. I have no doubt that this amp will be a constant in my setup for many year.
- It's very easy to record using this pedal: I have it connected to my interface from the RedBox output. Easy. And great quality of signal.

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Delivery: Flawless, in less than 2 days.

Subjective sound quality:
Since I have 2 additional different Hughes & Kettner amps (in a slightly higher price range) and the Boss Katana MkII amp (slightly cheaper than the AmpMan 50), herewith their subjective sonic comparison, while playing through a 4x12 cabinet with two Electro-Voice EVM12L Zakk Wylde Black Label (300 watts) and two Celestion Neo 250 Copperback (250 watts) speakers [Sonic Scale: 0 – somewhat vomitogenic sounds such as, for example, many 'dirty sounds' produced by various PRS Sonzera amps; 10 – sounds that are almost impossible to improve; 9-to-1 – sounds that are possible to improve and as the 'assessment number' drops below 3, you probably should not listen to those sounds too much shortly after you've eaten something]:

Sound quality: Clean High-gain/Dirty

Hughes & Kettner GrandMeister 10 10
Deluxe 40
Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 8-9 9-10

Hughes & Kettner AmpMan 50 7 8-9

Boss Katana Head MkII 8-9 8-9
100-watt Guitar Amp Head

Conclusions:
If the price of this Chinese-made AmpMan 50 was the same as that of the Boss Katana Head MkII, I would give it 4.5 stars. It sounds pretty decent, although not as good as its more expensive Hughes & Kettner "cousins," which is understandable. I have been playing the 2 more expensive Hughes & Kettner "cousins" (mentioned above) very frequently for quite a long period of time with absolutely no problem [both of them being in the 5-star category, while my custom-made one-off Carol-Ann amp being a 6-star amp :)]. If this AmpMan 50 turns out to be as reliable as the GrandMeister Deluxe 40 or Black Spirit 200, then it probably deserves 4.5 stars.

In the past, I bought numerous Chinese-made amps and effects (just to try them, because they were so cheap), but frequently, they lasted only "days or weeks," proving that they were not cheap for nothing…

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