Joyo BanTamP BadASS

My initial test with new gear is to check how it sounds straight out the box. So, I'll start with contents: out the box you get, the amp, power supply, footswitch, instrument and speaker lead - all good for a £122. Next up, plug in to see how it sounds. I'm pairing it with a TC BC208 cab and using my 1999 EBMM stingray. Low, Mid & Hi all set to far left position (off or low) comp switch at normal and control at 9am, gain at 8am and volume at 10am - morning times for illustration purposes and context. Plugged in the bass for instant nice tone and volume. Moving the EQ section to midday, adjusting the volume to full and working the gain up from zero, is astonishing! The footswitch appears to activate the compressor of which, is not too bad given the price of the amp. It is a single valve (AX7) 50w at 4 ohms little head that I'm running 20w at 8 ohms through my BC208 - it is loud at 20w. Will test more in the coming days but I am very impressed for more or less out the box tone & volume.

The tiny amp has an apearance of a little lunchbox that you might take to kindergarten. I didn't have much faith..
Untill i hooked it up with a pair of Phil Jones C2 cabinets to have a 4ohm load,what a sound.
The lows and lowmids are fat and round,mids are crisp.If you like fat tube sound, this is your thing. In my opinion the treble knob has more of a presence function wich is ok with me.
The compressor works ok untill 10 o'clock setting,otherwise it's a bit unnatural in my opinion.
The Bluetooth function works wel en is a plus.
There is no xlr balanced output, but you could insert a D.I. box between the send/return on the back.
The power section of this little amp is loud for the 50 watts, although not loud enough to work with a drummer. You can use it as a tube preamp and connect it to a power amp.
Overall, i'm very happy with it,the low cost only makes it better.Thx Thomann and Joyo.

I must have watched every YouTube video reviewing this amplifier before committing to buy. I have a 4 ohm promethean cab so that seemed perfect, and it did, sound great through that. The compressed channel and boosting the gain gives a beautiful grit to the sound, which I really like. The tone control's are subtle, not giving a huge sweep, but, as one YouTuber reviewing the amp said, it doesn't really give you scope to mess up your sound.
I've used the Bluetooth to play a simple beat from a free app on my phone to play along to, no problems there. Best to switch off the Bluetooth before powering down the amp or it can get confused when you next try to connect. The only issue I have has is the toggle switch to turn the amp off not functioning a couple of times. Now I've cycled it a few times, that too is fine. If you're buying in the uk, note it'll come with an eu plug and adaptor. I'm sure it's fine but I liked neither the idea or the look of this when it turned up, so for a few pounds I bought a kettle lead to clover plug adaptor, and that works fantastically. I like the sound of this little amp so much, it's now got a feed out of the headphones socket, into a rack compressor, an exiter, and an eq will be added shortly, all this being fed into a 300 watt reference amp which doesn't colour the sound, running three cabs. It's totally loud enough for home practice just on it's own, if I were going to go jam with people now, I'd be taking the Joyo and running it though my bigger rig as described above, because the sound is so nice. Must be the valve preamp. For home practice or to run into a power amp for jamming, it's a no brainer. The next addition will be a D.I box fed from the effects look send. This amp is all you need

It's very compact, yet powerful enough to fuel a basic practice setup. Thanks to its tube preamp, the sound is nicely crispy and responds very well to playing dynamics.

I used it formerly in travel, where its tiny size really mattered. It drived 200Ohm heaphones perfectly fine. It has built-in compressor and has good gain control plus 3-band eq, so I didn't even need any other boxes to be satisfied with the sound (definitely for practice purposes). Why Bluetooth input rocks, I shouldn't describe - it's just incomparably more comfortable over being tied with a cable (and not being able to charge with modern jackless phones).

I didn't use its main output frankly speaking, but in my home setup I used it as a preamp to Orange crush 100 by binding its effect send to combo's return. I swear, it sounds so much better than Orange's preamp that I abandoned my plans on replacing the combo with a bare cab.

Regarding build quality, it feels sturdy and I am not afraid for it.

Pros:
- Small, great for travel and home practice
- FX loop
- Bluetooth input
- Build quality
- Sound (for the price it's outstanding imo)
- Decent "out of the box" compressor
- Functional equalizer

Cons:
- The included jack cable stinks