Best Amps for Les Paul (& LP-Style) Guitars – 8 Soulmates!

This 40-watt tube amp has just about everything I think you would expect from a Marshall amp. Two great channels, full three-band EQ, and reverb.

The two channels are a Classic Gain and an Ultra Gain. Classic Gain can also switch between Clean and Crunch. The Ultra Gain has an OD1 and an OD2 setting.

This gives the DSL40CR a great amount of versatility that I haven’t seen too often on Marshall combo amps. On Classic Gain you have that vintage rock sound.

Upon plugging in, I kept the gain control relatively low, and used the master volume to get classic tube saturation. The resulting sound is pure classic rock goodness. “Whole Lotta Love” sounds just right. “Boys Are Back in Town” and “All Right Now” are spot on, too.

This sound is particularly good for rib-cracking power chords. It really rewards harder picking technique, and works great for 60s and 70s hard rock tones.

If you want a more modern, aggressive sound, you just have to switch over to the Ultra gain channel. Now you have everything from Iron Maiden to the most modern metal sound available.

I found the Ultra Gain channel a little much for my taste, and had to dial back the gain a little to get a usable sound. It was great for more modern rock sounds: it’s not quite scooped enough for Drop D Creed tones, but it’s close.

The great distortion doesn’t mean that it lacks in the clean department either. Quite simply, the cleans on this amp are fantastic. It might actually be one of the best clean sounds I have ever heard on a Marshall amp. I wouldn’t use it for country or jazz, but for clean sounds like Slash used on the Use Your Illusion albums, it’s definitely workable.

It is rich and deep. The cleans also play really well with pedals. If for some reason, you don’t like the amp’s distortion, you won’t have any trouble putting a pedalboard in front of this amp.

Something that I also appreciate is that Marshall has put the power attenuation on the front of the amp. While it doesn’t really make much of a difference, it is just a small convenience that shows the care Marshall has taken when designing this amp.

Since this is a modeling amp, you get a wider variety of settings than just the standard ‘clean’ and ‘gain’. There are now six different amp settings (the newly added edge-of-breakup Pushed tone, and five older classics - acoustic, clean, crunch, lead, and brown) with a variation button that effectively gives you twelve settings.

Les Paul guitars are fairly versatile themselves. So, having an amp as versatile as the Katana to complement a Les Paul is fantastic in my opinion.

Each one of the amp settings sounds great. None of them sound digital or flat. I even found the acoustic setting to have a very natural sound.

I wouldn’t use the acoustic setting for a full acoustic gig, but it’s usable for a short segment of a song.

You aren’t limited to what is on the amp either. You can connect the amp to a PC or Mac to edit and save your own presets onto the amp. I found the software is pretty easy to use and I found making my own presets to be a breeze and even fun. I’m of the opinion that time spent chasing tones is never wasted, and I was able to dial in some pretty fun facsimiles of classic Les Paul tones.

The smaller cab is a factor in affecting the tone coming out of the amp, but I got in the ballpark of Zakk Wylde’s Ozzy-era tone and Ace Frehley’s Rock and Roll Over tone pretty handily.

There’s even a very convincing fuzz sound ideal for Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins riffs.

I’m very partial to the Katana’s user friendliness. For example, The Katana uses a USB type C cable which almost everyone just has lying around. Along with the newest generation of this amp, you can also purchase the optional BOSS BT-Dual Bluetooth Audio MIDI Dual Adapter, which lets you tweak your tone on the fly using nothing but your smartphone, without even a cable.

I’m a little too curmudgeonly these days to try and play guitar through my phone, but it’s a cool feature that I’d love the time to dig into.

Apart from the amp presets, you also have an Effects section available to you. The effects section features a wide range of effects from overdrive, flanger, delay, compressor, and so on.

These digital effects are based on Boss’ own digital effects library. Accordingly, the effects based on Boss sounds are the most convincing: the chilly, metallic flanger is good for Stone Roses riffs, but not so much for Van Halen’s “Unchained.”

That said, I found it easy enough to switch between effects and adjust them. The effects sound just as great as the amp presets and they are all very responsive.

The BOSS Katana 50 is a truly versatile amp. From its great selection of amp presets to the high level of customization it allows. I always have a tough time finding anything wrong with this amp and you surely will as well.

It’s hard to argue against the convenience and broad-ranging versatility of this amp.

Further reading: BOSS Katana vs Positive Grid Spark (a much more in-depth take on the Katana, and comparison with the newer Spark amp from Positive Grid)

The gain on tap is really something. There’s enough crackle and snarl to capture those big, sassy '80s metal tones, but cranking the gain knob and messing with the EQ saw me coaxing some high-gain modern metal sounds from the amp as well.

Palm mutes sound pleasantly chunky and aggressive. Pinch harmonics shriek and squeal like a stuck pig. Or, perhaps, a War Pig. You don’t lose any note clarity, even when deploying extremely high amounts of gain. I had a great time serenading my friend with my favorite Gary Moore licks.

Rolling back the volume knob on my guitar and setting the amp gain a little lower allowed me to get a cleaner “spank” from the tone. The cleans were not quite as glassy as my Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister. Regardless, I wished I had my chorus pedal handy to try out the tapped intro to “Women in Love”. Next time.

Unlike the Marshall amplifiers that Edward Van Halen used throughout the '80s, this EVH combo has a separate gain knob and a relatively even taper for saturation. The jump in saturation from one to four isn’t quite as aggressive on those beautiful old-school Marshalls, so the amp is much more user-friendly.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played music that demanded the sheer amount of distortion this amplifier offers, but I was very impressed by its tonal palette. There’s more headroom than you’d expect from an amp bearing Eddie Van Halen’s name, although it’s far from the neutral clean voicing of a Fender amplifier.

Similarly, the crunchy midrange sounds of this amp lend themselves far better to early AC/DC riffage than all-out metal. However, setting the gain knob past five is where this amplifier really shines.

It handles the chugging drop D riff from “Unchained” like a champ. It offers the right kind of poweramp compression for high-gain leads thanks to its all-tube construction.

You don’t lose any note clarity, even when deploying extremely high amounts of gain. The high-gain settings even react nicely to your picking intensity, and I had a great time serenading my friend with my favorite Gary Moore licks.

Sometimes, I find high-gain amps to be very muffled and inarticulate with the naturally darker voicing of my Les Paul. No such issues here, although I did have to ride the amp’s pleasantly sensitive EQ a little to hit the sweet spot with my guitar.

I’d strongly recommend this amp to those who, like me, prefer hard rock and outright. If you like the Van Halen brothers over Mumford and Sons, you’ll like this amp. 

I love the Tubemeister for the specific tones from the modern iterations of classic rock bands. Rather than imitating classic Marshall sounds, for example, I like the Tubemeister’s ability to produce a tone that fits that genre without copying an existing tone.

My go-to riffs on this amp are classic KISS riffs, played loud and nasty with gain and volume about even. “She” and the harmonized solo from “Detroit Rock City” particularly benefit from this setup.

Likewise, I get a lot of joy from playing the arpeggiated lines from my favorite Rush tracks. The broken chords in the verse of “Limelight” benefit a lot from the clarity and articulation inherent to this amp’s character: no wonder Alex Lifeson played H&K amps for so long.

The built-in digital reverb isn’t enough for shoegaze, but it does provide a wet enough signal for me to do my best Gary Moore impression.

Of late, I’ve enjoyed the clean channel for country playing, even with my Les Paul. The clean sound is appropriately glassy and smooth for country and even pop riffing, and the power soak on the back allows me to retain my beloved tube saturation at bedroom volumes.

When I’m doing home demos or trying the Sisyphean task of keeping sound engineers happy, the built-in Red Box DI is a nifty feature, too, even if it does run extremely hot for when recording.

Don’t be fooled by the Bugera V5 Infinium’s small size. This little tube amp packs quite the punch. It’s very light in my hand, but the tone can get spectacularly heavy.

I’ll the first to admit that a Vox is the last amp I’d think of when trying to match up with a Les Paul. It’s about as far from the classic Les Paul/Marshall pairing as you can get!

However, the natural brightness and British character of the Vox does offer some intriguing tonal options.

Here, the C1 version stays true to both the design and the sound of the original AC15. It retains that classic British look and tone.

The AC15C1 is a powerful 15-watt tube amp. It is one of the loudest 15-watt amps I have ever played and you would be forgiven for thinking it isn’t a 15-watt amp.

Vox amps tend to be very loud: even the 15 watts of this amp was enough to rattle the windows in my apartment.

As with the AC30, this amp is heftier than it looks. I’m just over six feet tall and spent years lugging 4x12 amps around in touring bands, so I’m used to dealing with heavy gear. More diminutive players might want to consider their comfort when loading this amp in and out of gigs, however.

Considering how good this amp sounds and how powerful it is, you probably will want to take it to every gig. I know I want to take it everywhere.

In terms of features, the AC15C1 has some unique offerings. It has both a normal and master volume and spring reverb which are fairly standard on an amp of this type. It also features a tremolo reverb with depth and speed adjustments and a top boost with 2-band EQ and volume.

The spring reverb is nice and drippy, and the tremolo is, to my ear, more Fender-voiced than Vox. I was able to summon tones very workable for surf rock. Likewise, I got into the ballpark of Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys tremolo sounds.

In terms of sound, though, the amp isn’t very versatile. You won’t be venturing into high gain, distorted territory with this amp. Clean and light gains are what it does, but does really well in my opinion.

Of course, being a Vox, this amp excels at cleaner British sounds. With my Les Paul adding some much-needed warmth, the clean tone is very usable for the less jangly end of Britpop tones. I wasn’t much impressed by its capacity for drive and distortion.

I managed to find a usable blues sound, and the chiming, sustaining tones of the amp are nice enough to justify taking it to softer-voiced musical outings.

While I personally prefer the Gibson/Marshall pairing, there’s a lot to be said for this distinct flavor by comparison. It’s got enough grit and warmth for lower-gain rock playing: think Led Zeppelin’s early material, or full-throated Camden indie.

As the name suggests, this little 15-watt amp was made to play the blues. And from my experience, it does blues wonderfully.

The Blues Junior has that classic sparkling Fender clean sound. Switching over to the ‘fat’ channel, you get a smooth midrange and, well, fat crunch sound that is just perfect for blues and rock.

The reverb has also seen a substantial improvement from the Blues Junior III. The IV’s reverb sounds quite a bit smoother and warmer to me than on the previous version.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how well this little amp handles pedals. Drive pedals sound especially great with loads of volume. This allows you to push the amp a little further into a distorted sound. This is far from Marshall-style rock and roll saturation. It sounds best as edge-of-breakup bluesy drive.

Speaking of, I found this amp, paired with my Les Paul, to be great for country playing. More specifically, modern rock-tinged country, like Jason Aldean, Luke Combs, or Chris Stapleton.

My Les Paul just doesn’t twang quite the right way for classic Chet Atkins playing, but for “No Love in Oklahoma” or “White Horse” this pairing of guitar and amp works great. The cleaner sounds are fantastic for blues or country rhythm playing in a pinch, too.

Reverting to a clean tone did present a very neutral palette for pedal platforming. The addition of overdrive and compression helped to push this great amplifier further into the nether region between clean and dirty tones.

Speaking of pedals, Fender has also included a simple footswitch for easy switching between the clean and gain channels. It isn’t that big of a deal, but I do feel it was nice of them to include this small convenience. I tend to switch between clean and dirty sounds by manipulating my guitar’s volume knob, especially on a Les Paul. Regardless, it’s a useful inclusion when you need some extra push.

Build wise, the Blues Junior is a compact and lightweight amp. It’s a tube amp, so it has some weight, but I was easily able to throw it on the backseat of my car to take to gigs and rehearsals.

Even at just 15 watts, this is still a fairly loud amp. Although, I will say that it isn’t anywhere near as loud as the AC15. While you can certainly gig with this amp, you are going to be limited. I probably wouldn’t do any large gigs with it, but it was plenty for rehearsal and bar gigging. Likewise, I could see myself using it for rather smaller café gigs or some busking.

Further reading: Blues Jr vs Princeton Reverb (a much more in-depth take on the Blues Jr)