“Enough power, oodles of tone, and a super easy lug”: Fishman Loudbox Micro acoustic combo amp review

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“Enough power, oodles of tone, and a super easy lug”: Fishman Loudbox Micro acoustic combo amp review

Guitar World Verdict

Whether you’re serious player or maybe you’re just after an easy entry into acoustic amplification, the Loudbox Micro could be just what you’re after.

Pros

+
Good tone.
+
Plenty of power.
+
Simple to use.
+
Super value.

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The acoustic guitar has never been more popular. Even before Covid gave everyone a reason and the time to take up a hobby (and acoustic guitar sales took off), the resurgence of the acoustic guitar, following MTV’s Unplugged presentations, has brought new ideas and technologies into play. The tragics talk about the guitar’s Golden Era: the late 1920s to the early-1940s. But that period has nothing on what has been happening over the last couple of decades. Guitars have never been better, never been cheaper, and there’s never been so many options: like interesting timber choices, great hardware, excellent pickups, and dedicated acoustic guitar amps.

For four decades, Larry Fishman has been serving the needs of guitar players with great sounding and innovative pickups and, lately, amplifiers. His pickups are original equipment on a huge range of brands and models, with the kind of practical on-board preamp controls that performers require. You just don’t have to think too hard about it – it’s all right there. His amplifiers, too, have user-friendly control layouts that are perfect for the live performer, with value-added features like DIs, well-chosen reverb and chorus effects, and vocal microphone channels.

Full disclosure: I have a number of Fishman products and I use my Loudbox Mini all the time so, when I had a chance to try the little brother, I was pretty keen. The Micro, at 40 watts, is a little quieter that the Mini’s 60 watts, but since Fishman amps have always had a generous output that was of little concern.

The Fishman controls are completely straight forward. There’s a microphone channel with volume, bass, treble, and reverb controls; there’s a guitar channel with volume, bass, mid, treble, and reverb controls plus a variable, two-voice chorus. You can plug anything into this channel: for this review, I used 6- and 12-string guitar, mandolin, dobro, and banjo. But I have a friend who uses a Fishman amp for flute, and another who plays fiddle through hers. There’s also a master volume and a phase switch. On the back panel you’ll find a DI, a headphone out, an Aux in, and a power port for the external power supply. And it weighs just four kilos!