Having an all-valve guitar amplifier that sounds great at volumes that don't threaten neighbourly relations is fast becoming one of life's essentials. And Supro doing their bit to help with the Blues King 8.
Like a scaled down Blues King 12, this bedroom-friendly and portable little amplifier is styled after the mid-50’s Supro Spectator combo and finished in black. It is an all-valve design that takes your guitar's signal, runs it straight through a 12AX7 valve preamp, adding gain and sending it through a 12AU7 valve power amp for 1-watt output through a Custom Supro BK8 eight-inch speaker.
Even at 1-watt, the Blues King 8 should have just enough juice to send pets running from the room when you hit that spotlight hero note and hold it. But crucially it puts that hot Chicago blues tone into a smaller format and makes it available at lower volumes for home recording and practice.
Like its bigger sibling, the Blues King 8 is inspired by the Spectator and other low-wattage Supro combos of yore but is an all new design.
The Blues King 8 has also has a line output so you can use it as an outboard tube distortion unit running into another amplifier, or run it through a DAW. There were none of them in the 1950s. There is a footswitchable boost function too.
Price is $299 (£245, €275 approx).
See Supro for more details.
