Vox - Pathfinder 10 - 10W Electric Guitar Combo Amplifier

Product Information

At this point, my amp is super clean with huge headroom. And effectively it's a 18W amp, since the TDA is working at +-20V at x13 gain, and the unrestricted preamp can saturate it easily even on low gain. This is LOUD.

The VOX Pathfinder 10 is designed as a basic beginner amp so you won’t find fancy effects o r stuff like built-in looper on this one. I’ve always liked VOX amps for their looks and construction quality and I must say this particular model is no different.

Additional Media

I even paired this amp with a Behringer UM-300 but the results were not much better. Some metal tones were clearly better with this combo but it gets too fuzzy very easily.

As we mentioned in our introduction, this is a simple little practice amp with relatively few features, however, it still has a great deal to offer.

Tech Specs

Players raved about the impressive sound quality coming from the Vox Bulldog speaker, even with the gain or overdrive engaged. Those who enjoy playing clean loved the richness of the tone, while those who enjoy a heavier sound said the amp could handle a lot more than they initially thought. Lastly, the Bass and Treble knobs are flexible and effective. They can cut down a bright guitar, tame a low-end instrument, and dial anything in between. What’s important, VOX decided to equip this guitar amplifier with two separate channels – clean and overdrive. You can easily switch between them by pressing one button placed at the top of the amp.

The speakers are three inches, making this one of the smallest practice amps in this tier, but the sound is comparably loud to the clean setting on the Pathfinder. The Fly3 offers one additional switch for a delay effect, which you can adjust to make the time in-between the delay shorter or longer. These numbers are already easy to get from the two first opamp stages, and they are nicely placed in a level where we can also hard clip them near their value with various diode combinations if we want. And even get their hard clipping even at max power, while protecting the power stage from clipping the chip. Gain Control - This will increase the amplitude of the input signal in the pre-amp and can give you a more dirty/overdriven sound, which brings us nicely to the next feature. My goal is to have a nice super-clean platform to use with my pedals. I do not expect it to clip or sound like a tube amp on its own, but it can sure sound awesome with pedals. As for the sound, you can expect the usual bright and chime-like tones that Vox is known for. The Pathfinder is excellent for clean playing styles from folk to blues, but it can also handle an intense level of heaviness.

Features

People who used it with effect pedals such as delay and modulation were impressed by the results. It’s safe to say that the amp takes pedals well. Next we would have to perhaps decrease the voltage level of the preamp. So that bigger gain is still home-friendly and enough to bring either the opamps close to saturation/overdriving each other or enough to clip diodes. 9V sounds reasonable and we should be able to transfer some pedal tech easily. When nothing is plugged in, its switch is closed, and it gets the signal directly to the amplifier. When you plug a cable, the switch opens, and the signal goes to the cable. I will probably restore this since I do not need any more gain on the clean channel and I am not sure I like the change in tone.

As for cons, there are a couple. First, the amp doesn’t get any louder after turning the gain up to about 75%. Anything higher continues to distort the sound, but most players felt as though the sound was too saturated at that point. While most enjoyed the overdrive and gain combo, they also pointed out that you can’t get into anything too heavy without adding a pedal.

Warranty Info

The Pathfinder 10 is a straightforward option. It offers the best price possible for the price point while skipping key features other practice amps deliver. There’s not much going on in the input/output section. Here we find a simple offering with an XLR input for your guitar, plus a headphone out / line out for silent practice. The schematic has been around for almost a decade, but there still might be things that need to be fixed. Everyone agreed that this wasn’t the loudest amp out there, but most use it for playing in a single room of the house. As a practice amp, customers think this is an excellent buy for the features and price. Some users also found the larger size and weight to be something they liked.