Electro-Harmonix 44 Magnum review

  • £109
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The 44 Magnum is the bigger brother of the 22 Caliber.

MusicRadar Verdict

As an eminently portable safety net for your temperamental vintage amp, the 44 Magnum could prove indispensable. The intrinsic tone isn't especially impressive, but feed a pedal or two through it and it's certainly very usable.

Pros

  • +

    Portable. Works well. Adequate headroom.

Cons

  • -

    Doesn't sound great by itself.

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The 44 Magnum is the bigger brother of the 22 Caliber.
The 44 Magnum is the bigger brother of the 22 Caliber.

Electro-Harmonix 44 Magnum

This aural weapon is the bigger brother of the 22 Caliber, and as the name suggests, the 44 Magnum is a similar package boasting double the power.

It's a genuine power amp designed to react in much the same way as a more conventional unit; plug your guitar into the input and hook the output up to a speaker or cab with a load between 8 and 16 ohms via a speaker cable.

"A significant improvement comes when pedals and effects are used to help the tone."

Increase the volume and it gets more dirty in the familiar way and there's even a small bright/norm switch to add a modest boost in the high end if required.

In Use

When used by itself, the Magnum's clean tone is perfectly acceptable and - into our Orange cab loaded with four Celestion Vintage 30s - there's enough headroom before break-up begins.

Set the volume anywhere past 12 o'clock and it begins to overdrive, but not in an especially musical way and, at full blast, the drive is overly flabby and indistinct.

A significant improvement comes when pedals and effects are used to help the tone, be it smoothing it with a Tube Screamer or augmenting it with the likes of the Line 6 M13.

Simon Bradley

Simon Bradley is a guitar and especially rock guitar expert who worked for Guitarist magazine and has in the past contributed to world-leading music and guitar titles like MusicRadar (obviously), Guitarist, Guitar World and Louder. What he doesn't know about Brian May's playing and, especially, the Red Special, isn't worth knowing.