Electro-Harmonix 44 Magnum review

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Electro-Harmonix 44 Magnum

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.

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.