I ordered one of these to bring on travels. I didn't expect it to sound amazing but I didn't expect it to be a complete piece of junk either...
I ended up returning the first one I got because it was so noisy I assumed if was faulty. Thomann kindly sent me a new one free of charge (and even let me keep the first one) but sadly the new one was exactly the same.
The level of hiss is so loud it practically drowns the audio signal unless the tone control is lowered considerably. And even with the tone control all the way down it is still unacceptably noisy. This device can cause listening fatigue and probably hearing damage just by listening to the inherent white noise with no instrument connected. Yes, it's really that bad!
It also makes the loudest and most horribly piercing digital squeaks I've ever heard if you accidentally touch the tip of the jack plug when it is switched on. I've never heard anything that loud come out of headphones before! I got instant tinnitus from just a fraction of a second of that squeak!!! It seems like an extremely bad flaw in the design. It's so bad that it has the potential to permanently damage your hearing. This device should NEVER have been allowed for sale!
You could perhaps expect the different gain settings to affect the noise but sadly, no. They only affect the loudness of the audio signal. The noise remains the same. This means that only the highest gain setting is remotely useable (well, not really, just slightly better than the lower gain settings). The two lower gain settings actually have louder hiss than audio signal.
The sound itself it lifeless, lacks dynamic and headroom is extremely limited. Even with passive pickups the Amplug overloads into ugly digital clipping/distortion/pops/clicks unless you keep your playing very soft. If you start digging in, use a pick or slap you WILL get nasty digital clipping/distortion. And don't even think about using it with active pickups, they will overload this piece of crap by just breathing on the strings! It is utterly useless for anything except soft fingerstyle playing with passive pickups.
Build quality is very plasticky and cheap. Which I wouldn't actually mind at this price point if if sounded ok. Sadly it doesn't.
The knobs/wheels are very loose so it's easy to accidentally change volume/tone when you don't want to.
The built in drum machine is fun for about 1 minute until you get bored with the included (and not particularly great) rythms. The sound quality of the drum machine is like the cheapest drum machine imaginable. It would have been a lot more useful if they had included a built in tuner instead to be honest.
This device is a total waste of money and can potentially damage your hearing! Thumbs up to the Thomann team who sent me a replacement free of charge but unfortunately it is still a total piece of junk.
By far the worst piece of audio equipment I can remember buying EVER!
My advice: AVOID!!!
Update: I forgot to mention that I tried the Amplug with a couple of different headphones. This review was actually based on the only headphones I found it to work with at all: Audio Technica ATH-M50x.
I did briefly test if with some higher quality headphones too: Sennheiser HD600 and Beyerdynamic DT1990. The Amplug didn't work with these headphones AT ALL. The output level got EXTREMELY low and it didn't deliver any lows whatsoever. Just a very thin, weak signal. The Amplug was already close to useless with the Audio Technicas but amazingly it got even worse with the Sennheisers and Beyerdynamics. It got so bad that the bass actually sounded better in the room, unplugged.
A total piece of junk! Trust me, you really don't want to waste your money on this.
