If you amplify your ukulele, you need The Bud!
The Bud is without question the smallest, TRULY GIGABLE guitar amplifier on the market. You won’t believe the tone coming from either your ukulele, acoustic guitar, or any stringed instrument with a pickup or microphone for that matter, not to mention the volume The Bud is capable of cleanly producing. At 9x9x9 inches, 17 pounds and 120 watts of analog power with a feature set that allows you the versatility to cover almost any kind of gig, this is a MUST HAVE piece of gear for the working musician.
“Just got back from my road trip where I used my new Bud amp (one week old) in performance. I was a headliner at ukulele festival. I used both channels with the tweeter activated. Channel one was for my custom built tenor uke equipped with a MI-SI active piezo pickup – LR Baggs UST. Channel two was for my 1954 Fender Champion lap steel guitar – Jason Lollar reissue single-coil pickup. The uke’s EQ was basically set to flat on the Bud. For the steel guitar I boosted both the 80 Hz, and 420 Hz to about 2 o’clock and set the reverb to about 11 o’clock. These are typical lap steel EQ settings. I used the Bud both as a soloist with my uke and in a band setting with the steel guitar.
The sound person placed a Shure SM-57 about two inches in front of Bud’s speaker. He told me he didn’t have to change the EQ on his board, the Bud got it right. All he had to do was adjust the volume in the house. I didn’t have to tweak the Bud once during my performance. The amp is a pleasure to work with. After my show both my fellow performers and members of the audience commented on how great of a tone I was getting. Henriksen has a winner with the Bud.”
Gerald Ross
About The Bud
A couple years ago we were cleaning out a box of stuff that belonged to our late founder, Bud Henriksen, and found a mysterious speaker cabinet he had made with a 6″ speaker in it. The box happened to be the exact size for our circuit boards to be mounted in, so we built it into a prototype. The result was shocking, not only in the amount of volume which could be coaxed from the enclosure, but also in how incredibly good the sound was. Equally shocking was the response from our customers; obviously there was a need for a tiny amp which sounded as good as our JazzAmp line, but that wasn’t a toy or just a practice amp. So we set out to engineer the smallest possible amplifier a musician could still legitimately gig with. Mission accomplished! Not only does The Bud have an unmatched feature set and enough real power to gig with, it has tonal fidelity that other small amps on the market simply can’t compete with and it sounds just as amazing with acoustic guitars as it does electrics so you can use one amp for both on the same gig, something no other amplifier achieves as well as The Bud.
Features and Specifications
The Bud has two identical pre-amps, each with independent EQ, separate FX loops, independent reverb, full 48 volt phantom power and an input gain control to adjust for different pickups. There’s also an auxiliary input on channel 1 so that whatever you are using it for can be EQ’d separately from your instrument signal. Channel 2 has a bright switch for instruments that need more high end push.
There is a balanced XLR out on the back of the amp which is post-EQ, post-reverb and both channels summed – meaning the signal you’re sending the house (or mixing console, or other amplifier, etc…) is the same signal you’re hearing from the speaker! For individual channel output the FX loop send/returns can be used.
If you need more sound pressure, there is a parallel extension speaker output to make full use of The Bud’s output power. The Bud can drive a 4×10 bass cabinet with no problem at all, and if you plug a 1/4″ dummy plug (headphone adapter plug) into the headphone jack, it defeats the internal speaker but leaves the extension speaker out live. Did we mention there’s a headphone jack?
The possibilities are nearly limitless, all from an amp so tiny you won’t believe your eyes, but you will believe your ears.
Tech specs:
• 120 watts
• 17 lbs
• 9″x9″x9″
• 1/8 Aux. input
• Dual channel, each with independent 5-band EQ and reverb, 48 volt phantom powered XLR/1/4″ combo inputs, and input gain control.
• TRS send/return FX loops for each channel with instrument/line level select
• Channel 2 bright switch
• XLR balanced line out (post EQ and reverb, both channels)
• OEM 6.5″ Eminence Beta speaker with special fluid-cooled, high-yield neodymium tweeter (defeat-able)
• Ext. Speaker out
• Headphone Jack
