Magnatone Baby M-80 designed with help from Billy Gibbons

19 Dec 2023 by Jef |

4,3 / 5,0 | Approximate reading time: 2 Minutes

Magnatone Baby M-80 designed with help from Billy Gibbons · Source: Magnatone

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The Magnatone Baby M-80 is a small 12-watt amp that has a British voice and was designed with some help from ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. The guitarist has some input on how this new combo turned out and so it should sound great.

Magnatone Baby M-80

This Magnatone Baby M-80 features a Marshall-style British tube amp circuit with a 3x 12AX7 preamp section paired with a set of NOS 6AQ5 tubes. The power tubes are around half the length and width of the normal EL34 power tube. This means that Magnatone can shrink the overall size and weight of the amp, making it super portable.

Celebrity Involvement

Magnatone has shared that Billy Gibbons’ expertise was instrumental in refining the amp’s compact size and its unique gain structure. The ZZ Top guitarist is known for his great guitar tone and so this involvement from him is a great marketing tool for any brand. They recently hit the press in November when they worked with Slash, so having Gibbons involved with this latest release a month later is only going to help sales out even further.

Not a signature model

However, this Baby M-80 is not a signature Billy Gibbons amp. If you want one of those then the Billy Gibbons Super Fifty-Nine M80 limited run was the way to go. However, they only made six of those so you could be out of luck.

Source: Magnatone

Controls

The amp features Master, Bass, Treble, and Gain controls, along with a mini-switch for Hi or Lo gain modes. Along with a tube-buffered FX loop. The Baby M-80 lacks a dedicated mids control, but the amp’s designer Obeid Kahn has honed the 8-10 range on the bass control to force the mids to dip, so a more aggressive tone can be achieved if desired.

This new all-tube amp is available in a compact 1×10” combo format and as a head with matching cabinets. Both the combo and cabs are loaded with a 10″ WGS speaker.