Best Amp for Taylor t5z

The Taylor t5z is a pretty flexible guitar as you can use it as both an acoustic or electric guitar. It cannot compete with the best in each category but its flexibility makes up for it.

The best amp for Taylor t5z is the Peavey Vypyr VIP 1. It is a modeling amp that allows for both acoustic and electric settings. With it, you can go easily from clean to dirty or from clean to clean EFX. If you want an amp that expands your sound to 2 channels, this is it.

 

Peavey Vypyr VIP 1 Review

Here are more details about this amp (Click here to see pricing on Amazon).

Pros:

• Versatile: One of the nicer modeling amp that allows you to easily switch from one playing mode to the other. Specifically, it caters to both acoustic and electrical tones. This takes full advantage of what the Taylor T5z can offer.
• Amazing presets: This amp offers presets for both acoustic and electric. In the acoustic model, you get 4 presets that includes 12 string, and models like Trace Elliot. For the latter, you are getting
• Price range: The price is very affordable at USD150.

Cons

• Replacement: Controls are electronic so replacing them might be more problematic, relative to other non electronic amps
• Interface: The interface can be intimidating due to the flexibility this amp offers. I suggest looking at a Youtube video to get a hang of how things works. Once you went through, you will find the controls are easy to remember.
• Clean tones: It is harder to have a clean tones as you have to do some trial and error to get the right settings for your guitar.
• Gainy tones suck: For channels that have grainy tones, the noise gate is very loud and drowns the guitar’s softer tone. This contributes to why clean tones are harder to get for this amp.
• Modeller settings: Auto adjust back to default after you made the changes. This can be a pain to change if you practice everyday and need to adjust the settings.

 

Alternative combo amps for Taylor t5z

If the Peavey Vypyr VIP is not to your liking, other modelings amp that you can consider are:Line 6 Spider and the Rivera Sedona 55.

Line 6 Spider V review

Line 6 Spider V (click to see pricing from Amazon) is a step up from the Peavey Vypyr in terms of price and power.

Its powerful speakers are able to handle both acoustic and electric voicing, thus giving you the flexibility that is needed to bring out the Talyor T5’s strength.

Pros

• Versatile: Can cater to both types of voicing
• Clean tones: For guitarists who love clean tones, this amp will get you plenty of it. In fact, they have a few presets that all sounded warm and clean.
• Plenty of effects and tones: There are about 128 pre sets that you can play around with. Some of them sound less than ideal, probably due to the patches being not well programmed, which brings me to the next point.
• Patch editor: The Line 6 has an easy to use patch creator, allowing you to create your own preferred effects. If you do this well, you will unleash the real power of the amp.
• No messy cords: With the line 6, you probably don’t need any additional gear, which saves you the trouble of going through the messy cords.

Cons

• Learning curve: Due to the numerous options, there will be a learning curve for you to fully enjoy the Line 6.
• Fixed built-in drum loops: With no ability to change the tempo of the drums, it will result in a less than ideal practice session, especially if the built in metronome is not what you are looking for.
• Distortion is limited: If you want serious distortion, it might be challenging to get it on this amp.

 

Rivera Sedona 55 review

The biggest downside of this amp is the price. It costs a whopping $2900+ so your wallet is going to hurt.

Having said that, it has some wonderful sounds that takes advantage of T5’s dual tone flexibility.

Its channel one is meant for electric guitar voicing, with a nod to the Marshall amp sounds that one is familiar with.

For acoustic, use channel 2. It delivers a very warm tone, especially with the tweeter engaged.

With the Rivera Sedona 55, you don’t have to mess around with settings and such. The default settings work just out of the box so saving you the learning curve when compared to the Peavey Vypyr.

 

Peavey vypyr vip vs line 6 spider

The main difference between peavey vypyr vip vs line 6 spider lies in the accuracy of the sound. The peavey vypur vip sounds more natural while the spider sounds more gimmicky, especially when it is distorted. The latter however has more presets and effects.

Other notable differences between peavey vypyr vip vs line 6 spider are

• Line 6 Spider has a more intuitive interface
• The phase editing app for Line 6 gives you more options to creating your own presets
• Peavey vypur has a more natural distortions

 

Split guitar signal into two amps

Another option is to split your guitar signal into 2 amps via a splinter pedal. One can go to an electric amp to tap into the Taylor t5z’s electric side while the other goes to a PA for acoustic.

If you want to do this, I recommend using the JHS Buffered Splitter Guitar Signal Path Effect (Amazon best seller).

It splits the signal into 2 clean channels and allows you to easily switch from one amp to another. With this in place, you can experiment different tones and effects that the Taylor t5 can allow you to.

One additional benefit of this JHS guitar signal splitter is that it can act as master volume control. For amp that are too loud for your bedroom practice, you can use this to bring a finer control to the amount of volume you wish to hear.

The only downside I can think of is the setup. You might need a quick glance at the instruction manual to know what goes where. It is also not clear which direction of the knob should you turn to get your desired output. For a relatively simple product, I think the labeling can be better.

 

Conclusion

The Peavey Vypyr VIP is an affordable modeling amp that caters well to the dual tone of the Taylor T5. It might not have the best of everything but for its price, I would it is value for money.