I vividly remember my dad telling me about Wi-Fi when I was a kid. He promised that when I made it to high school, I’d be able to print my essays from a laptop—no cables required. It sounded like science fiction, but by the time I had my awkward ninth-grade growth spurt, I was regularly doing just that.
It’s funny to think about how much easier wireless technology has made printing, listening to music, and even watching our favorite movies, but how it hasn't quite made its way down to average musicians and their instruments. Sure, you’ll see Paul McCartney with a wireless pack attached to his violin bass, but your local indie band is almost certainly still plugging in their Telecasters with a cable, just like Leo Fender did in 1952.
It doesn’t make sense that, for most people, amps, cables, and the basic guitar rig are nearly the same after 70 years. That’s where the Yamaha THR30 II, and a new variety of all-in-one amps called “desktop” amps, come in. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a built-in battery merge with onboard effects and a built-in audio interface to essentially do anything a musician needs at any time.
At $500, it’s cheaper than what you’ll pay for many traditional amps that do much less, and it sounds fantastic. In a decade’s time, it’s easy to imagine that many touring bands will have abandoned their heavy setups for something like this. If I had a kid who was learning music, I’d tell them that by high school, cables could be a thing of the past.
Yamaha’s THR II models are a series of amps that come with Line 6’s awesome wireless tech on board. Plug a small aftermarket dongle ($50) into your guitar, turn on the boombox-sized, battery-powered guitar amp, and you can shred your favorite Jimmy Hendrix licks anywhere.
THR II amps come in three varieties, the 30-watt THR30 II I'm testing and smaller 10-watt THR10 II and THR10 II Wireless versions. I'd only consider the two amps with built-in batteries (the THR30 II and THR10 Wireless) because that's really where the magic of these little amps comes into focus.
There are no cables, no stomp boxes, not even a tuner required—it’s got all that built in. It's designed to answer all your musical questions with a yes. Want to record? It’s got a USB output, so you can just plug it straight into a laptop. Want to play along with a song on your phone? You can use it as a Bluetooth speaker while also using it as a guitar amp.
You barely even need to remember a power cable. The dongle is charged by plugging it into the amp’s quarter-inch jack, so you never need to worry about batteries, and the amp itself will last about five hours at medium volume before you need to plug it back into the wall.