Best Bass Headphone Amplifier 2026 – Blackstar vs Vox vs Donner

Practicing bass guitar at home without any sort of amplification just doesn’t feel the same! But getting those hours of practice in without annoying your family members or neighbors means playing through a normal amp isn’t an option either.  

Step up the bass headphone amplifier! 

These amazing little machines, also known as ‘amPlugs’ plug directly into your bass, are powered by batteries, and allow you to hear an amplified bass tone through any pair of regular headphones without the need for a large amp or cables. 

But with multiple options now available, which is the best bass headphone amplifier currently on the market?

For the best clean tone then the Vox amplug bass headphone amplifier is the best choice, if you prefer distorted tones with more variety then the Blackstar Fly Bass headphone amp will probably suit you better. We found these two familiar branded options were easily worth the money over some of the cheaper options available. 

Summary Table:

	Vox amplug 2 Bass	Blackstar amplug2 Fly Bass	Donner Basement
Price	$50	$50	$25
Looks	10/10	9/10	4/10
Features	7/10	9/10	5/10
Sound Quality	8/10	8/10	4/10
Usability	7/10	7/10	9/10
Battery	8/10	8/10	9/10
Total	40/50	41/50	31/50

We concluded this after buying and testing a variety of bass headphone amp options. Keep reading though for a full breakdown of the features and what we liked and what we didn’t about a few different options.

The Contenders 

To help you decide before you buy, we purchased 3 of the top-selling bass headphone amplifiers and put them through a series of tests to decide which one is the best. 

The contenders were: 

• Vox amplug 2 Bass APB2-BS 
• Blackstar amplug2 Fly Bass AP2-FLY-B 
• Donner Basement 

Below we go into detail on a number of different categories which will hopefully help you figure out the winner in the Vox amplug 2 vs Blackstar amplug 2 Fly Bass vs Donner Basement contest.

Vox amplug2 Bass

Price: $50 

Looks: 10/10

The Vox is definitely my favorite looking of the 3 contenders. The embossed gold logo and the fake ‘amp front’ which is really just a sticker make it look very sleek 

Features: 7/10

Connection

The amplifier, of course, comes with a ¼ inch jack connection to allow you to plug directly into your bass.

A nice feature is it moves 180 degrees through a variety of positions which means it allows you to adjust the angle once is plugged into the bass for easier adjusting of the settings without needing to unplug it or bend your neck at some weird angle. 

This moveable jack also allows you to tuck it behind the amp so it folds down even smaller for storage or putting in your pocket without getting jabbed in the leg by the jack. 

Different Channels 

Firstly, the Vox allows you to switch between 3 different channels by pressing the power button. These are:

• High Gain
• Normal Gain
• Low Gain

The Green light indicates the high gain channel, the orange light indicates the normal gain channel, and the red light indicates the low gain channel. 

This might just be me, but I would have thought it should be the other way around? Surely red is the more ‘aggressive’ color and should therefore be the high gain setting surely? A small thing that probably annoyed me more than it should have!

The differences between these three settings are really subtle on the Vox. The higher gain setting just adds the slightest bit of grit, but I wouldn’t call it full-on distortion. I ended up just using the low gain setting mostly as the difference was so minimal. 

Other Controls

On the top of the amplifier are 3 dials. 

Volume: To control the volume of the bass, this goes up to a decent level. At the top end, it doesn’t deafen you but is definitely loud enough to drown out most general external noise. 

Tone: This is essentially an EQ dial. You can roll off some of the higher frequencies to create a more bass-heavy tone or turn them up for more of the high end clarity. The differences are quite subtle and on most bass guitars you’d be better adjusting the tone using the dials on the bass itself. But still its a nice bit of extra control to have. 

Rhythm Volume (Tempo) Control: The third dial has a dual function, it adjusts the volume of the rhythm track (see below for more on the rhythm tracks), and it also adjusts the tempo of the track if adjusted whilst holding the rhythm track button down. 

These dual functions are cool and save space on the small device, but you definitely need to read the instructions to know these secret functions even exist!

Rhythm Tracks

On the Vox Amplug 2, you have a rhythm track button that plays a little drum groove when you press it. There are 3 different types of tracks to choose from by pressing the button again. 

Vox calls these three tracks

• Rock/ Pop
• Funk/ R & B
• Other

Then within these 3 types of track, you can cycle between variations by holding down the rhythm button and pressing the power button. So you technically have 9 different rhythm tracks to jam along to. 

Again, another secret setting I would never have figured out without reading the manual! 

The rhythm tracks consist of real drums and sound great. They aren’t the fake drum sounds you might associate with some old Casio keyboard or something, they have a really nice tone to them, and playing along doesn’t get boring quickly. 

Having the different types of track is really nice too, from some clear cymbal heavy rock grooves to some nice rhythmic tom heavy funk beats too. Great for practicing different bass playing styles. 

The most annoying thing I found is that there is a metronome but it is hidden on the ‘other’ setting and so isn’t that quick to find. I found myself having to scroll through the settings a few times to find it. I think separating out the metronome onto its own track would have been nice but overall that is a minor thing. 

Aux in

If you bought a headphone amp, chances are you are trying to keep the noise down. So playing along to speakers is a bit pointless, and you don’t want to have to wear two pairs of headphones. This makes the Aux In setting very handy. 

You can plug in audio from an mp3 player, phone, laptop etc and get it to play through the headphone amp at the same time as your bass. This worked well and could go up to a loud volume which you can easily hear whilst playing along. 

One small annoying thing was you need to either own a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable or buy one, it doesn’t come with it. 

Sound Quality: 8/10

So the important thing, what does it actually sound like to play? 

Well I loved the overall tone of the Vox amplug2. This was the first of the three headphone amplifiers I bought and I honestly couldn’t believe the sound that came out of it when I first plugged it in. It is warm, full and sounds like you are plugged into a real amp. 

Vox are a highly respected brand who make great sounding amps and it’s probably no surprise they wouldn’t let their name be tarnished by something that sounded average. 

As I mentioned in the features section, the three settings simply adjust the gain and it is subtle. This leaves you with only one ‘effect’ really, but what a tone! I suppose if you nail it why add more?

Usability: 7/10

Overall usability was good, the adjustable angle of the jack is a very handy feature and the dials are all fairly self-explanatory. There are a few things I didn’t like though:

As I already mentioned above, the light colours for the channel selection were the wrong way around for me. Perhaps this annoyed me more than it should, but as you will find out in the next section, Blackstar got it right as you’ll see below. 

I get that the amps are small and so using combinations of button presses is probably essential. But this is the first time I’ve had to consult the manual on a piece of music tech for a while to figure out how to do certain things.

Usually I just mess around to figure things out, but a lot of the features here really are ‘hidden’. I bet there are loads of people out there using this amp with no idea of the additional settings and options available to them. 

I found changing the tempo on the rhythm track really fiddly. It was like cracking a safe. It felt like just the slightest touch would take it from slow hip hop groove to 170bpm drum and bass. 

Battery: 8/10

I have been testing this for roughly 10 hours and it still hasn’t run out of battery, so not bad. The manufacturers claim you will get between 11 and 17 hours depending on how often you use the rhythm track.  

A very handy feature for a forgetful person like me is the auto-off function which turns the amplug off after 30 minutes if not used. Meaning you won’t come back the next day to find you need new batteries. 

Overall Score: 40/50

If you are primarily looking for a nice warm, clean tone then the Vox sounds fantastic for such a small bit of kit. It comes packed with nice little features such as the rhythm tracks which meant I was messing around with it for hours. 

The downside of the Vox is the lack of variety you can get from the tones. If you are a bass player who wants to try out different sounds or play with heavy distortion, you may find the lack of variety on the Vox slightly limiting. 

Blackstar amplug2 Fly Bass

Price: $50

Looks: 9/10

The Blackstar amplug2 Fly Bass looks very similar to the Vox. The size is the same, the font on the dials is the same, the only difference is the branding.

This is therefore just a matter of personal preference and for me, the Vox just looks that bit cooler with the gold letters. The Blackstar still looks very smart though. 

Features: 9/10

Connection

The connection type is identical to the Vox with a ¼ inch jack that rotates 180 degrees. 

Different Channels 

The Blackstar also comes with three channels:

• Classic
• Modern
• Overdrive

But this time it is green for classic, orange for modern and red for overdrive. I was so relieved that the red channel was overdrive, in my mind this just makes so much more sense. 

These channels are very clearly different from one another which I liked. Unlike with the Vox where the three channels were very similar, the heavy overdrive is a mile away from the clean classic tone. I will go into more detail on the sound in the tone sectio