JBL BandBox Trio

JBL's debut amp combines room-shaking volume with the ability to dismantle your favorite tracks in real time

- MATT MCCRACKEN

AI IS IN everything these days, from your car and your fridge to your amps and AI-powered pedals. It's quickly becoming two letters slapped onto pretty much anything to make it sound more enticing. The JBL BandBox Trio is yet another guitar product that's leveraging the power of AI to offer musicians a better practice tool - but it comes with a headline-grabbing USP. At its core, it's a mashup of a smart practice amp and a PA speaker, plus (drumroll, please) it can separate and isolate a song's bass, guitar, drums and vocals in real time - and all from streamed audio. It's a potential game-changer for learning songs, and that's just part of the BandBox's bigger picture. The Trio (there's also a smaller Solo model) offers four channels, microphone connectivity and a companion phone app with which you can access a myriad of practice tools like a pitch shifter, looper and metronome. Outputting a hefty 135W RMS via a 1x 6.5-inch woofer and 2 x 25mm silk dome tweeters, the Trio boasts a frequency response of 50 Hz to 20 kHz, so it'll sound great playing your favorite tracks at volume.

A builtin battery allows you to play it on the go, with a charge time of around three hours and a playtime of up to 10 hours, depending on what you're doing. You also can run it with a traditional IEC cable.