- JBL’s two BandBox speakers are made for instruments and microphones
- AI tribe separation so you can play alongside your favorites
- $249 / £199 for BandBox Solo; $599 / £549 for the BandBox Trio
JBL has introduced two new portable speakers and practice amps that solve a common musical problem: finding other musicians to practice and play with. The new BandBox Solo and BandBox Trio have an AI-powered system that should enable you to play guitar with Geese, rock out with Rammstein or, er, play trumpet with Taylor Swift. Although as JBL takes pains to point out, the features are purely for non-commercial purposes.
It’s all about the stems. Stems are the individual tracks that make up a recording – the drum tracks, the guitar track, the lead vocal, and so on – and the BandBox speakers can separate and adjust these stems from your playing music via the power of AI.
This means you can turn off or isolate certain strains to play or sing along with the band, or mute the rest of the band so you can hear that tricky bit more clearly when you’re trying to learn it.
Stem separation has been available in digital music apps for some time now, but live stem separation in an amp/speaker is really quite clever and could be really useful for anyone learning new music. And the larger speaker could be really handy for bands that want to practice or play live without having to pay for a PA system.
I find them fascinating, not just because they contain the kind of technology I would have killed for as a guitar-toting teenager, but because they combine the two worlds of JBL: while many people will know it for making the best Bluetooth speakers and many legendary hi-fi speakers, it also helped shape the sound of rock’n’roll in Fender’s 1960s music and guitar amps (so has been a great music and guitar amp) decades.
JBL BandBox Solo and BandBox Trio: key features and price
The BandBox Solo is a wireless Bluetooth speaker that puts out 18W of power and promises zero distortion (unless you’re playing through a distortion pedal), and it comes with a selection of instrument effects including classic amp tones and pedals including chorus, reverb, tremolo and phaser. There’s even a looper so you can play along with your own game, and of course there’s also a tuner.
There are more musician-friendly features, including a built-in metronome for keeping time, and a detuner that can make songs easier to sing or guitar parts easier to play. And you can connect the speaker to your laptop to capture performances on your favorite digital audio workstation.
As the name suggests, the BandBox Trio is designed for multiple musicians – although there are four inputs, not the three you might expect. It’s a larger, wedge-shaped speaker, and it’s much louder: 135W. It is designed to be used alone, but can be connected to other speakers for even more power.
BandBox Trio has the same AI and effects as its smaller sibling, but also adds a four-channel mixer and a drum machine. JBL is pitching this one for small bands, open mics, and other multi-musician setups where you don’t want to lug around pedalboards and PA systems, and it comes with a replaceable battery that delivers up to 10 hours of playtime.
The BandBox Solo is $249.99 / £199.99 (approx AU$395) and the BandBox Trio is /$599.95 / £549.99 (approx AU$1,085). Both models will be available from February 2026.
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