- JBL’s two BandBox speakers are made for instruments and mics
- AI stem separation so you can play along with your favorites
- $249 / £199 for BandBox Solo; $599 / £549 for 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 feature 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 is at 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 those stems from your played music via the power of AI.
That means you can turn off or isolate specific stems to play or sing along with the band, or turn the rest of the band off so you can hear a 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 genuinely useful for anyone learning new music. And the larger speaker could be really handy for bands who want to rehearse or play live without having to shell out for a PA system.
I think these are fascinating, not just because they contain the kind of tech I’d have killed for as a guitar-toting teen, 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 guitar amps, and has been a huge player (so to speak) in recorded and live music for 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 amplifier tones and pedals including chorus, reverb, tremolo and phaser. There’s even a looper so you can play along with your own playing, and of course there’s a tuner too.
There are more musician-friendly features, including a built-in metronome to keep 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 in 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’s designed to be used solo but can be connected to other speakers for even more power.
The BandBox Trio has the same AI and effects as its smaller sibling but adds a four-channel mixer and a drum machine too. JBL is pitching this one for small bands, open mics and other multi-musician setups where you don’t want to be lugging pedalboards and PA systems around, and it comes with a swappable battery that delivers up to 10 hours of play time.
The BandBox Solo is $249.99 / £199.99 (about AU$395) and the BandBox Trio is / $599.95 / £549.99 (about AU$1,085). Both models will be available from February 2026.
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