Re: I'm ordering my amp. .... finally.
This amp is very very close to the same thing as the Vox AC30 handwired reissue.
4 x EL84
One EF86 in V1 and a bunch of 12AX7 in the rest of the preamp circuit.
Tremelo has two control knobs (rate/intensity?) and a short/long toggle that gives you two distinct ranges of trem. The reverb is single knob and is as lush as anything I've ever heard from a Fender.
What they did was take the gain channel on the Black Cat (AC30 type amp) and add some cool tone controls options and trem/verb. The reverb on Black Cats, as well as that on many other Class A amps is rather weak when compared to what they do at Fender.
I'm a reverb ho. Gotta have it. The way the guys at Bad Cat explained it to me is that by only having the one channel passing through the verb, they don't lose as much signal as when both channels pass through the reverb.
The tone stack is way cool. First, there is a 4 position rotary that allows 1. take all tone controls out of the loop completely, 2. just use the 4 position rotary tone knob like on the Black Cat (ef86 gain channel on the Black Cat), or 3. "normal" treble and bass controls 4. or both. When I used both, what happens is the 4 way rotary fixed tone control changes the control frequencies in the regular normal bass/treble pots. Tone options out the ying-yang.
There's a cut, plus master volume. On the master, they used to use a cheap push/pull volume pot to defeat the master and allow you to just run the amp like an old AC30 with no master at all, just the one knob. This time, they went with a high quality toggle switch. So, you can defeat the master if you want to purify the signal a bit more.
On the back, there's a speaker out with a heavyduty 3 position rotary (4,8,16ohm). There's also a 30/15 watt attenuation toggle (half power option where two of the power tubes are taken out of the signal). The 15 setting doesn't really get a lot more quiet, but it does allow for more power tube saturation at lower volumes. Just a slightly different tone option.
I think that's it.
Lots of crappola, but the tone is pure, focused and just everywhere. As for price, I'd rather not mention. :doh:
