New Vox day!

Thundermtn

Thundermtn

New member
My first new amp in well over a decade! An AC15C1 in white with a Celestion Creamback.

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This is actually about a week late. Un-boxed the thing, looked fantastic. Turned it on real low and clean and started breaking in the speaker and it sounded pretty good.

So I get it warmed up good and plugged in my LP and crank the pre and the thing fell on it's face. Not smooth, no sustain, mega bright, weak bass and no thump, on top of that I had tube rattle once I Iayed the juice to the power tubes. Bitterly bummed out summed it up, a had played one in GC with a greenback and it had been pretty good. So now I have a day old amp I'm looking to dump.

Anyway so my bro says just play it for a week and put some new tubes in it. His AC30 a few years ago needed help too. So I commenced to beating on the speaker at high volume for a week and ordered a high gain JJ for the V1 and the rest are just a standard JJ set.

Now that the speaker isn't brand new it is sounding a little better, so tonight I re-tube it and it is sounding about 100% better. It's much quieter noise wise, sustains much better and is darker/warmer, excellent dynamics, no more tube rattle. Still getting used to it after being a triple rec. player most of my life but am having a lot more fun with it now. It may end up being a keeper after all once the speaker gets fully broken in.
 
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Re: New Vox day!

I figured why have all these guitars and only one working amp. The Mesa isn't going anywhere, it's too heavy to get rid of, in multiple ways. Lol
 
Re: New Vox day!

I have an AC4C1 combo; the stock tubes didn't favor it. RFT preamp tubes/JJ EL84s were a vast improvement.
 
Re: New Vox day!

Oh man, tuned to C# with an EMG 85 neck p/up, with both volumes dimed and the TC @ 0 this thing is giving me a really nice Sabbath tone.

So far with vintage output stuff I'm still on the fence but with my hottest ones the tone is pretty cool.
 
Re: New Vox day!

Funny Thread Title!

Vox Day is a pretty famous science fiction author, publisher and blogger.

You did do the capitalization correctly, though, good job!

As far as the amp goes, I really think it's not near enough break in to be forming opinions. And don't forget all those tone controls. It's easy to think the sounds are not what you like, when it's new, until you've really played with it.

I recently plugged into my Orange 1/2 Stack and thought: "This doesn't sound right, in fact it sounds like crap. WTF?" But I hadn't played it since moving it to it's current location, it was not placed well in the room, the Marshall combo and Bassman were hogging the good spot. And it's twin channel amp and neither channel was set up right. Maybe I used to play it that way? It took two band practices to get it dialed in.

I really hated all the BOOM bass bottom end. That's stepping on TBP's space, and it's just not how I hear my guitar (a Tele, like yours). But that's after 2 years of daily play on the Bassman, I'm sort of used to hearing Bassman, which I love, but which often leaves me wishing for a little more gain.

Once I had the idea of "OK, let me make it sound like the Bassman" and went to work with the tone controls, wow, it started sounding pretty good!

I also had to get over my prejudice against turning knobs all the way down. I did this partially by remembering that Jeff Beck turns the the bass and middle all the way down on his amps. So I got really vicious with all of them maxing gain on the drive channel, choking down main, zeroing bass, etc...

And yeah it started sounding pretty good. I feel like the amp should sound good with everything at 10 O'clock, but I don't really run any of them that way after a while.

I'd stick with it, get vicious with adjustments, including placement, and play with it some more before consigning it to your 'history of bad decisions' folder.

PS: It looks fantastic. So, that's another reason to work with it a bit, and it's a really perfect size, too.
 
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Yeah it's a knob tweaker for sure. It does change tone pretty well. Mentally I'm still adjusting to knobs at zero or ten being useable but on those edges so far that's where I'm getting some good tone, so guitar dependent though. It's picky on distance to the wall in the back too but I'm getting it dialed in more.

Tele, clean, is awesome. I need to try some pedals and see how it responds. I don't have an OCD, and I'm liking the Wampler Plexi too. My Boogie was perfect and amazing from the first second, a floor model already broken in, closed back and so much different. Still getting used to such a different rig. It's got some good tones in there but still not sure if it's "my" voice, de-programming from years of intense high gain and sacrificing easy pinched harmonics is tough.
 
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