Re: Tone Quest: 1959 vs. JCM800 ??? (Moded ???) HELP!!!
Hopefully this will help to answer some questions and it's also an attempt to address many posts. For what it's worth...
PCB verses HAND WIRED
I'm not going to overly technical or type a novel (not enough time for that--ha, ha). We've done extensive and exhaustive comparisons/A-B'ing. If you use a well designed, good quality PCB along with good quality wire and components you will not hear a difference *but* most PCB equipped amps (like the reissues) use caps that are lesser quality caps, wire, trace materials, etc., etc and that is where the sonic differences come into play and you will hear it not the actual PCB itself.
If there is not much difference why do you hand-wire your V-Plex amps?
When people think of older Plexi's they know they are hand wired so we're hand wiring them so they are as close circuitry wise to the early 1968 plexi that we cloned.
Regarding older Plexi amps being inconsistant (as the-guy-who-invented-fire suggested)
Never was there a more true statement regarding old Plexi's (ha, ha). We work on a lot of old plexis all the time and we've seen far more variances than what is listed on any given website on the net (voltages, transformers chokes, components, values and the list goes on) so I whole heartedly agree with the-guy-who-invented-fire. You are rolling the dice when purchasing an older Plexi off from the net, etc.
They hold their value well, there's no doubt about that but if you are purchasing one for tone then I would recommend playing on them first. If you like it and have the money then I say go for it. A lot of people want a great sounding plexi but do not want to spend thousands and risk getting one that does not sound good, that's the main reason why we introduced the V-Plex.
Will the reissue transformers work?
Yes, naturally they work fine and you can gig with them for years. Some people love them and some people do not so it's really personal preference more than anything else.
Do the new reissue transformers sound or feel the same as the older transformers?
No they do not. For a long time we had two reissue heads in the shop that people could play on or test drive. One was all stock and the other had a cloned transformer set that we had Mercury clone for us (they were from an early 1968 plexi that we also use in our V-Plex amps). We never told them what the differences were, etc. but every time someone plugged in and A/B'ed the amps the comments were always the say.
"Are these the same amps? They do not or sound the same..."
Will you install a Post Phase Inverter Master Volume?
Yes we will and we do it on about 1/2 the V-Plex amps we ship out. It's an additional $69.95. It's 100% transparent and when it's on 10 it's completely out of the circuit. You can get the break up/distortion at any volume level (even bedroom volumes).
Tell me, whats the % of this V-Plex being a real perfect copy, as if it was made by Marshall on the 60'... ???
For what it's worth: We literally cloned this from a very early 1968 Plexi (it may have been a very late 67 but from everything we checked it appeared to be an early 1968). It was literally the best sounding older Plexi we've ever worked on. We traced out the circuitry, took voltage readings, removed the transformer set, sent the transformers to Mercury and had them clone it to the "T". We're not cloning the exact look, exact layout, etc. but all the V-Plex amps sound like the early 68 we cloned it from.
Im buying the V-Plex... but there's a little problem... I live in Brazil, and i don't think that Trace will be able to ship the amp here ... and maybe not even accept the order ...
We ship globally every week so it's not a problem at all. You can pay with an international money order or Visa, MasterCard and Discover (both debit and credit)
Have a great day guys!
Trace
