VOX AC's & pedal suggestions?

[2manyguitars]

Ok, so I realize AC-15's & AC-30's don't always take pedals very well, or so I've been told anyway? I just bought a AC-15 Twin & I'm looking for pedal suggestions. Mostly I'll be looking for dirt pedal ideas, but I will also probably be running a EQ & some kind of delay? I have a Night Train G1 50w head that I'm running into a 2x12 cab & it is supposed to give you that VOX chime but the two amps are apples & oranges to my ears? For heavy distortion I run a MXR Fullbore Metal with the gain turned up to just passed noon & a Soul Food O.D. pedal with the gain @ about 9 o'clock, the tone @ noon. This is mostly acting as a boost pedal but it adds some tone & some much more natural clear gain, the 2 together sound pretty good but it can also be a P.I.A. sometimes. For lighter distortion I just use the Soul Food & the amp's Girth CH. I'd like to find one pedal that will give me this same kind of sound out of the AC-15 Twin. Also anyone who has experience with this amp & pedals, what ever they might be, please feel free to chime in as well. If there's a perfect Flange out there for it or something like that I'd love to hear about it! So any thoughts &/or suggestions will be much appreciated!

 

[James Rock]

Re: VOX AC's & pedal suggestions?

The hotcake is meant to be good but I have never tried it, for distortion RAT type pedals and Marshallish pedals always have sounded good to me but they still have that VOXY mid focused tone which is kind of hard to get around. What kind of sound are you after middy rock distortion or a more modern thing? For boost I like my Caline CP-20 which is a Fulldrive Clone on the Comp Cut setting and boost on adds a nice glassy crunch (the more middy TS type tones dont work so well with VOXs to my ears). Also I like modded BOSS DS-1s with VOXs.

 

[man-in-moon]

Re: VOX AC's & pedal suggestions?

I just went through this a few months ago. I had an AC15 and AC30 I went through about 20 pedals trying to find ones that worked well. After a lot of fails I did a lot of research online and found out about the bright cap mod. It made the amps take pedals a lot better. It takes a little of the sizzle off but the sound is still vox. The older voxes do not have these caps and neither do the new hand wired series from what I understand.
If you want to try the mod look it up all you do is remove 2 caps from the circuit at the top boost jack. There are demos of people showing the amps before and after the mod on YouTube. Here are some pedals that worked well the AC's
Wampler sovereign, full tone ocd, bogner burnley, boss DS-1, ibanez ts808, mxr custom badass distortion and a rat. Tube screamer type circuits worked really well.
I would look into the mod I mentioned it's easy to do and made the pedals sound a lot better.

 

[zzmoore]

Re: VOX AC's & pedal suggestions?

I just went through this a few months ago. I had an AC15 and AC30 I went through about 20 pedals trying to find ones that worked well. After a lot of fails I did a lot of research online and found out about the bright cap mod. It made the amps take pedals a lot better. It takes a little of the sizzle off but the sound is still vox. The older voxes do not have these caps and neither do the new hand wired series from what I understand.
If you want to try the mod look it up all you do is remove 2 caps from the circuit at the top boost jack. There are demos of people showing the amps before and after the mod on YouTube. Here are some pedals that worked well the AC's
Wampler sovereign, full tone ocd, bogner burnley, boss DS-1, ibanez ts808, mxr custom badass distortion and a rat. Tube screamer type circuits worked really well.
I would look into the mod I mentioned it's easy to do and made the pedals sound a lot better.

Yeah.....the Treble Booster (Dallas Rangemaster etc etc) were born because of VOX.
The above info is correct.....the Top Boost/Brilliant channel has a non-switcable bright cap. Most people remove it. I reduced mine to about 68pF.
Anyway...at less than half volume, the bright cap CAN play havoc with boost pedals.
You just have to do some experimenting. Making the cap switchable is also a possibility.
good luck

 

[Myaccount876]

Re: VOX AC's & pedal suggestions?

Treble booster into the normal channel, preferably cranked up loud. That's most of the AC30 dirty tones you hear right there. For fuzz type dirt, I use a Basic Audio Scarab Deluxe, and my amp is an older Night Train (bright channel) to sound more like a traditional AC15/30 amp (less preamp gain, less piercing treble, more high mids). That works exceptionally well. IME, Vox amps work better with transistor based dirt pedals, but I'm sure there are IC and diode based pedals that work well with it too - I just haven't played it.

But my first recommendation - treble booster. It is a must with a Vox. If you're handy with a soldering iron, they're very easy to build - they're usually people's very first pedal builds.

 

[2manyguitars]

Re: VOX AC's & pedal suggestions?

I'm def. very interested in the tone cap mod.! I do have a treble booster & some other pedals that work in almost the same way but they are almost all diode based pedals, or the ones that I've bothered to really get to know are anyway? If I do this mod. on my amp I think I like the idea of having it switchable instead of removing it completely, if anyone has done this or knows of a good D.I.Y. video to help guide me along that would be a very cool thing too!!! If making it switchable proves to be too much of a P.I.A. then I guess removing the caps should be fairly easy? I do have basic Amp/Effects soldering knowhow & obviously wiring guitars, I've been building & hot rodding guitars for over 20yrs now! Wow, that sentence just made me feel even older, anyhow, as far as amps go I've done a few little things here & there on a few of my amps, hand wired a Champion 600, stuff like that so I'm pretty comfortable with the iron in my hand but I'm no expert & I've always found simple is almost always best? So if you are kind enough to make any suggestions please keep this in mind. Thanks for all the help, support, & ideas so far! Please keep them coming!!!

 

[zzmoore]

Re: VOX AC's & pedal suggestions?

Is your AC15 the "CC" or the "C" model.?