Vox AC50CP2 Combo - Any thoughts?

the_jaffa

A friend of mine has offered me an AC50CP2 as his father in law is selling it but neither he nor I know anything about it.  Don't have any idea of what it might be worth either.

Can anyone enlighten me somewhat please?

Cirrus

I had two of the head versions - one 50w and one 100w. Bought and sold both of them now, between those four transactions the price was anywhere between £200-£350. I wouldn't imagine the combo would be that much more valuable, I'd consider £350 a fair price if only because I know I'd want to replace the speakers - the wharfdales aren't good, and I know the amp sounds great with V30s.

The amp's fairly well built, typical pcb/ surface mount components and ribbon cables etc that you'd expect at the price point. The series effects loop is good. And the presence of bias pots and test points accessable behind a cover on the back of the amp was really handy. Both channels are lots of fun - the clean channel is clean clean with lots of headroom and relatively hard/ fast breakup, it's not good at the edge of breakup stuff an AC30 will do but it will do glassy cleans and take pedals well. The distortion channel is a funny old beast because it sounds great but definitely has some foibles - there's lots of clear deep bass and the treble can get very fizzy. I found the trick was the keep the presence control basically all the way off and to set the channel volume so it was juuust pushing the phase inverter into compression. Then with the mids turned up to 3:00ish, treble at 12 and bass turned up until the sound filled out, it's a pretty huge sounding amp with great grind and midrange roar. It was also the least saturated high gain sound I've ever used in that even with the "fat" switch engaged, you could go from screaming distortion with endless sustain to really good sounding light crunch by rolling off the guitar volume.

The master volume is very useable. Preamp tube swaps made a difference, probably more so than any other amp i've used, so I'd suggest trying some different brands if you get it.

Ultimately, I think the only things against it are that it's possible to make it sound fizzy, and that it's got fairly mass-market construction inside.

But if you get it, definitely change those speakers...

the_jaffa

Nice one Cirrus, cheers for the info.  Wisdom awarded.

I'll have a look at it and see how it goes.