Do I need a new amp?

Phil_aka_Pip

p90fool said:

I've likened it before to listening to Radio 1 - it's processed to sound good on a kitchen tranny, a factory Tannoy or in an average car where it'll punch through a lot of background noise, but on a good stereo in a quiet room it has a weird "pumped" quality which can get nauseating quite quickly.

I find that Radio 1 gets nauseating quite quickly for other reasons.

ICBM

I feel the same about the Tech 21 gear - I can never get happy with the sound, there's always something just slightly 'off' that starts to become uncomfortable after a minute or two, and although I can get it 'nearly right', I can never get completely relaxed with it and found myself forever tweaking trying to dial it out. I sold my second Sansamp GT-2 to a friend who wanted one, and who loves it - I had bought it because I heard so many good reviews I thought the first one must have been a 'bad one' or something. I dislike the usually highly-regarded Trademark amps too.

Interesting to find someone else who's experiencing the same 'sensitisation' problem I do... I thought it was me just being overly micro-sensitive again .

I still think the VT60 sounded good though - I played it for about five minutes, and that would normally be easily long enough to show up the 'digital' characteristic I hate. I was mostly using the AC30TB model, which possibly unsurprisingly sounded the best, but I tried it both clean and with a bit of crunch and it sounded fine. I do think the 'Rectifier' setting sounded very odd though, somehow 'claustrophobic' if that makes sense!

p90fool

ICBM said:

I feel the same about the Tech 21 gear - I can never get happy with the sound, there's always something just slightly 'off' that starts to become uncomfortable after a minute or two, and although I can get it 'nearly right', I can never get completely relaxed with it and found myself forever tweaking trying to dial it out. I sold my second Sansamp GT-2 to a friend who wanted one, and who loves it - I had bought it because I heard so many good reviews I thought the first one must have been a 'bad one' or something. I dislike the usually highly-regarded Trademark amps too.

Interesting to find someone else who's experiencing the same 'sensitisation' problem I do... I thought it was me just being overly micro-sensitive again .

Not at all, in fact when you demonstrate these things to people who have never noticed them, they can usually hear it too.
It may just be an unusual balance between being artistically and technically minded which makes some of these things pop out to some people and not others.
An ability to listen and focus very intently on precise aspects of sound plus a technical understanding of what might be causing it is probably why you're not just your average amp mender. It's definitely the reason I pick up a fair bit a development work from an FX manufacturer - I'm good at bridging the art/tech divide without being especially brilliant at either.

Voxman

The rectifier is the worst model in the AD60/120VT/VTX/VTH amps no question. However the real secret of these amps is to put an EQ in the FX loop. The difference is stunning and even the Rectifier sounds reasonably decent. The Marshall models completely come to life and those nasally tones at low volume go completely. And its the same with any model.

Because Vox designed the Blues as gigging amps they set the underlying EQ characteristics to sound best at full blown gigging volumes. But this meant they are missing something at low volumes compared to e.g. Line 6 amps that had the EQ set to sound good in the store but the tone went flabby and muddy with volume. The EQ remedies that, and as the volume increases you need it less.

And ICBM is right...if you can't get great tone from the Blues then its you not the amp. And by the way, the old Blue amps are very different to all subsequent AD chrome amps, because the Blues have a genuine valve output stage that reacts to speaker impedance.

p90fool

Voxman said:

And ICBM is right...if you can't get great tone from the Blues then its you not the amp.

I think he said decent rather than great, but ok I take your point, it must be user error on my part.

ICBM

Could be the guitar too .

Not a joke - I had a Vox AC4TV for a couple of days once, and it sounded *awful* with any of my guitars. I could not get a decent tone out of it at all, either clean or dirty, I have since discovered that they have a basic problem with humbuckers, or even hotter single coils like P90s or Rick High-Gains. Guess what I was using...

They actually sound OK or good with low-output, glassy-sounding single coils, ie Fender-types.

Voxman

ICBM said:

Could be the guitar too .

Not a joke - I had a Vox AC4TV for a couple of days once, and it sounded *awful* with any of my guitars. I could not get a decent tone out of it at all, either clean or dirty, I have since discovered that they have a basic problem with humbuckers, or even hotter single coils like P90s or Rick High-Gains. Guess what I was using...

They actually sound OK or good with low-output, glassy-sounding single coils, ie Fender-types.

  I'm very surprised and more than a little puzzled that you struggled to get good tone from a humbucker guitar. I had an AC4TVH head on loan with the matching 1x12 cab containing a Celestion Greenback and it sounded pretty good with the humbuckers in my PRS Cu24.  Although I switched to single coils after 2:40 the first part was on the bridge HB p/up. The jazz tone at 3:40 was the neck H/B and from 06:40.

ICBM

That perfectly illustrates what I heard in it. Nasal, all midrange and with no top-end at all. (And not much bass either.)

I am not renowned for liking small single-ended valve amps, but although I understand that it's not meant to sound like a BF Fender , it just has no depth or life to it - totally boxy, harsh and muddy at the same time. I even tried removing the three 'strangle' caps (C1, C15 and C20) in the circuit and it made no useful difference.

Each to their own - the popularity of amps like the Epiphone Valve Junior and the Fender Champion 600 (both of which I think sound at least equally awful) mean that someone must want that sound...

For me, the Vox sound is a semi-cranked vintage AC30/6TB. I don't even think AC15s sound 'right' - too small. Most of the modern AC30 versions don't have quite the openness of the old ones either.

The proof of it hating humbuckers and liking glassy single coils is in the video - where you set it with the volume rolled back a bit so the treble pass cap is brightening the tone, at 5'31" - that sounds good, but as soon as you roll the volume up again at 5'40" it goes straight back to sounding muddy. And also the change from 7'24" (bad) to 7'32" (good). My problem with that is that I just don't like that sort of spiky single-coil tone on a guitar, so an amp which only sounds good with that is no use to me.

No offence intended! Just my opinion as to how I hear those tones.

dilbert

d8m said:

I run a small pedal board in front of the amp.

There's your' problem. Moar pedalz required  :-bd 

Bigger the board, the better the results

dilbert

Voxman said:

ICBM said:

Could be the guitar too .

Not a joke - I had a Vox AC4TV for a couple of days once, and it sounded *awful* with any of my guitars. I could not get a decent tone out of it at all, either clean or dirty, I have since discovered that they have a basic problem with humbuckers, or even hotter single coils like P90s or Rick High-Gains. Guess what I was using...

They actually sound OK or good with low-output, glassy-sounding single coils, ie Fender-types.

  I'm very surprised and more than a little puzzled that you struggled to get good tone from a humbucker guitar. I had an AC4TVH head on loan with the matching 1x12 cab containing a Celestion Greenback and it sounded pretty good with the humbuckers in my PRS Cu24.  Although I switched to single coils after 2:40 the first part was on the bridge HB p/up. The jazz tone at 3:40 was the neck H/B and from 06:40.

Cool demo. You convinced me, anyway  :-bd

ThePrettyDamned

@voxman I had the first chrome panel one, and it was a really cool sounding amp.

My mate switched the valve out on his and it definitely made a difference too. So I don't know what the valve does in it, but it does do something. He swapped the stock one for a new mesa (the old one was years old!) and the difference was there.

Very cool amps, both the chrome and the blue one. I actually miss mine - loud, reliable and good sounds. I used the ac30tb, uk70s and uk80s only - ac30 for home practice, uk80s high gain and UK 70s for cleans, mild od and crunch all from pick attack and volume knob. Really cool thing.

d8m

Maybe I should buy a new guitar instead! )

I can upgrade either the guitar(currently Hamer XT) or amp.

ICBM

d8m said:

Maybe I should buy a new guitar instead! )

I can upgrade either the guitar(currently Hamer XT) or amp.

If that's one of the Korean-made Hamers, I would strongly suggest upgrading the pickups before either changing the guitar (assuming you like it!) or replacing the amp. The stock pickups are rather characterless and 'shouty' if I remember right…

I can (as I'm sure others here will do as well) highly recommend Oil City Pickups, as well as some of the other more established British brands. I still like Duncans too, but don't think all good pickups come from the US now .

d8m

This is not the first time I h ave heard about upgrading the pickups in Hamers really bring the guitars to life.

Shamefully in all my playing experience I've never delved that far into changing components  so don't really understand what makes a pick better or give it defining characteristics.

This could be worth looking into though!

Cacofonix

Go to bareknuckle's site.  They give really good examples of the different pups and how they behave.  

Even if you don't buy from them you'll get useful info.

I changed the pups in my mex strat as they were perfectly voiced for ss/digital amps but really harsh and shrill in a valve setup.  Alnicos rather than ceramics made a huge difference.

Danny1969

I playing through a VT50 at the mo, I repaired it months ago but the customer never bothered to pick it back up .... that might tell you something there !

Really badly built amps that sound very average is my review, there's a graininess to the clean sound I can't get rid off and it just sounds lifeless. Built in effects are awful as well 

d8m

amp wise I'm fancying one of these:

http://www.blackstaramps.com/products/ht-5r/

As far as P-ups I have been recommended these:

https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/main/pickups.php?cat=humbuckers&sub=vintage_hot&pickup=vh_ii

Budget wise I can spring for one at the moment so I guess ill need to do some research!

Voxman

 @Danny1969: Tone opinion aside, every amp tech I've spoken with has actually commended the build quality of the chrome VT series saying they are very tidy inside and superior to several of the more expensive amps from 'big brand' names. I had a VT30 on loan and was very impressed with it - and to be fair I much preferred its tone with the 10" speaker to the VT50 with the 12" which was too dark sounding for my taste. 

 

@ThePrettyDamned: Yup, the original chrome ADVT's with just the 11 amp models are actually well liked, and these can respond very well to a valve change.  The other interesting 'mod' on all the chrome variants is to add some 'filling/padding' inside which reportedly really tightens up their tone.  Both these 'mods' are well documented by folk on Valvetronix.net

ICBM

I also liked the VT30 I played. Haven't tried the VT50.

drwiddly

I played one of those Hamers a few years ago in Turnkey. I agree the p/u's were very meh but the guitar itself wasn't bad at all. A p/u upgrade would be a big improvement (Bare Knuckles are great but Oil City are too and they're a lot cheaper + Ash has an offer on atm for forum members).