Amp Alert - New Vox AC30's on the way.

philipnz · Post by **philipnz** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:59 am

These look sweet. Due to be made in China in a factory owned by Vox (Korg).

Just check out the features. Will they be good enough to rattle the vintage/reissue/HW closet?

http://www.voxamps.co.uk/products/ac30/ac_30cc.htm

Rog · Post by **Rog** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 10:53 am

Looks great - I imagine by the time they get here they'll cost about a year's salary??

philipnz · Post by **philipnz** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 11:09 am

They shouldn't.
Here are the indicative street USA prices
2*12 Greenbacks $US1000 current reissue $US1800
2*12 Blues $US1700 current reissue $US2200

The NZ list price of a Reissue Greenback is $NZ3700. By my reckoning the price of the new Greenback in NZ should be $NZ2000. And the amps only have to come from China, not England.

There is also a 1*12 and Head priced at $US900 and $US800 respectively.

As far as quality goes, no doubt people will be very critical of the new amps being made in China. Those people also love the oil stains left on their garage floor by British made cars.

ash · Post by **ash** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 11:19 am

It will be interesting to see how they compare inside to a 'real' British one. I suspect they will be downsizing the non-critical components and using PCBs where they can. On the other hand, maybe they will go the whole hog and just rely on cheap labour to keep the price down...

Rog · Post by **Rog** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 11:27 am

LOL - well, that's about my salary.....

philipnz · Post by **philipnz** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 11:34 am

The British one uses a PCB and the Valves are mounted on their sides. Agreed though there is bound to be a lot of solid state components in there especially in the reverb and trem. Here are some snippets from the developers.

Just to give you guys a bit more in-sight on the detail of the new design: -
Carbon Film resistors in the right places of the signal chain.

Axial Polyester capacitors.

Both transformers & the choke are built to the old Albion specs (we are actually making the transformers ourselves).

The chassis is an "L" shape steel/aluminium two piece based on the original shape, and mounted on a shelf like the originals. Apart from being more historically correct this gives the tubes an easier life by mounting the EL84s upright, and also helps reduce microphonics. The steel/aluminium also helps bring the hum down to absolute mininum levels, along with getting the grounding as best as I could probably get, the hum levels are virtually non-exsistant.

I may be biased here, but I personally think that I have created probably the most sweetest AC30 variants ever - I am particularly proud of this amp out of all the products I've ever done, it is adictive to play.
That's my opinion as a guitar player and not just "marketing' BS.

B45-12 · Post by **B45-12** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 11:12 pm

Is it just me or is this all getting seriously weird? I mean in a few years time you will be plugging in your korean made Gretch into a Chinese made Vox amp to get that classic UK beatles sound.

Alterntively you could plug your chinese strat into your Indian made Park amp for that authentic 60's american sound.

Maybe you should plug your Indoneasian Epiphone SG into wherever the current Fender Bassman comes from now for that authentic Kiwi 70's sound - think I'll just take to booze eh - it's simpler.