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Re: 70ies Vox AC-30 any good?

5/16/2005 6:08 PM
SpeedRacer	Re: 70ies Vox AC-30 any good? i've never personally worked on a 70's vintage, from what I have seen in pics and read (in VOX book) they look sketchy at best. The AC30 runs very hot and has very poor ventilation. It's an oven.. Combine that with poorly made (by modern standards at least) PC boards and you have a recipe for nagging intermittent problems and failures. Many (most?) of them did not use the GZ34 rectifier which not only slowed the warm up of the whole circuit but also lowered B+ levels so I would guess that the 70's models would have a tendency to be less reliable. Given the choice, I'd go with the 90's model as a few quick mods and they can be very good sounding amps, and they have fewer miles on them. Swap the tubes for something better and swap out the output tranny and the reissue amp will sound great. jm2c

5/16/2005 6:08 PM

SpeedRacer

Re: 70ies Vox AC-30 any good?

i've never personally worked on a 70's vintage, from what I have seen in pics and read (in VOX book) they look sketchy at best. The AC30 runs very hot and has very poor ventilation. It's an oven.. Combine that with poorly made (by modern standards at least) PC boards and you have a recipe for nagging intermittent problems and failures. Many (most?) of them did not use the GZ34 rectifier which not only slowed the warm up of the whole circuit but also lowered B+ levels so I would guess that the 70's models would have a tendency to be less reliable.
Given the choice, I'd go with the 90's model as a few quick mods and they can be very good sounding amps, and they have fewer miles on them. Swap the tubes for something better and swap out the output tranny and the reissue amp will sound great.
jm2c

Replies:

Greg Simon The reissue AC30's sound great in s... -- 5/16/2005 6:39 PM