About a Vox build

[pjd3]

Hello.

I'd be really interested if I'm being reasonable or out of my mind. Feel free to clobber me if needed.

Starting 2 years ago I began a guitar build, and finished it last year. It was my first, and exceeded my expecations. This guitar is a Tele baritone but adorned with lots of Celtic themes and imagry - a Celtic cross control plate, celtic shields for pickup selectors and input jacks, and on and on. The reason I made this thing was exclusively for fingerstyle electric, in the acoustic fashion, old medieval and celtic songs in DADGAD and Orkney tuning. Think an electric guitar that Steven Wake and Tony McManus might get on with. And its now tuned to D, not A or B like a baritone supposed to be. That brought it to life.

Problem is, this guitar has a very different frequency content as well as pickups that are basically low DCR and low inductance so high resonant frequency. And it as 40 differenct coil combinations. Yes, 40. thats what happens when you are an electronics tech by day and can't leave well enough alone.

So, heres my little quandry that perhaps you could offer some direction to. The issue was finding an amp that this guitar could live with. It didn't work with a super clean Marshal Plexi, exascerbated a certain mid frequency that was too prevalent no matter what, so I guess that type of amp is out. I finally got to run this guitar through the newish Fender tonemaster pro, and to my big surprise, I loved the way it sounded with a super clean Vox AC30. On the tonemaster they call it "Bright AC30 with Blue". Its obviously a 2 x 12" combo with the Blue speakers as the vintages were. But, the tone begins to fall apart the moment it breaks into even the slightest amount of breakup. It thrives on totally and unequivolcably clean. It benefits from a little EQ'ing from a parametric or graphic eq but just slight adjustments. With the Vox, it has a nice frequency spectrum and a lovely little chime that suites the song material very nicely. Now, I'd be happy to one day build a couple of Vox's, (oh yeah, this would be a stereo rig, or at least 2 of the same amp). I suspect that the standard Vox AC30 might begin to start breaking up a bit early, before it can reach a stage volume, and still remain ultra clean. On the Fender Tonemaster, I had to keep the volume knob below 2 in order to avoid the beginnings of break up. But at that super clean level, it sounded wonderful.

Is there anything you can imagine doing to a Vox amp, that would allow this situation to occur. Are there preamp gain stages you would relax? or would you change the power supply to say, a quad of KT77's or EL34's? Might you try a Pair of KT88's?
I've only build Marshalls and Fenders, and at this point in time, Vox circuits look a bit alien to me, as a whole.

So, if you were assigned this job, how would you go about is? Or, is there another amp you can think of that actually does this? Keeps the Vox responce, but, keeps it real clean, and loud?

Thanks for hanging in with me on this. YOu are indeed very patient if you made it this far.
Best,
Phil D.

[Kagliostro]

Give a try to a VOX AC50 and to an AC100, then decide if you like one of It

Franco

[pjd3]

Thank you,

I'm taking a look at the schematics, now.

Best,

Phil D (pjd3)

[Kagliostro]

If you like I've full documentation for an AC50 clone

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EDIT: Now I'm on the PC were I've the data so I can publish it


Franco