Early 70's (72-74) Vox AC30 Opinions?

[miserneil]

Friend of mine has an immaculate AC30 for sale which he's dated between '72-74'. I'm quite tempted.

Anyone got an informed opinion on these?

[zenzeypher]

awesome! are the valves original or replaced with identical ones? these can shape the tone alot.

[ICBM]

Be careful. That's the era of the Italian-made PCB Voxes. All the build quality of a typical early-70s TV.

Pull the chassis - or look carefully through the top grilles, you can usually see - and if the preamp valves are mounted in a large rectangular cutout in the chassis, directly onto the PCB, it's one of these.


NB, PCB construction and mounting valve sockets on the PCB are *not* necessarily a poor quality approach, but the devil is in the details, and these amps most certainly are junk.

[miserneil]

Be careful. That's the era of the Italian-made PCB Voxes. All the build quality of a typical early-70s TV.

Pull the chassis - or look carefully through the top grilles, you can usually see - and if the preamp valves are mounted in a large rectangular cutout in the chassis, directly onto the PCB, it's one of these.


NB, PCB construction and mounting valve sockets on the PCB are *not* necessarily a poor quality approach, but the devil is in the details, and these amps most certainly are junk.

Thanks ICBM, It's a tag board according to the seller. Top Boost, Silver speakers. Is this going to be close to the 'classic' era Vox sound?

[ICBM]

Thanks ICBM, It's a tag board according to the seller. Top Boost, Silver speakers. Is this going to be close to the 'classic' era Vox sound?

Yes, should be if it's the proper build. It will have some differences from the early ones, but they still sound good.

[Lustycourtier]

From memory, it will be SS rectified. Vox Product, not JMI either.

[Cirrusband]

From what I've read, all through the late 60's and into the early 70s on the whole they started cutting corners with components, gradually switching to cheaper speakers, solid state rectifier, pcb construction, cheaper transformers etc. BUT it seems like there's a lot of overlap and you can get amps right up to the start of the 70s that are well built, possibly as they used up parts. Late 60s amps can be great - exactly as good as the fabled JMI years but much cheaper just because of the the "a VOX Product" label. People are nuts.

But the thing to remember is that they all sound different, and at this point some of these amps are into their fifth decade - they'll all sound different and be of variable reliability. There's no substitute for playing it for a bit and looking inside to see whether it's just a box of rust.

[Lustycourtier]

Im sure the edge, quo, and May all use from this era. And I know your a big quo fan Neil!

[ICBM]

From what I've read, all through the late 60's and into the early 70s on the whole they started cutting corners with components, gradually switching to cheaper speakers, solid state rectifier, pcb construction, cheaper transformers etc. BUT it seems like there's a lot of overlap and you can get amps right up to the start of the 70s that are well built, possibly as they used up parts. Late 60s amps can be great - exactly as good as the fabled JMI years but much cheaper just because of the the "a VOX Product" label. People are nuts.

But the thing to remember is that they all sound different, and at this point some of these amps are into their fifth decade - they'll all sound different and be of variable reliability. There's no substitute for playing it for a bit and looking inside to see whether it's just a box of rust.

Exactly.

Particularly with Vox, there was a huge amount of chopping and changing - they subcontracted a lot of the manufacturing work, usually to the lowest bidder. Recently I worked on a 1975 AC30 with factory-original alnico speakers (with 1975 date codes, not older left-overs) and a tag board, but with a particle-board cabinet and a solid-state rectifier. According to some sources this amp shouldn't exist - it's *later* than the earlier PCB versions with crap speakers - but the owner bought it new like that so there's no question of its history.

It sounded great, although not perhaps quite as great as a JMI with a ply cabinet and a GZ34.