liam_082's Music Gear Setup
One of the Bugera branded EL84s decided it wanted to blow so replaced the lot with some TAD tubes I had lying around. Sounds a hell of a lot nicer, especially when using the dirt channel or pushing the amp. Got rid of the fizz that was present with the old tubes
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This rig
~$585
Bugera Vintage V22HD 22W Tube Guitar Amp Head
Avg price: $584.69
Great tone on a budget
Really great sounding amp. Very well made and feels very robust. The footswitch which allows you to swap channels and turn reverb on or off also feels sturdy.
The controls are as follows; Normal input, Bright input, Clean Volume, Channel select, Channel 2 Gain, Channel 2 volume, Bass, Mids, Boost switch, Treble, Master Volume, Presence and Reverb, Standby and Power. It has an effects loop, two speaker out puts, impedance switch which goes from 4ohm to 8ohm to 16ohm. Pentode/triode switch.
The EQ is very effective with a smooth transition through the control range with no large jumps etc. Very linear. The onboard digital reverb is actually quite good and very usable if you are into reverb. Having the ability to switch reverb on or off is great.
The lead channel or whatever you want to call it is very good and works great for me. Is actually quite high gain but when boosted with an OD/tube screamer it really comes alive and will do metal tones with ease. The amp also accepts pedals really well and modulation pedals sound great both through the front of the amp or in the effects loop.
The clean channel is really great sounding. It's chimey but not harsh and has a lot of depth and responds well to picking dynamics. Distorts nicely the louder you turn the amp up. The boost switch gives a sort of vox like feel to the clean channel too. The normal input takes away some of the shrillness you get with single coils and the bright channel helps to give humbuckers a less dark tone if needed.
The amp has 3 preamp tubes and 2 power tubes which are as follows. 3x 12AX7s and 2 EL84s. V1 and V2 are both gain stages and V3 is the phase inverter stage which splits the signal for the two EL84s. The Bugera branded tubes it comes with aren't very great or reliable although their sound quality isn't bad by any means. I recommend atleast changing the power amp tubes though as mine blew an EL84 after 25 hours or there abouts of play time.
The construction is very good and robust. The PCB is high quality and the valve sockets are not directly mounted to the PCB either which lowers the risk of heat related problems arising in the future. Looks wise it looks like a Badcat however it isn't a close on one. According to Bugera it isn't a clone of any amp that was already or previously on the market.
I'm very happy with this amp head and look forward to many years with it, providing I don't buy a Marshall JCM2000 in the future. Though I'd probably keep this still. If it were to break is definitely replace it with another and don't be followed by the 22watts. It is very loud indeed through my 2x12 cab. Easily loud enough to play live without having to turn it up too much
About this setup
This gear photo by liam_082 features 1 piece of gear, including Bugera Vintage V22HD 22W Tube Guitar Amp Head.
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they really buried the tubes in that head, assholes
Yeah, surprisingly well made however. The tube sockets don't appear to be directly mounted onto the PCB. Bugera tubes suck balls though. So fizzy and one of the EL84s blew after about 25 hours of play time
@liam_082 I didn't even let thechinese tubes in my klark teknik pultec clones stay a day. I tried it, it sounded okay, I let it them cool off, took them apart. I gotta say behringer city has the best quality builds of any chinese knock offs
@jimmarchi1 The Bugera tubes sounded great clean but the upper mids were really fizzy and horrible sounding and would almost over compress or something when I picked harder which sounded like a slight volume drop and a lack of clarity. Amazing clean tone though.
When I decided to swap them for the tubes that I had in my Laney before I put JJs in it, the fizz went and the distortion is much smoother now but also has more depth and doesn't do that weird volume drop thing. One of the EL84s had practically fallen apart though, could here bits shaking around inside of it.
Bugera definitely seem the best out of the Chinese knock offs currently though the Joyo tube amps seem interesting in a similar price range.
I'm more than happy with how this amp sounds and responds so far and it definitely sounds better to me than the Laney VC30 I used to have
you should hear this circuit with the proper EF86 high gain channel