geoffrey_james's Reviews

I've tried the ac15 heritage, what do you think of the 30 versus the matchless DC30 with which she shares so many preamp similarities? Have you ever had any issues with yours? I keep thinking about adding one of these to my ac30 arsenal, but the weird PCB-meets-turret construction keeps me wary. Same with the Brian May limited edition ac30. I have come close to buying a BM model on 3 occasions now, but the construction freaks me out and I stick to truly hand wired stuff....

by the way, I stick to the EF86 channel on my DC, did you have a similar experience with the heritage ac30? I am also a real fan of the normal channel on my actual voxes though.... I love a good top-boost clean sound, but for truly dirty lead playing the normal channel has the mids and plenty of great texture with a treble boost in-line a la brian may. With the EF86 you don't even need that. The original EF86 brilliance channel has THE sound and even delivers a full bodied clean for country leads. Pop an old mullard ef86 in there with a hifi-grade dampener on it and you are golden. Anyway, its nice to see another vox fan on EB who really knows their vox. It seems like people mostly just know the AC30 by reputation and don't really get down with its history and they sould because every little change really effects the sound of these amps in interesting ways, unlike fender circuits that are way less sensitive to component value changes. I am totally rambling at you dude.

thanks for the eloquent ramble mate! Enjoyed it! Agree that the H2 is not totally pure in more ways than you reference but really packs a nice punch anyway. We know the only thing better costs 2 to 3 times as much and needs a reliable backup especially with the lower value bias resistor.

i've only heard the matchless on tv and youtube so I'm no expert there but having heard the H2 live I tend to prefer it. there's something a little cardboard in the matchless comparatively

huh, my experience with my kit C30 clone is that its anything but cardboard. It definitely has more highs and lows on tap, is considerably louder than my '62 (they are about even when I put the C30 in 1/2 power), and has a refined hifi sheen that maybe didn't translate well to the recordings you've heard. In the room it has an amazing 3D quality with gorgeous swirling chime and this midrange "bloom" that you can't appreciate until you get 4 or 5 feet from the cabinet. It does NOT like to be close miced unless you use 2 microphones in near coincident. But it doesn't have the softer attack of a JMI and with the wrong speakers the chime can get overbearing, more of the percussive 'meanness' of an early Marshall but with better sustain when playing bone clean. On the other hand the dual rectifier slots allow you to change the voltage swing a lot just by dickering with the rectifier tubes. Dual 5Y3 rectifiers in full power tames the output a little, browns the sound a smidgen in a voxy way, and gives the amp gobs of compression and less punchiness without sacrificing its cool midrange bark under overdrive.

all that said, all my different flavors of ac30 are really best played daisy chained together where they can augment eachother, but I so seldom have the chance to play that loud and if I did I would still own my plexi too....

those Matchless get bad-mouthed by some of the players I know so I haven't really explored them but while I can hear the balls of my H2 when Rich Robinson plays one on youtube I've never been blown away by any of the players I've heard on TV using the Matchless. Maybe you have a great Matchless link?

nah, I just like mine.... I am also going to say the stock matchless speakers do NOT do it for me. I like it through older greenbacks in a closed back cab or an open backed 2x12 with a blue and an H30 bass cone type of ceramic speaker. The greenback V30 or greenback H30 combo with doping removed from the cones? Not great for this amp.... I also do not like the parallel 4 ohm wiring matchless uses. I am a vox guy. I want series 16 ohm wiring. I'm trying to think if I have any links to recordings of my carefully tweaked C30... I have a late 50s mallard EF86 mesh shield in mine with a mix of GE and mallard 12ax7 and ecc82 tubes in the rest of the pre spots and PI too.... I really dicker with all my amps to get optimal gain and frequency response out of the preamps

and to get optimal speakers hooked to them.... straight up ac30s are easy in that regard, a pair of blues, no additional thought required! Although I am really int to the blue/H30 combo anymore to get some better bass definition and more of a 3d note bloom courtesy of the different compression and breakup characteristics of the ceramic and alnico side by side

have you considered selling the CCX as well as the heritage in fawn and investing in a current production HW2X? I was really knocked out by the new fawnies and scooped one up as well as an AC4HW

i wouldn't sell the H2 if I didn't need to augment the cash flow right now. I plan to find another '07 and do the whole mod over again when the cash flow gets back to normal. I love that amp! :( Bet the AC4 is a lot of fun! so those don't use the turret board?

nah, my ac4 has a turret... its the fancy one... like all single ended amps with full tonestacks it can be a little finnicky with settings when its gunned into full bore distortion, but I use it all the time, it sounds fantastic, very voxy and more my cup of tea than the 5f1

I have a '62 JMI bass voiced model with rear top boost! You have her older sister. Mine runs so hot with the 47k bias resistor that it has blown up because of thermal runaway a few times but I can't bring myself to swap to the safer spec... while I love the vib/trem channel I settled on a current handwired as my safe, gigging ac30. Gets damned close to the old girl though she is a bit stiffer and puchier ina good way. Apples and apples. If you like apples they pretty much every kind is fun to eat.

How much do you want for your upgraded AC30H2? I would not mind having another C30 type amp with the EF86 pre....

i've got it on eBay for 2245.00 shipped but I can ship it with paypal buyer protection and split the 10% eBay fee savings so let's say 2100.00 shipped or you can stop by and pick it up and save even more

the vintage ac30s seem to have the edges worn off the highs / high mids that just make them a pleasure and I did achieve some of that with the Mercuries and tone-circuit reset on the H2. You have to turn the H2 up louder than the '61 to get it to really sing. But no reliability problems and that's why the Pixies and Imagine Dragons take them out as back-ups to their vintage ACs

BTW, this particular '61 toured with Hootie and the amazing Blowfish, then went to their tech (isn't that typical?) Billy Chapman of SC who started his own electric mandolin company. Billy's quote: "This is the best sounding AC30 in the world!" I'm not completely sure he was wrong... :)

While $2100 sounds fair for a modded H2, its a just a bit rich for my blood right now as it would involve me selling off something from my collection (horde) to make up the the difference in what I have to play spend and what you need to get... and I am really happy with all my stuff right now. Alas. I would love to put my '62 against your '61 some time!

My '62 has this soft, magical cloud around the notes even with the volume set at 9 o'clock, bone clean. Its impossible to describe, but later JMI ac30s, like the grey panels? they don't have it, though they are softer sounding than the RIs usually (though the current HW2x is really getting close, I think if I were to put some mercury Haddon clones in there and change that cathode resistor it would go toe-to-toe with my vintage baby). By the way, what MM output transformer did you get for your H2x and what vintage transformer is in your '61? Based on the year I suspect it could be a Woden or a Haddon like mine I think.

haddons

rock on, love the Haddon iron