VLOG: New amp gear - Vox AC30CCH and Tonelab

So it's officially Vox week in the studio... picked up a couple new (to me) amps and finally got a chance to put 'em through their paces...

Vox AC30CCH head - Having played guitar for close to 15 years, I've had plenty of Fender-ish designs and Marshall knock-offs that have been relatively convincing, but I've never had anything that's delivered a convincing Vox sound. The AC30CCH is part of the Vox Custom Classic series... upside is that it's got a lot of cool features, downside is that it's produced in China (which, granted, usually isn't a big deal for me, but there's just something about Vox's English heritage that's hard to shake on this one). While the AC30CCH inherits several features from the old school AC30's (4xEL84 power section with GZ34 tube rectifier, tremolo, normal & top boost channels), it adds several more modern features including channel blending, spring reverb, master volume, switchable FX loop, and various voicing switches (brilliance, standard/custom EQ, warm/hot output bias, smoothing). I wasted no time putting it to use in the studio... it dishes up the stereotypically chimey cleans and overdriven grind that Vox amps are famous for. The AC30CCH, much like the Egnater JTM45 head and Mesa Studio preamp, will probably get used on virtually every recording project I do from now until the day I quit playing.

This video shows me putting the AC30CCH through its paces with a couple recent guitar acquisitions... a G&L ASAT Special Deluxe and a PRS Starla...



Vox Tonelab - This isn't the first Tonelab I've had... A couple of years ago I had one of the Tonelab SE floor-based units, which I used primarily as an FX box & MIDI controller (and secondarily for any recording projects). This one, however, is the desktop version, which I picked up for the studio to put down scratch guitar tracks on demo recordings. Overall, I've been really impressed with the Tonelabs... the tonal quality of the amps and the effects are top notch, probably closer to the tone/feel of a real tube amp than any other modeler on the market. The downside is in flexibility... it has nowhere near as many effects as a Boss GT-8, not as fancy of routing as a Digitech GSP1101, and not as many models as a Line 6 POD. But simplicity has its advantages, as it's a lot quicker and easier to dial in good tones using the Tonelab than the competition. And at the end of the day, it's all about the tone, right?? I bought this to replace the Line 6 Gearbox that I've been using in the studio for demo/scratch tracks. While the Gearbox has tons of options (amps + cabs + effects), it's just never "felt" quite right to me.

As always, here's a picture of the new toys...



Stay tuned... in the next week or so I should be posting a couple of studio-quality tracks that feature the AC30CCH in action.

--B