First off, we need to ask what tube bias is and how it applies to the Vox AC15.
In basic terms, tube bias is the ratio of current being drawn to each tube in the Vox AC15 amp. In a perfect world, equal current would go to each Vox AC15 and there would be no overload. But, due to issues such as tubes blowing out, running hot or people upgrading their stock Vox AC15 tubes – sometimes you need to bias them. If one tube is under performing for whatever reason, the others will be over worked.
WARNING – If you are not comfortable dealing with high voltage electrics, have your tech or a qualified electrician look at your Vox AC15 tube bias. The sorts of voltages we’re talking about can be lethal.
Here’s a book you should read.
Why Is Tube Bias Important? I’ve Got a Vox AC15 – I thought they were reliable?
They are reliable, but they’ve got working parts and working parts can become worn. Let’s use an analogy. Go to your car and let one of your tyres down. Now drive around for a week and take a look at the three inflated tires. You’ll notice that the tread on those tyres is more worn than the flat one because they’ve been working harder to compensate for the flat tyre. It’s the same with the tubes in your Vox AC15, if one tube is taking more current than the others, it is working harder and will wear out quicker.
So, how do we bias the tubes in a Vox AC15?
You’ll need a bias meter and a tube bias tester. One can save your amp, the other can save your life.
Then you need to UNPLUG YOUR Vox AC15 BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING!
Then, MAKE SURE IT’S UNPLUGGED – THIS IS SERIOUS!
Ok, I’ve made my point. Take off the back of the amp and you’ll see your Vox AC15 tube layout. You attach the little bias tester like this. Plug the tubes into one end of the tester, and then plug the other end into your Vox AC15 tube slots. The tester is then plugged into your bias meter.
The Vox AC15 has a bias trim pot for each tube. You adjust these so that the bias reading for each tube as displayed on the meter is equal (or as close to equal as you can get).
I say it again, if you love your Vox AC15 and you’re unsure of what to do, let your tech bias your tubes.
I love my Vox AC15 but it isn’t worth dying of electrical shock for. BE CAREFUL.
Tone – This is the thing I love most about the Vox AC15. The tone is so bright and warm. Plug in a tele’, Les Paul or Strat and the Vox AC15 makes them all sing.
Made in England – The legacy of the Vox AC15 is English through through. From the tweed on the front to the retro Sixties Invasion tones. The Vox AC15 is one amp with a lot of English character.
Versatility – Whether you want your Vox AC15 to produce screaming lead sounds or mellowed out jazz tone, it delivers. Just a little tweak on the Vox AC15 control panel can make a world of difference.
Price – The Vox AC15 is pretty much half the price of the Vox AC30, but has twice the tone. Find out why here
Conveience If you’ve ever lugged a Vox AC30 down the fire escape at your local blues club, you’ll know what we’re talking about when we say the Vox AC15 is a much more practical option. It’s about half the weight. No more bad back from lugging that giant Vox AC30 or Fender Twin around, the Vox AC15 is little but packs a huge punch.
Reliability – You’d think a tube amp made in England, like the Vox AC15, would have reliability issues. I’ve had mine for years (a vintage model and a CC1) and apart from routine maintenance, I’ve never had to look inside once. Sure, you’ve got to change out the tubes once a year, but that takes ten minutes.
Does it sound incredibly warm and awesome? Yes, yes it does.
For years during the Sixties, the Vox AC15 was used just as much for bass playing as it was for guitar playing. It’s a versatile amp with a great range of frequency response. The standard 12 inch speaker can easily handle a bass. The only caution I’d give is this. Don’t crank the volume too hard when playing bass.
Did you know that on her album The Reminder, Canadian artist Fiest recorded her vocals through a Vox AC15 amp. That’s how she got that really sweet, valvey warmth. It’s so versatile it’s amazing. Loads of people use Vox AC15 amps in the studio for all sorts of instruments. It’s a really great acoustic amplifier as well. Because of the bright, responsive nature of the amp, it really compliments the frequency range of an electro acoustic guitar.
If you’re like me and you’re a guitar player who dabbles with bass, don’t shell out an expensive, heavy bass amp that’s going to take up tonnes of room. Use your Vox AC15 and double it up as a bass amp.
Add a little drive to proceedings and you get a really hot, fat, warm bass sound with just enough to cut through. Cut out some of the bottom end using the cut dial and you’ve got that really zingy, top end flavour that people like Bootsy Collins love.
This is the question people ask the most. “Why should I buy a Vox AC15 online when I can go to the local guitar store?
My answer is always the same. Go to the store, check out the amp, play with it, listen to it, but don’t buy it from them.
Why? Because the best deals are always online. For every member of staff, every plug socket that is turned on, every thermostat that is turned up – those are costs that the store has to pay that online retailers don’t. If you buy a Vox AC15, you get a better deal because the online dealers don’t have the over heads.
You should use the store to audition the Vox AC15 to make sure it’s the amp for you (it will be, it’s amazing) but you will save quite a lot of money getting the online. Just don’t give in to the salesman who’ll be pushing you to buy there and then.
Take the time to try out the amp, then go home. The guitar store is the WORST environment to make a big purchasing decision. Noise, sales people pressuring you, people watching you, the parking meter ticking outside. Don’t put yourself through it.
Go to the store, play the Vox AC15, but leave your wallet at home.
Online dealers don’t have anything like the over heads that guitar stores do, that’s why they can sell Vox AC15 amps at a fairer price.
Even if you’re local store CAN match the online price, you’ve still got to drive down there, park up, carry the Vox AC15 to the car and risk damaging it the minute you’ve paid for it. Why bother? Buy online, get free delivery, warranty and have it brought to you.
I’ve owned many Vox AC15 amps, I’ve currently got two – a CC1 and a vintage Vox AC15. On the the Vox AC15 CC1, there’s a dial called ‘cut’. Now, most dials are self explanatory – ‘volume’, ‘bass’, even ‘presence’ if you know a little about sound, but ‘cut isn’t an obvious sound feature, so what’s the deal?
Obviously the best way to understand is to hear for yourself, so head down to your local Vox AC15 dealer next time you’re free and ask for a demo. (I’d always advise trying a Vox AC15 for yourself, even if you plan to buy online). But here’s how I’d explain it.
The cut function is almost an independent parametric equaliser. By that, I mean it has a different effect on the sound depending on how you’ve got your Vox AC15 set up. Dial it up to the max and any top end frequencies in your set up will be highlighted, creating a twangy, bright sound. Turn it down to 1 and it will enhance the bass in your tonal spectrum. But it’s much more than a simple top/bass boost, it reacts to the tone that you’ve dialled in.
The way I use it as a post eq fine tuner. I set my tone up how I want it (depending on the sound I’m going for and what guitar I’m using) then I use the cut dial to smooth out any peaks in the frequency spectrum. This approach enables me to really reach for the extremes of tone that you can achieve with a Vox AC15, without the unpredictability. The cut function adds the finishing touch to your tone. Use it to craft your perfect tone.
If you held a gun to my head and forced me to find fault with the Vox AC15 and I was sure your gun was loaded, I’d talk to you about circuitry access. The Vox AC15 is a very well made amp, good parts, good standard of manufacturing and great design. But, this does have a downside.
Valves (or tubes as they’re called outside the UK) will need replacing. Either they burn out (which is normal and is the nature of the beast we know and love as valve amplification) or you opt to change them. The stock valves in a Vox AC15 are superb, but some people prefer to adjust the tone of their amp by using different valves.
So the downside of the solid build quality of the Vox AC15 amp is that you need to spend a little time getting into the guts of the amp. The back board is typically screwed on and the manufacturers really meant it when they put the screws in! If you don’t have an electric screwdriver or drill, persist with a manual screw driver.
TIP – Put the amp up on a table so you’re not stooping to reach the screws. Your chiropractor will be pleased with this approach.
To take the back board off, remove the four screws carefully. Try to not unscrew at an angle as this can make it a pain getting the things back in.
TIP – When you have the screws off, put them on a piece of white paper on a flat surface in the positions they were in when screwed in. The paper means you’re not struggling to find them (they’re pretty small) and the flat surface means they won’t roll away. Although all the fittings are a standard size, it’s much easier to get a screw back in the hole it came from. You’ll know this theory from changing a tyre on your car.
Once the back is off, carefully pull the valve housing section towards you. Wires will be attached, but they’ll long enough for you to remove the magazine containing parts of the circuitry and the tube housing completely from the amp. You won’t need to unwire anything.
You’ll be able to identify any blown out tubes because there will be a brown residue on the inside of it. When they blow, they burn out and like a lightbulb, the filament is a burned out colour.
If you’re voluntariliy swapping out the tubes, make sure your replacing like for like in terms of output bias, voltage and function. Don’t replace a rectifier tube with a non rectifier tube, for example.
To remove the tube from the housing, you simply pull it upwards. It’s not like a lightbulb, although I used to always try to twist out of habit. To replace a tube, line up the pins and push the new one back in. Simple.
Bin the burned out tube.
Gently replace it with the new tube, making sure you’ve got the right one. Push it in, gently twist it clockwise until you hear a click, then replace the housing and screw on the back.
Some amps are better than others at ‘taking’ effects pedals. This is mainly because of their residual tone spectrum. Amps such as the Vox AC15 and the Fender Twin are great at handling effects. Normally, it’s gimmicky modeling amps with lots of pre-sets that struggle to process the extra signals you introduce to the chain. This is because they don’t have the clarity of your favourite class A valve amp, such as Vox AC15.
The Vox AC15 is well known for ‘liking’ effects pedals and outboard processors. By liking, what I mean is that the amp doesn’t struggle to incorporate the new signals. It is is easy to enhance the existing (and amazing) tone of the Vox AC15 with effects pedals, taking you closer to finding your own signature sound.
Let’s have a look at some of the pedals that work well with the Vox AC15.
Ibanez Tube Screamer
The Ibanez Tube Screamer is a vintage piece of equipment. Frequently copied but never bettered. The warm, crunchy drive adds lush harmonics and depth of tone to any set up, but works especially well with a valve amp like the Vox AC15.
The Electro Harmonix Hog
If you’re searching for other worldly octave, harmony and synth sounds, (something that even the Vox AC15 can’t give you) then this is the ultimate. Electro Harmonix are masters of creating unique sounding effects. There are cheaper options available, but they won’t sound anywhere near as awesome as this bad boy. HOG stands for Harmonic Octo Generator. Check the vid!
It’s incredible right?
T Rex Replica Digital Delay
This is a replica of a classic pedal. The originals are hard to find and are pretty expensive, but as far as replicas go, this one does the job perfectly. It’s essentially a modern, hardier version of the classic. Delay, when used tastefully, can really enhance the colour of your tone. Imagine the warm, mellowed out tone of your Vox AC15 set to clean but with 5 times as much space and width. This is the first pedal I’d buy if I was starting from scratch.
In terms of price, service and convenience – you can’t do better than buying a guitar amp online. Whether you’re going for a Vox AC15 or the VoxAC15’s louder sibling the Vox AC30 – or indeed any class A valve amp – the best deals are online. In fact, Amazon seem to have some pretty great deals. You can buy direct from Vox via your amazon account.
The reason for this is pretty simple. An online retailer doesn’t have the overheads that a shop does, such as rent, electricity, insurance, security, staff, water and so on – so they can afford to offer the product at a better price.
There are other advantages too. You’re better protected as a customer when buying online. Especially if you use a credit card. Any person buying goods over the Internet is protected by the Distance Selling Regulations, which came into effect in 2005. In short, they afford the customer all of the same rights they’d have if they bought from a high shop, but there are also some extra protections too.
For example, there is a ‘cooling off’ period – where the customer is legally entitled to return the goods that they bought, regardless of whether they are faulty or not. Using the subject of this blog as an example. If you buy a Vox AC15 from your local guitar amp retailer, the product would need to be faulty, damaged or otherwise ‘not as advertised’ for the retailer to be obliged to provide a refund. When you buy online, you don’t to say any more than “I changed my mind” to get a refund. That’s why I always buy online. Better prices and more protection, plus – I don’t need to put gas in the car, pay for parking or get wet in the rain.
Although, when it comes to musical equipment, many people say ‘try before you buy’. This is decent advice, but you can always try out the product that you’re thinking of buying (like a Vox AC15 amp if you’re reading this blog) in a store, then you can make your purchase online and save a good percentage on the cost.
There’s also Youtube, opinion sites (such as this) to help you make your decision.
Why use up your time and money chasing the product when you can have the product come to you for a cheaper price?
The Custom Classic series is Vox’s most recent range of guitar amps. Any amp you see that ends with CC1 or CC2 in the model name is from that range. Vox AC15 and Vox AC30 amps both feature in this range.
I believe that these amps are as close you can get to an authentic vintage sound in a modern, reliable amp. The range offers the best of both worlds. You get the sound of a true class-A vintage valve amp, but the build quality and reliability of a modern built unit.
I’m not going to lie and say the Custom Classic Vox AC15 and Vox AC30 products sound EXACTLY like the early models, because they don’t. Many Vox AC15 purists will argue until they’re blue in the face that nothing can come close to the sound of an original 50’s or 60’s produced unit. I believe that the slight difference in tone measured against the huge difference in reliability and road worthiness makes it a worthwhile trade-off.
So, what’s the difference Between The Vox AC15 Custom Classic and a Vintage Model?
Well, for a start, you’re looking at least a thousand dollars. The vintage models are collectors items. In terms of sound, it’s hard to say, because the vintage models have inconsistent tone. Some are sharp and bright, others are a little warmer. The tone of these units is dictated as much by the person that put them together as it is by the valves and rectifiers.
The Custom Classic units are obviously a lot more consistent in terms of sound, because they’ve been produced in high tech facilities using modern parts. The vintage models need vintage parts.
If you’re lucky enough (and rich enough) to get your hands on a vintage Vox AC15 in good working order, the sound of it will blow you away. But you can’t gig that bad boy unless you’ve got a spare. These are the sort of amps you keep locked in a room and maybe use for recording. Don’t ever take a vintage Vox AC15 on the road without back-up. Amps are like cars really. The old classics look great, smell great and sound great – but you’d be safer and more likely to not break down in a brand new car.
Is It Worth Considering The Custom Classic Range If I’m a Tone Fiend?
Absolutely. On average, I’d say the difference in tone between the vintage models and the CC models is maybe 5%. And don’t forget, vintage valve amps can deviate in tone by way more than 5% just because of the weather. With a Vox AC15cc1 for example, you’ve got that classic valve tone and you don’t lose it.
If you’re looking to spend your savings on a piece of musical history, you should get a vintage Vox AC15. If you want to invest in an incredible piece of kit that is unmistakably a class-A Vox valve amp – the newer models are the way to go.
What’s The Difference Between CC1, CC1X and CC2
Speakers. It’s the same everything else, but with a different speaker. Speakers do influence the overall sound and some people favour Wharfdale whilst others prefer Celestion. Personally, I don’t care, both sound great. But Vox offers the choice.
To quote Vox…
AC15CC1: Loaded with the VOX / Wharfedale custom GSH12-30 speaker
AC15CC1X: Loaded with the VOX / Celestion AlNiCo Blue loudspeaker
The CC2 is an option if you’re buying a Vox AC30, which I don’t recommend. It’s a great amp, but see below for why I believe the Vox AC15 is better (and cheaper).
This is a question a lot of people ask. It’s definately true that the AC30 is the better known amp compared to the Vox AC15. This often gives rise to the misconception that the Vox AC15 was built as a quieter or ‘bedroom’ version of the AC30. This however, isn’t the case. The Vox AC15 is the original class A Vox amp. It was manufactured at the start of 1958, later that year Vox released the AC30 – as the bigger brother version of the original, which was gaining huge popularity.
Essentially the main difference between the two is volume. The clue is in the name if you know what to look for. The Vox AC15 has 15 watts of output and the the Vox AC30 has 30 – however, if you know anything about electronics, you’ll know that this doesn’t mean the Vox AC30 is 2x as powerful.
When shopping for an amp, you’ll pretty much be paying for volume. All things being equal between two amps, the louder one will be more powerful, due to the larger speaker and higher power output. Likewise, if you’ve got two amps at the same price and one is much louder, in most cases you can rest assured that the quieter one has the superior tone.
IMPORTANT – You don’t need a lot of power output for a valve amp to be loud. A ten watt amp is more than enough to make serious noise.
I’ve played and owned both Vox AC15 and Vox AC30 amps. I love them both. But I love the Vox AC15 more. And the reason I love it more is the fact that it has a lower power output.
Allow me to explain what I mean. The beauty of valve amps and especially ones made by Vox is that the tone improves as you crank up the volume. This is the reverse with cheaper amps and amps that don’t have valves – the sound quality diminishes very quickly as your put more demands on the amp’s output. If you can get your cheap, solid state amp sounding good with the volume dial above 6 – you’re a better man than me.
The reason valve amps sound better the higher you crank them is down to overdrive. The harder the amp has to work to hit the output, the more overdrive it produces. Overdrive, as you probably know, is that immensely satisfying ‘crunch’ you get when playing loud. So if you take two amps that are basically the same but one is 15 watt and one is 30 watt – which one do you think will hit that overdrive sound quicker?
That’s right – the lower output of the AC15 means that it can achieve that sweet, warm overdriven sound that Vox amps are famous for, at lower volumes and much sooner. So when you really crank it up – you’ve got two advantages.
1) – You’re not over powering the other guys in the band or upsetting your neighbours.
2) – You’ve got a much more natural, reliable overdrive. You’re AC30 will produce some great overdrives, but you’ve got to work that little bit harder to achieve it.
There are two other plus points to owning a Vox AC15 over it’s bigger brother.
