AC30 Shootout Tone Report

[Mills]

Hey all!

 

I just thought I would let you all know about how my Ted Weber 6V30 kit fared against two AC30 amps one a 1964 combo and one a head. Here are the specs of the amps:

 

1964 AC30 combo:

Woden transformers

JJ Power amp tubes

Unknown preamp tubes

One silver alnico speaker one alnico blue

 

1964 ? AC30 head

Albion Transformers

JJ Power amp tubes (as far as I know)

 

2009 Ted Weber 6V30 kit

JJ Power amp tubes (cold set)

JJ Pre amp tubes

Weber solid state rectifier

Mercury magnetics output transformer

North Coast Music 1964 JMI cab

1 Weber alnico blue and one Weber alnico silver (less than 50 hours of break-in)

Carbon comp resistors in choice locations

 

The listeners:

Dave Beegle: Excellent player and all around great guy.

Dave Parsons: Tone guru and the main solderer of the project.

Me: Striving to get there!

 

What we did was play both amps by themselves through their own cabinets (most of the testing was done on the combos) and then played both heads, one after another, through the same cabinet and speakers. This gave us a really good idea on the tones to expect from the amp. Playing was done with a stratocaster played by Dave Beegle (www.davebeegle.com) my guitar teacher and one of my top three favorite guitarists I have ever heard. If you have never heard him play check out these Youtube files. Seriously awesome:

 

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer..._type=&aq=f

 

So, to the shootout! I unfortunately was not able to record any clips because we didn't have the time but I will do my best to describe what I heard. Both amps were set up side by side and switched between with little time between listenings. Both vintage amps were variaced to 105 volts for safety's sake. The two combos sounded different but not in a bad way. The kit amp had a larger frequency bandwidth with an extended low range and presence. Upon changing cabinets it became apparent that the biggest difference was in the speakers. The 6V30 was punchier and was more, "rock and roll," while the AC30 had a more, "pop," kind of sound. Interestingly, the low sensitivity brilliant input of the 6V30 was the favorite in terms of matching the AC30 tone. This did result in about 3db of difference (quieter) which is worth noting. The head was the least favorite of the three and the belief is that the Albion has something to do with it. It was a bit more focused of a tone in the high frequencies while the Woden amps were much fuller.

 

Bottom line, all three are excellent amps and, to the surprise of the Daves, there was no fizzyness present in the kit amp which they were expecting due to the modern components. In a live setting, once the band is going full tilt the differences would be negligible and, by itself, I prefer the 6V30. It is an incredible amp! I expect as the break-in process continues the amp will become more and more like the vintage units. Dave Beegle remarked that he had heard more variation between vintage AC30's than with my amp.

 

So very good news!

[tulk1]

Mills,

 

Great revue! I'm a big fan of both the Weber kits (Tweed Super, Tweed 5E3) and Vox AC30s. Albeit, mine is a CC1. Which brings up, it would be interesting to see a shoot out between your kit, the vintage AC30s and the chinese made CC's. Comparable equip'd, of course.

[Mills]

Thanks! The next amp that I want to build is a 5E3 and I have been hearing really good things about Weber and Mission amps kits.

 

I had thought about that too and it came up during the shootout. So if anyone wants to send me a CC2 with a mercury magnetics output transformer, 2 alnico speakers and a full compliment of JJ tubes I would have no objections!

[bolero]

I did a shootout between a real '63 non-topboost AC30, a matchless DC30 clone, and an AC30cc2

 

the real thing sounded awesome, the DC30 clone turned some heads & sounded amazing as well, surprised me!! the CC2 wasn't bad but didn't come close to the other two