AMP

[Texas Jim]

I have a S-500 Tribute. Does anyone use a VOX AC15C1? PRO's or Cons please.

[TMO]

Amp is a classic. Bright, chimey, warm are words that come to mind. Reverb clean will produce rockabilly/beatles era sounds. Driven a bit (with gain mid, and volume maxed, but master low) will give some bakersfield twang (act naturally was recorded by the beatles with this amp). Turn it all up and have a tube screamer or something and you will get Queen's Brian May's sound to a tee. If you liked british rock in the 60's and 70's, you'll like it. Alot of country guys will use it too, stage amp for an acoustic, or a studio clean.

As a practical consideration, it get's real loud. To achieve effects through the Amp only- you may need to be on volume settings that will shake the pictures off the walls in a small room/venue.

Personally, I wanted the sound, but was willing to accept an emulation via Vox's Valvetronix VT20+

You may want to check these out. A full analog circuit to a triode 12AX7 on its clean. Alternatively a 36 Amp emulator, with effects, pedals and 8 memory setup footswitch bank. These are voiced in an IC preamp circuit and amplified through the tube. I have blown away at how cool this thing is. Bitchin speaker too.

Forget the effects and the gizmos, it has one super cool feature: the tube output is separately switched. Which means you can run your settings at whatever gain, vol or master you select, and then you can adjust the wattage of the tube's output. So say you want to run gain at 5 volume at 10 and master at 10 with the tone knobs turned down. This is where you would usually turn your volume on your guitar way way down, and if you accidentally touched it while playing- well yu know. Also nobody's volume pot is that linear. Well on the AC 20+, I can output any voicing at any level in the IC or analog preamp stage through the tube at say 5 watts- which is about all my basement can handle. At a coffee shop maybe 15 watts. Small venue you can go clean all the way to 33 watts- which is plenty loud, obviously, and if you are miking your amps, all you would ever need.

under $200 too- amazing. But a big big step below the raw power of the ac15.

[blargfromouterspace]

Pros - as TMO said, its a classic. Great amp, and very, very good fun too.

Cons - Deceptively heavy, but still an easy one arm lift.

[Philby]

I play my S-500 through an AC15C1. Some random thoughts:

It is LOUD for 15W and the Celestion speaker is fairly brittle and ice picky until it is broken in. As a result, standing (or mic'ing) directly in line with the speaker can be painful on the ears. Off axis the sound is better balanced. The sound that fills a room is magnificent.

My amp was noisy until I replaced the tubes with JJ's.

I find the amp sounds better when you really drive the input. My S-500 needs a boost pedal before the amp to bring out its best. This is less of an issue for humbucker guitars.

The Clean channel and Top Boost channel are both fantastic. Both give the sounds I've had in my heard since I first heard electric guitar! Personally I think Top Boost is where all the fun is - especially when set to light, touch sensitive break up. But you have to dial the treble way back or your ears will bleed. The Top Boost controls are highly interactive, so you can cover a lot of ground by making apparently subtle adjustments.

I'm not a fan of the Vox Reverb sound. But I'm a BIG fan of the on-board tremolo.

I can't believe how much sound you get for the money!

[Theguitarstore]

The AC15 is a classic and as was said before by upgrading your tubes from stock you can really improve the sound. One thing I notice is that people find the AC15 1x12" lacking a bit for louder rock bands. Vox has put out a 2x12" version that comes in an AC30 sized box and is a real solution for what many people are looking for. At the store we use this amp as a primary to demo pedals with when people are testing things out. It sits under the G&L wall so I hear many players using MFD's through it. You are going in the right direction.