Last week my Samamp VAC 23 came in at Supersound music here in So.Cal.
For those that don't know about these(you MUST live in a cave!LOL!)they are a 112 combo that come in Tweed as standard, but can be ordered in any color. The cab is the EXACT dementions as the Fender 57 Tweed Deluxe. The circut is based(loosely) on the 5e3 circut. It is all hand wired class A. Uses 6v6 power tubes and a 12AX7 and 12AT7 tube combo. Then, and this is where it gets tricky, the amp uses a 15 watt, a 7 watt and four 4 watt light bulbs to cut power going to the power tubes to give 3 watts, 5 watts, 11 watts, 18 watts or 23 watts of power via a switch on the top panel. Power is then delivered to a 12" Jensen NEOMAG Jet Tornado speaker. The Idea here is to not put any thing into the sound path, or to the speaker as in an attenuator.
It works very well!! Controls are a Volume(with push pull.) Treble(with push pull), Bass, a three way Tone switch, a Master Volume, a switch for the power levels, one input, a Standby switch and a On/Off switch. At 3 watts with my ASAT Bluesboy plugged in, I can have my Guitar volume at about 1/4 and get a clean sound, anything above that and overdrive kicks in. at full volume on the guitar, it gets REAL nasty with the Master volume maxed and the amp voumue at 3/8. At each power level things get a little cleaner until I get to 23 watts and there is a TON of head room. The amp is very touch sensitive, you can pick easy and get very clean sounds or dig in and dirty things up a bit. Now for those Push/pull switches....The voulme switch is a gain switch. When pulled, it bypasses the tone controls and gives a great tweed sound, if there isn't enough mids for ya, just pull the Treble switch for a mid boost. The 3 way tone switch goes from Normal(middle) to bright(up) to dark(all the way down) you can play with this switch to better match the pickups of your guitar. This amp will give you great Fender Blackface cleans, Tweed breakup, even a little Marshall fuzz. If you haven't checked out the Steviesnacks video demmo I would encourage you to do so on youtube. Just type in "Samamp VAC 23 demmo". He ordered his with a 15" speaker. it is an option if you want. I just felt that at 3 watts, it wouldn't allow a 15" speaker to be used too well. If I can get a pic to download I'll get one up. Hope this sparks some intrest in a great amp. At $1200.00 for the 12" version it's not the cheapest amp out there, but it IS one of the best at that price point for hand made amp.
