exaspera41on.netlify.app

• Welcome to That Pedal Show! Please subscribe to our channel and visit our store Life too short for long YouTube videos?
• The TSE808 is emulating a famous tube screamer pedal. Read the included manual for more info.
• The Vox AC30 was first made famous by the Beatles on recordings such as “Day Tripper” and later championed by Queen's Brian May. Providing guitarists with a distinctive jangle thanks to its 30 watts of power and quartet of EL84 tubes, Vox's flagship model (along with the 15-watt AC15) remain a wildly popular amplifier from stage to studio.
• I recently purchased a Vox AC30 custom classic and am looking for a great overdrive/ distortion pedal to put in front of it. I know that there are a lot of choices so I am looking for what has sounded and worked great for you. I am also looking for a pedal that can go from a slight over drive to something significantly heavier.
• These Russian pedals are not so much in circulation in the UK, although they are easily available from Thomann most of the time. This pedal is modelled after the Vox AC30, and does a commendable job at capturing the core classic tones - nice and bright and sparkly, although not quite the full saturated distortion of Brian May at the gainier end.

As you said, these amps sound right when cranked, but as you surely know this is not a multichannel amp like modern high gain heads, this is basically a single channel amp, if you crank it and boost it in search of a nice vox saturation that means you won't have anymore clean headroom, so whether you plug delays in front or in the loop it wound.

Cranked Vox Ac30 Vst Plugin Pedal Tuner

This before and after schematic illustrates the wiring changes needed to beef up a Vox AC30C2X, including the addition
of a footswitch controllable DPDT switch.

Dear Amp Man,
Great articles. At the moment, I’m using some of your ideas rebuilding a Pignose G40V.
I have a Vox AC30C2X. Sounds great. It’s my amp for non-in-ear gigs. It’s bright and I play a Fender through it, so I’ve done some minor modifications to take some of the brightness out of it—nothing major. I run the amp with the two channels patched together, and one channel cleaner than the other. I never run it flat-out.
I was looking at the schematic the other day and wondering if it would be practical to run the normal channel’s output from V1 through a switched jumper of some kind to the top boost’s input on the other triode of V1 to cascade the channels. Would a setup like that work and get me into Mesa/Boogie, 800-pound violin territory, or would I end up with distorted mush? Foot-switchable would also be way cool. Or should I save my lunch money and get a Lone Star Special?
Any other thoughts or ideas on the Vox? Appreciate it!
Regards,
Mitch Morgan

Hi Mitch,
Thanks for reading, and glad you’re getting some useful information from the column.
There have been so many iterations and re-issues of the Vox AC30 over the years, so thanks for being very specific as to which model you have and even supplying the schematic! There was one small issue I ran into regarding the schematic, however. The definition was not quite good enough for print, and even though I also searched the web, I could not find a better version. That being the case, I’ve re-drawn the necessary sections here and present them in both a “before” and “after” version, which should make it a bit easier to see exactly what’s going on.

Cranked Vox Ac30 Vst Plugin Pedal Exerciser

Cranked Vox Ac30 Vst Plugin Pedal Pushers

The modification is not that complicated, and although this is a circuit-board amp, the procedure I propose should not require cutting circuit traces. I’ve also made it switchable using a DPDT on-on switch, so that one position is stock and one is modified (cascaded channels). In the “modified” position, the normal volume control will act as a pre-amp and the top boost control will act as a volume, with the master, of course, remaining a master. So let’s get to it. By the way, the steps and descriptions below are also nicely mapped out on a drawing of the rear of the DPDT switch appearing on the schematic.

Fig. 1 — Start by lifting the side of the R37 resistor not connected to the amp’s integrated circuit and attaching a new wire to it. This wire will connect to one of the common terminals of the DPDT switch.

Viva la resistors! First, locate resistor R37 (Fig 1), which connects the output of the normal channel to the op-amp that drives the effects loop, and find which side of this resistor connects to a pin on U1. https://gtiwoi.over-blog.com/2020/10/batman-telltale-patch-download-xbox-one.html. Since a direct trace cannot be seen on the top of the circuit board, this can be found by using a multimeter with a continuity function. Once you find which side of the resistor is connected to the IC, lift the opposite side from the circuit board. You will then need to connect a wire to the lifted side of the resistor. This wire will run to one of the common terminals (#5) of the DPDT switch.

Next, locate R7 and R8 (Fig 2), which are the input resistors from the top boost jacks. Find which end of these resistors connects to the grid of V1 and lift this end of both resistors from the board. Now connect a wire to one of these pads and connect the other end to the other common terminal (#2) of the switch. Return to R7 and R8, connect the open leads to each other, and attach a wire to this junction. Connect the other end of this wire to a switch terminal on the same side as the previous wire (#1). Now connect a wire to this same position on the opposite side of the switch (#4) and connect the other end to a ground connection on the circuit board. A good spot may be the ground side of R16, which can be verified with your meter.

Fig. 2 — The R7 and R8 input resistors from the top boost jack must be connected to another of the switch’s common terminals and brought to ground through an additional easy-but-important step.

Cranked Vox Ac30 Vst Plugin Pedal Schematics

Now, the last part of the procedure is to connect a jumper between the two remaining open terminals on the switch (#3 and #6). Also, connect a wire to one of these terminals. The opposite end of this wire needs to be connected to the wiper terminal of the normal volume control. This can be done by connecting it directly to the center terminal of V1 or to the pad where you removed a lead of R37, which may be easier to connect to.
Tune-up tips. That’s it! You’re all done. I’m really not sure if this will get you into 800-pound violin territory, because only a few amps are truly capable of that, but here are a few tips for this mod. First, it may be best to use coaxial cable to make these connections to reduce noise and the chance of oscillation. If you do, remember to connect only one end of the shield to ground. This will prevent any ground loops. Next, if the result here is just too aggressive, overdriven, muddy, or just plain hairy, you will need to better control the signal from the normal channel. /top-professional-vst-plugins.html. This can be done by replacing the jumper on the switch with a resistor and capacitor in parallel. You can arbitrarily start with a 220k resistor and a 220 pf capacitor. Decreasing the resistor value will raise the signal level, and vice-versa. The capacitor controls the amount of high-frequency content in the signal. A smaller value will be brighter and a larger value will be thicker.
There you have it. Your very own Vox AC30 cascade. Enjoy!