VOX AC30 CCH

OBERDORFF
June 24, 2008

Rating: 8/10

Sorry for my poor english, I'm French. But I'll try to do my best. So I bought this amp head, with the Vox V212BN cabinet on May 2008. All was ok in the package.
I had some other amps before, tube or not. This is by far the best sounding amp I ever tried. Clean sound is warm, full, you can get a very funky tone, or something for rock n'roll balads. Very good. When the volume is cranked, then you go thru crunch and very dynamic overdrives tones. Wow. I got a Gibson LP DC+ and a Fender American Deluxe HSS.. All two sound great with this amp.
The master volume is a good thing to get overdriven tones without loosing your ears when playing at home, but it's nearly impossible to play at very low volume.
All is good on this amp when looking for a good sound.
About the features, the bad points are :
- Footswitch can only switch on and off the reverb and tremolo, and I think it could be better to change bettween normal and Treble Bosst channel, and to add a switch for the effect loop (as a switch exists on the back pannel of the amp)
- Only one master volume, so you can't get a nice clean sound and a crunch sound on other channel without having a difference between channels volumes....
Finally I can only use this amp by 3 ways :
- with two clean sounds with different egalisations (normal channel that don't have egalisation, and something a little bit different on trebble boost channel).
- With the normal channel for clean sounds, and the trebble boost channel with a bit more gain for solos parts, to cut through the mix better. And think about buying a a/b box switch for changing from normal to trebble boost channel....
- The way i use it now is on the treble boost channel, with a booster for the solos parts.

So if you want a very nice clean sound, or stunning overdrives, this amp is yours, but, remind that for live sessions it will be very difficult to go from the clean to the overdrive without adjusting the master volume, or having two ac30cch, each one with a master setting matching the preamp section gain, or a good overdrive pedal......

So I rated this one at 8, as it could have a 10 for the sound, but loose 2 points for flexibility on live sessions..