VT30 inbound

[Rampant]

Hey dudes

Just pulled the trigger on a Vox VT30 plus footswitches today, courtesy of dolphin music online.

I know it's not antique/boutique/all tube/expensive but I'm pretty excited. So c'mon courier - get it to me quick
:)
I've been agonising over this for ages - hope I made the right choice. I liked it when I tried it and it is acknowledged as being pretty decent sounding amongst guitar enthusiasts such as ourselves...

:happy

Mark H

[bcdon]

Just pulled the trigger on a Vox VT30 plus footswitches today, courtesy of dolphin music online.


I have a VT30 and really like it. There is a VOX channel on Youtube
that has some pretty good demos.

xuBm3BTKizY

[Tig]

I have a VT30 and really like it. There is a VOX channel on Youtube that has some pretty good demos.


Very cool about the Vox "deep editing".

Thanks, and welcome to The Fret! :beer:

[bigG]

Great decision, Rampant! That Vox VT series is easily THE best buy out there anywhere near the price range. I think you'll love it! :applause

Welcome aboard, bcdon! Nice first post there, man! :cool:

[bcdon]

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys!

[Rampant]

Welcome to the fret bcdon.

And mucho thanks for sharing the deep editing videos - cracking first post, matey.


Sitting at home now waiting in anticipation for FedEx :)

[Rampant]

This arrived today and I've been playing with it for a couple of hours. It's loaded with features - but the best bit is that it sounds really, really good.

Stoked

:D

[bcdon]

This arrived today and I've been playing with it for a couple of hours.
Just in time for the weekend! Cheers! :dude

[marnold]

Sweet! I look forward to a detailed review :)

[Rampant]

You're expecting a detailed review, eh?

OK, but tha'll be a while....

In the meantime, my first impressions are good. Great sound. The tonal emulations of different amps are wicked and the presets give a wide variety of sounds to choose from.

The effects I've used so far are chorus and octave. (The octave program also has a chorus effect, but the chorus can be dialled out, leaving only the octave working.) The effects are good and using the footswitch bar gives instant effects changes.

My only disappointment is that overdriv/gain cannot be programmed into the footswitch. the Gain dial is independant and fixed in series with the eq (and also in series with the reverb). So to put in more gain the rotary knob has to be rotated. That also effects the total volume. Clearly this is very difficult to acheive on the fly while playing. I may have to invest in a drive/fuzz pedal for switchable distortion effect while playing a song and that kinda defeats the object of this style of amp, I think.

So if I were recommending an improvement to Vox for the next series of valvetronix amps it would be to have a second gain channel with 'fat' switch that is footswitchable instead of the current single channel design.

Cheerz

Mark H

[SuperSwede]

Rampart, you can always setup program 1 as a clean amp, then 2 as a slighty overdriven variant and so on.. the only thing that the amp doesnt change when selecting a different program is the master volume and the attenuator level.

[Rampant]

SuperSwede, thanks dude...

From what you said I assume that ALL the settings including gain and eq are sucked into a program when I save one???

I did notice a couple of times that weird thing happened when touching a knob a tiny bit while in a preset mode...
Does this mean that if I'm in a program and I touch, for instance, the gain knob that the result will be that the amp reconfigures to all of the manual settings??? Slightly confused by this?

Cheerz

Mark H

[marnold]

From what you said I assume that ALL the settings including gain and eq are sucked into a program when I save one???
As Swede said, the only settings that are not saved are the attenuator and the Master Volume. The VT series has eight user presets as opposed to the AD's two so you can save settings for every level of gain your little heart desires.


I did notice a couple of times that weird thing happened when touching a knob a tiny bit while in a preset mode...
Does this mean that if I'm in a program and I touch, for instance, the gain knob that the result will be that the amp reconfigures to all of the manual settings??? Slightly confused by this?
Remember when using the presets (or your saved channels) the knobs are bypassed and the amp is using whatever settings are saved. However, if you touch one of the knobs, you are adjusting that particular setting. So say the knob reads noon on the gain, but the preset you are using was saved with the gain at maximum. If you'd move the gain knob ever so slightly, the gain would immediately drop from max to about noon. It's a bit confusing at first, but it's very handy for tweaking presets for a particular room or just to try things out without affecting the saved settings at all.

[Rampant]

Cool

Thanks dudes. That's a really wicked feature - but not explained well in the user manual.. (Yes I did the very un-masculine thing of actually reading the instructions, lol.)

There certainly is a lot to this amp.

I like. :D

[markb]

Yeah, everything's saved but of course the knobs will bear no relation to the saved setting. Moving one a little "reads" the knobs and you're away in manual mode again. This is fine until you find you need to cut some bass to cut through the mix. Touch knobs on a Valvetronix with care. There is a way to find all the original settings by holding a button and turnng the knob until one of the lights stops flashing (or something like that. This is all typical of Korg/Vox processors.

Fender Cyber Twins and one Yamaha modelling amp fixed this with motorised knobs. Call up a saved setting and all the knobs went to the saved positions, neat eh?

[SuperSwede]

Unfortunately the VT manual doesnt explain much of the valvetronix technology.. I would recommend downloading the original tonelab manual that describes much more detailed how the eq and volume controls work on each amp model (expect those models not featured on the tonelab of course).

[mrmudcat]

Welcome and have fun exploring................:AOK

[marnold]

Yeah, everything's saved but of course the knobs will bear no relation to the saved setting. Moving one a little "reads" the knobs and you're away in manual mode again.
Sort of. You are in manual mode for the knob you moved, the others stay at their saved settings. So if I adjust the bass, the bass changes but all of the other settings will remain the same as the saved settings.


There is a way to find all the original settings by holding a button and turnng the knob until one of the lights stops flashing (or something like that. This is all typical of Korg/Vox processors.
On the AD series (and I assume it would be this way on the VTs as well) the channel LED will light up when the knob gets to the saved setting.