Classic 30 preliminary

[Duff]

The Classic 30 came and I plugged it in and adjusted the dials and the reverb started to howl without even a guitar plugged in when turned up, maximum feedback almost squeal at twelve on the reverb knob all volumes and gain turned off.

Turning down the reverb still has a drone and howlish hum and hum at lowest levels with or without guitar plugged in but the reverb tone is awesome and the speaker sounds great and it is a loud amp that has decent clean channel breakup and good overdrive tone.

It came with four JJ power tubes and I'm not sure what preamp tubes.

It is packed up and ready to go back for a replacement or else a different amp but I'm leaning on waiting for one of these to come back into stock later this month because it sounded so good.

Thought about a valveking but dismissed that thought. Still consider the Bugera that Spud is happy with. Maybe even a Fender Blues Jr., but like the Classic 30 and am willing to wait, build quality was superior by far to many of my amps and it doesn't sound anything like my Delta Blues when A B'd. It is much louder, maybe the Delta needs new power tubes. It's over a year old. The reverb is also much stronger on the Classic 30 and the tone is way different with the twelve inch speaker. Great overdrive and driven clean.

Thought you all might want to know.

[marnold]

I'm obviously biased, but check a Jet City if you get a chance.

[ZMAN]

That sucks Duff: It sure doesn't give you a warm and fuzzy feeling about this amp. Supposed to be made in the USA. Not much to be said for quality control. It had to have shown up on the post build inspections. Maybe it was banged around in transit. Planes, Trains and Automobiles can take there toll!

[Spudman]

I played my Delta all night last night. There is no way I'll be going back to the C30. The Delta roars. If tubes is all you think yours needs why not just get some new ones?

Marnold has the Jet City and he's pretty happy with it and I really like what I've been hearing as well. If you want another lower wattage amph why not check into those? But if you really want to stop your amph purchasing frenzy then look into the Marshall that Robert has or the Engl Steve Morse head. You'll find everything you need from those.

Robert's Marshall Demo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzMpsrHUoN0)

[FrankenFretter]

I bought a ValveKing Royal 8 some time ago, and have never been happy with the sound. I finally decided to sell it and buy a different small combo for taking with me to guitar lessons. Two people tried it out, and didn't like it for the same reason I didn't, the kazoo-like overdrive. The last person to try it out suggested that it wasn't inherently the amph itself, but something wrong with the electronics, or tube(s). He said that the clips he'd heard of stock Royal 8s didn't sound the way mine does. I wish I'd realized that when I first bought it, so I could've sent it back for replacement. I just thought that it was the way the amph sounded. Now I'm going to try replacing the pre-amp tube, and if that doesn't do anything, I'll replace the power tube.

Sorry you got a lemon, Duff. I hope that whatever you end up with is more to your liking. Even though I don't own one, I'd also vote for the Jet City. I may pick up one of their Pico Valve heads when they're available. They look very promising.

[Duff]

I bought a Royal 8 for my fiance's grandson. I really liked it a lot and got lots of good tones out of it.

I have read that if you put a new speaker in it, I forget which one, an Eminence or Weber or something, but a good one, and a new set of good tubes like JJs it will sound incredible, relatively speaking. Supposedly a major improvement of the sound like a quantum leap. This would not cost much and you might be able to do it yourself except for biasing the tubes if needed, I'd check to see, in the manual, if it's self biasing.

Just played my Delta opened up pretty good on the drive channel, some Gary Moore stuff, and it roared indeed, but the Classic 30 still sounds great. I considered a Valve King 100 watt 212 which is awesome and Loud like I want but it is built not as well as the Classic 30 in my opinion but has a lot of different sounds and 6L6 tubes instead of EL84s.

[markb]

I love the Valveking's clean sound (I've only played the 50w 112 combo). Pure smooth 6L6 tones that absolutely purred with a neck 'bucker. The drive side was a wee bit excessive for my purposes but I could live with one of those.

[wingsdad]

I briefly owned a VK Royal8 and the only reason I didn't keep it was to trade it in toward the purchase of my Tech21 Trademark 60 1x12 that had surprisingly turned up on a trade-in just a month after getting it.

Personally, I like it for the low volume small space amp a 5W, 8" speaker amp should be expected to be useful for, that, and nothing more. That it has a headphone jack is a hint to that limtation. I like how it can be worked to match up efficiently with different gain pickups by picking the correct input jack.

[oldguy]

I'm obviously biased, but check a Jet City if you get a chance.

+1 if you want great gain and overdrive but no reverb.
The Bugeras are getting rave reviews on the combos so far, as well as the Jet City combos, which you can get with reverb.
And of course, there's always the Hughes and Kettner Statesman combos.

[FrankenFretter]

I bought a Royal 8 for my fiance's grandson. I really liked it a lot and got lots of good tones out of it.

I have read that if you put a new speaker in it, I forget which one, an Eminence or Weber or something, but a good one, and a new set of good tubes like JJs it will sound incredible, relatively speaking. Supposedly a major improvement of the sound like a quantum leap. This would not cost much and you might be able to do it yourself except for biasing the tubes if needed, I'd check to see, in the manual, if it's self biasing.

I did swap the speaker for a Weber Mod. No change. The power tube doesn't need biasing, btw.

[Duff]

FF, it could be a lot of different things that cause the amp to sound less good than other Royal 8's.

I would have thought that the Weber speaker would have made a definitely discernable change to the sound. I'm not sure which speakers they recommend for the Royal 8 but I remember reading about it. You might do a search like, Peavey Royal 8 replacement speaker. There are a couple that made a major difference in the sound.

Also, they said that the tube change was a major improvement but I don't remember which tubes they recommended.

After these two mods they said the amp sounded more than great, relatively speaking.

But, there could be other problems like cold solder joints or burnt out somethings resulting from cold solder joints. Cold solder joints should be covered under the mfg warranty for the full period of the warranty. A Peavey service center could check and resolder the joints if they are bad. This has been a common problem.

I don't think the overseas workers have been well trained in using the new lead free solder that takes quite a lot of soldering skill to use properly. As it is always said, the overseas employees in China, etc., are probably not making a commensurate wage compared to the American worker, you know, the slave labor type analogy. These underpaid workers probably aren't trained all that well and may not have the prerequsite skill ability and understanding to master the challenges of working with the new solder. Plus turn over of employees in these plants could be high, resulting in a lot of green, unseasoned employees working on this stuff.

Supposedly Peavey has its own plant in China and has decent quality control from what I have been told. Not being an expert I wouldn't know for sure. My American made Peavey came thru messed up, so where was that quality control? Of course, my Peavey could have been damaged in shipping because the box was actually "open", not even taped shut on one end, shipped UPS, but didn't show any visual bumps or damage of any kind, which is kind of hard to believe considering the box was actually open. So damage in transit can't be eliminated as a cause of the problem with mine.

Are you keeping the Royal 8?

I had my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Special Tweed Edition resoldered under warranty shortly after buying it and learning about the HRD cold solder joint problem that commonly caused problems; preventative maintenance and didn't cost me anything.

[Duffy]

I got my new impecable Classic 30 today.

It sounds hot. All JJ power tubes and Ruby preamp tube in the first position followed by two more JJ's in the preamp section.

It sounds incredible and is LOUD. I like the features and it has real real good blues tones plus great rock tones.

I a/b'd it to my Delta Blues and the comparison was like night and day: dark and bright. The amps compliment each other in my opinion.

All said and done, the Classic 30 is, by me, an awesome amp; and made in the USA.

The tone is crisp and clear on clean and smooth on overdrive with fabulous tones to be found from chiming full spectrum tones to great overdrive with superb note definition and not muddy at all.

Played Epi Tribute to Les Paul LP thru it, a great Epiphone SG copy of a gibson 66 stock sounding super great, and the Xavier XV500 tribute LP with the three quarters maple cap on mahogany body and crunchy PAF GFS pups, it sounding super super great as well and it only cost a fraction of the other two guitars. The Xavier has proven to be a great stock guitar thru lots of amps and pedals. Amazing quality for the price and the pots are rolling off nice and smooth all the way thru the tone range, must be upgraded in the new version thru the work of that Jay dude at GFS.

I would recommend a Classic 30 to anyone looking for a great LOUD tube amp that has great character and totally usable features, effects loop, extension speaker jack out, and a strong boost circuit; plus needlesstosay, the cool vintage tweed vibe. This is an amp that a person can bond with without even trying, if you like the wavelength its on.

[Duffy]

As it turns out the replacement Classic 30 has two problems, small problems, but irritating.

The input jack has not worked right from the get go. You have to jack it up to get it to connect, pain in the butt. This I could easily fix.

Reverb tank howls when the boost button engaged, not nearly as bad as the first one though. Insulating tape on the reverb tank would probably eliminate this problem.

Also produces static when idling, not a smooth hum, intermittent but mostly static'y.

Great sounding amp.

But since I have tried two and both have not been exactly perfect, and I have the Delta Blues that I've had for over a year and it works great, sounds great, etc., I think I will try the newly designed Vox AC15 Custom, a new version of the Custom Classic with the Wharfdale speaker. The one I'm getting has the Celestion Greenback speaker and other design changes including a lay out more like an AC30, with two channels and a top boost. Also the tubes mount onto the chassis, not directly into the pcb board, which I like.

So I am exchanging the Classic 30 and will try the AC15C1.

I played an AC15 a while back and was highly impressed with it, so this should be an indication that I will like the amp when it comes in and I can really try it out. My local place only has the AC30.

Because of the inconvenience with the Peavey's I am getting a great deal on the new Vox.

I will post my observations when I get to try it out in a few days.

Hopefully it will come thru with everything working right and no unusual or annoying sounds other than the expected tube amp sound. Being fifteen watts maybe I can turn the volume dial up more at low volume and get some better tone. It also has a master volume which I like.

I hate to turn in the Classic thirty but I think it is the thing to do. Seems like the quality control down there in Mississippi missed some things that should have been obvious. The reverb problem has to be known about, and the jack must not even have been tested. Then again, testing is probably a really quick hit or miss thing.

[MAXIFUNK]

Duffy I briefly heard that amp on Saturday seems very cool and did sound good.
I did not hear it for very long but it did make want to give a good once over.

I think your going to really enjoy that amp congrats.

[Duff]

Yeah Maxi, I am confident that it will be a great amp; but it is really hard to give up that Classic 30 with its hard hitting power, super great tone, and really great overdrive channel. Cranked that Classic 30 rocks! The clean channel goes into beautiful overdrive at around half volume and sounds as good as the overdrive channel. At this point it is a Fu@@ the neighbors volume, but fun for sure and really a delight to hear.

[bigG]

Two lemons in a row from Peavey USA is a rarity, and a concern that they should look into pronto.

The Delta Blues, Classic 30 and Vox AC15C1 are all GREAT combos, IMHO. I've owned or played thru each.

Duff, that Vox is a real winner! I think since you have the Delta Blues already, the Vox will really open up your tonal pallette. Fine choice! :AOK

[Duff]

Thanks BigG.

Spud had mentioned before to me that having the Delta and the Classic was basically redundant. I really like the Classic 30 though. I will try running my Delta into a 12 inch cab I have and see if it sounds different; since the Delta and the Classic definitely sound way different here at my house.

The Delta isn't perceived as being as loud as the Classic when opened up. This is probably because of the wavelength changes coming off the fifteen inch speaker, dropping the tone deeper. Also I believe it takes, in simple definition, more watts to push a lower frequency wavelength, and probably more watts to drive a larger diameter speaker as well - maybe both characteristics are two manifestations of the same cause; but I only shallowly believe this because I think it is more dynamic of a relationship than that: the wavelength of a speaker of the same diameter could be way different than the wavelength of another speaker of the same diameter, and the sensitivity of a larger diameter speaker could be a lot greater than that of a smaller diameter speaker.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to receiving the new amp and will let you know what I think about it. From what I can tell it is going to be a good sounding amp, always upgradable, and the greenback sounds like a good thing to have in there. Evidently they use cheap Chinnese tubes though. I will probably have some JJ's put in and have it biased. Or just change the preamp tubes to JJ's.

I am, however, very wary of suspect and low quality tubes after my catastrophic failure of my Crate V50 resulting from a bad Ruby tube or tubes flashing out, blowing out a lot of other things in the same event. I think that spending money on known high quality tubes is a good preventative maintenance move with any tube amp that you care about preserving. One would think, however, that Vox would put decent tubes in their new model of one of their most famous amps.

[Duff]

Rearranged my amps today after sending the Classic back.

Put the Delta on top of some two by four spacers above my Crate V32 Palomino 212 and it sounds mega louder with much better treble response, having raised it above the floor. The floor obviously had a muting affect. I'm going to place some two by fours under the palomino on the floor to raise it up a little as well.

The Delta really roared on both channels and never sounded better.