Vox AC15c1

[Duff]

Just got the AC15c1, the new AC15 Custom that has been redesigned from the AC15CC1, to include a much more AC30 interface, plus other upgrades and design changes, physical and electronic. Supposed to be an improvement over the earlier model that I played a few years ago.

I have not played it very much yet but enjoy the sounds I have gotten out of it so far, plugged straight in with a dual HB guitar and my CV 50s with Custom Shop Texas Specials. Plenty of high end chime and a full bass sound as well. Excellent note separation, not muddy whatsoever and sounds good driven. Two real channels now: normal and top boost, both overdrivable without a pedal to a nice smooth overdrive, non metallic laid back sounding overdrive.

Needlesstosay it has a cool vintage vibe with the black vinyl and classic grill cloth.

I will take some pictures and also play it some more so I can give a better description of how it compares to my other amps.

[tochiromifune]

Waiting for the rest of your review :-) because I plan to buy this amp...

[Duff]

I'm still really new to the amp.

Last night and today I'm playing my new Epiphone LP Tribute with the USA Gibson '57 Classic humbuckers and it sounds really good after tweaking the controls on the amp. I am on the Top Boost channel right now and get some really great LP tone out of it, cutting the treble. The amps eq is highly interactive, meaning when you adjust the bass or the treble separately that it also adjusts the treble or bass at the same time, even though you don't touch the other eq knob. This provides a lot of room for tonal differences. Then you have the tone cut knob that also affects the sound. Plus the volume and master volume to work against one another to get a clean or driven sound. On top of that you can add reverb and tremolo to get some really great full sounds.

Yesterday I played my Classic Vibe 50's with the Fender Custom Shop Texas Special single coils thru it and it sounded really great. With this guitar you can also tame the treble and get a surprising sound, and these are hot texas single coils with lots of treble. On the treble side you can adjust the amp to get some super stratocaster twang and bite.

I have yet to try a telecaster thru it yet and I have one with a Custom Shop Tele Texas Special in the bridge. This one will be interesting to test out.

The amp, as you probably know, has a Celestion Greenback in it and the new design has successfully remedied the "ice pick" treble problem of the cc1's. People used to cut out a capacitor to tame the shrillness of the treble on them. This amp has solved that problem, plus has the tone cut chicken head knob.

The tubes are now down facing and easily accessible thru a closed back cabinet. Although closed back it has a broad perforated ventilation panel on the back, along with two standard type ventilation ports on the top. I have not felt the back of the amp to try to detect heat because you can't touch the metal of the head unit like you can on my Peavey Delta Blues. I'll tell you, I bet you could have fried eggs on the Classic 30 I sent back; great little amp that it was.

The exterior of the amp is probably mostly unchanged except for the closed back, and is really a classic looking amp, with the gold piping giving it a refined look.

The amp is LOUD. I can see a drummer frantically waving me down in a small to medium room. Even in a large ballroom it would probably be plenty loud, plus you can run an extension speaker in conjunction with the regular speaker. It is loud without using any type of pedal or boost pedal. I have not hooked any pedal up to it yet. I'm sure you could boost or overdrive it with a pedal and get a lot more perceived volume. If necessary you could also install a way more sensitive speaker in it to get a lot more volume. I'm cool with it the way it is.

[tochiromifune]

Thanks a lot Duff for your review. Really nice of you.

Just a question about the clean headroom: if you turn the master all the way up how much can you turn the volume before getting saturation? Do you think the clean sound is loud enough to play with a drummer?

[Duff]

It is deafeningly loud with a fair amount of cleanness. There are a lot of ways to shape your sound by tweaking the controls and interactive eq. About one o'clock on the top boost volume with the master all the way up is where you start to hear any significant breakup with THIS AMP. This amp is voiced almost like another instrument in your signal chain. It is not what you would call a really clean amp, it colors your sound, even with the gain down low. It has a characteristic sound and you can get a huge variation of tones out of this fundamental sound.

I plugged into my Fender Super Champ XD with the Ragin' Cajun speaker and switched it to the clean channel, no voicing. Played both the LP and the strat with Texas Specials into it and the Fender is fender clean almost to the ceiling. Same with most of the Fender voicings on the second channel, very clean at very high volume. Way cleaner than the Vox. This would be expected.

Therefore, if you want a real clean amp, get a clean Fender. The real good ones like the Vibrolux or Twin cost a lot. The SuperSonic is incredible but cost a LOT. Maybe you can find a cheaper amp that's as clean as a Fender, I don't know. But if you want a lot of clean headroom, Fender makes some great clean amps and on the overdrive channel a lot of them are not that great unless you turn them up to supersonic levels; except for the SuperSonic, that sounds great at low volumes on the BURN channel in either of the all tube vibrolux or bassman voices, plus the reverb works on the bassman voice. These SuperSonics are around 800 used in mint condition.

I have read that dudes with the AC15c1, like mine, when playing with a loud drummer are able to get over by turning up the volume all the way on the master and the top boost channels but the result is not a fender clean tone, but cuts through.

On my LP with the Gibson USA 57 classic pickups, if I roll off the volume on the bridge pickup the AC15c1 cleans up quite nicely, without loosing any volume. Not so with the strat: turn down the volume and the volume goes down correspondingly, very unlike the LP. The LP I was using is the Epiphone Tribute to Les Paul version with a lot of high quality electronic upgrades, not a typical Epiphone LP. I should try one of my Epi LP Std's with Seymour Duncans - the JB and 59 pickups and see if the volume roll off works the same with one of them to clean up the amp.

If I was playing with a loud drummer I would use my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and blow his butt away - none of that, "Hey! Why don't you get a real amp!" BS. Light him right up. He'll be waving you down like a traffic cop.

[tochiromifune]

I am playing with a Strat and the drummer I am playing with is not that loud. Also, I like clean sounds but not entirely clean like Fenders, just very slightly dirty, but not distorted or too crunchy. It's difficult to explain with words...

[Duffy]

You will probably REALLY like this Vox AC15c1 then.

It is not completely crystal clean, but has enough headroom within its own tonal voice to be completely clear up to high volume, and never overdrives into what I would call distortion, as in a Marshall or other high gain amp. It's not high gain at all but is supposed to take distortion pedals very well.

Sounds like you would like this amp. It has its own mellow voice with Vox chime and is tweakable big time. The Tone Cut knob alone is really cool at getting different sounds and opening it up for a strat, cutting down the treble for the LP to get a nice smooth, almost muted mellow tone, without even touching the eq section. So, it's a really rich sounding amp and when you add on some of the very nice reverb it has, along with a touch of the great tremolo, you can get a complex and really full sound.

I like turn up the reverb about half way or so most of the time because I like that sound, and I turn up the Tone Cut to mute out the trebles when playing the LP to get a resultant great sound. On the strat I tweak it with a more open tone cut or no tone cut at all and adjust the eq and amount of overdrive to get great sounds.

If your drummer is not a slammer and is dynamic enough to listen to the other members of the band and adjust his playing volume to blend into and enhance the other members, you will have a great amp here that gets plenty loud.

If your drummer, like many drummers I know, is a slammer that only knows one volume and is inable to play at any softer volumes than his own groove, you won't have the power to devastate his butt and bury him under his own extravagancies; which is what I really like to be able to do with super loud slammers that like to tell you to, "Get a real amp!", because they don't know how to play backed off. A lot of rock drummers are full tilt boogie type guys that expect the rest of the band to be super loud. These are not the best of drummers in my opinion, and lack drumming finesse and dynamism.

I think the best drummers have a jazz type underlying ability to be very musical on the drums, rather than just slamming out a super loud basic beat. I think this type of drummer makes the best rock drummer. Watch those drummers that accompany Jeff Beck. They are some of the best drummers in the world and you will see that they are very dynamic, not slammers, except maybe on certain songs that require a slam beat.

I play drums and I can tell you that drums are a very musical instrument with tons of dynamism and a vast variety of tones and sounds available out of a relatively small number of fundamentally tuned heads. I personally have two snares set up at all times: a mellow toned snare with lots of low end without a dead ringer, and a hot popping piccolo that really snaps; this adds snare variety that blends into some really nice rythyms.

If your drummer knows how to not play full blast then you will be definitely all right with this amp. Another inconvenient option is to mic the amp or use an extension cabinet. But you should be alright straight up with this amp considering how you described your drummers ability to play less than full blast.

I think you will really like this awesome amp. It will never be a metal amp unless you use modelling effects.