Dub-T-123

For pots the general recommendation is going to be CTS. I like the ones from “The Art of Tone” on eBay. He has good prices and the log taper works well for guitars. Not sure if a Casino is like a Jr or if it’s all 500K. Short shafts for sure though

Are you planning on getting a pair? If you do and you happen to have experience with the custombuckers I’m really curious how they compare

That’s a handsome little guy

Man that is a good looking guitar. I’ve always lusted for the Byrdland

So from what I’ve gathered the main problem with the sound of this pedal is that it’s not a real amp. It’s an algorithm which anticipates you do certain things which you might not necessarily do. For example, if you roll back the tone knob it’s almost no effect until it’s all the way down then you get that throaty sound you expect. But in between there’s almost no gradient. As a player you notice that stuff but again you can adjust your playing to cope This thing is a ton of fun and I don’t mean to besmirch it but it’s not as good as a really good amp. As a practice tool with headphones this is absolutely perfect and I’m having a lot of fun. I would not want this to be my only option for recording or gigging but it is exceptional as a practice tool

Now when I look at gear related sites with ads I keep getting an ad for this cable at sweetwater. It’s actually like $436 and their algorithm thinks I really want to buy it

You guys catch that this comes with double white bobbins? I think this must be related to that recent DiMarzio lawsuit The display case is cute but a little confusing to me. Are you supposed to not install the pickups so they can be displayed in the case? Do you install the 59 pickups and then put the old pickups in the display case? If you install these do you ruin the value as a collectible? I wonder how these differ from the custom bucker which is supposedly an exact paf copy and all that. I wonder how this competes with something like Throback where they are using Gibson’s original winding machines. Gibson can analyze an original pickup and reproduce it with CNC, throback just reproduces the components as accurately as possible and then lets an original winding machine do that part of the magic. The custombucker is like $600 for a pair. I wonder if the extra $400 gets you a completely different pickup or essentially the same pickup with special bobbins and display case etc

In that pic we can see 10 jacks, 9 switches, and 3 knobs on the BACK of the amp At which point do you put down the meth pipe?

I have probably had a bit less than two hours on this thing so far so I’m hesitant to give much a review what I can say. It’s a hit in terms of ease of use and instant gratification. It will be a hit for my intended purpose as a practice tool i really like how it goes from the cleanest amp model to the most saturated. The ease of use is unparalleled. The sound is absolutely going to be better on a Kemper or a real amp. This has some fizz and digital artifacts which are to be expected at this level. I think I have more to learn with this thing but it’s a great product for my intended purpose im sure you guys know what I mean. I can hear the shortcomings and adapt to them to where it sounds good, but it’s less forgiving than the real thing

Your ac10 and ac15 bear very little resemblance to their original counterparts except maybe cosmetically. The originals were not Fender copies either

I’m not sure how this is relevant to the post you replied to but Vox is a bit of an outlier. The ac30 was not a copy of any Fender product, it was probably made from application notes from a Mullard book or something ac30s have always been unreliable and less easy to work on than fender. When Korg bought out Vox, everything except the hand wired series were made in China and very poorly designed Korg’s whole deal is make an ac30 looking object cheap so I can sell a bajillion through guitar center. The first run of Chinese amps was the custom classic series (the amp that I have). If you manage to find a schematic for these you will see the amp itself closely resembles an ac30 top boost without the ef86 channel. That part of the amp sounds good albeit highly unreliable and poorly implemented. Remember the goal of Korg is to sell a bajillion units, so the amp must have tremolo and reverb and effects loop to compete right? This is where things start getting screwy. You have a solid state tremolo which works but is just as boring sounding as it gets. Anybody could just do without that tremolo but the point wasn’t to sound good the point was to convince people to buy. The spring reverb is also solid state driven and is by all means the absolute worst sounding spring reverb I’ve ever heard. It is so obvious that the reverb was just slapped on to be more competetive in big box stores. the effects loop is also solid state buffered. I’m not an effects loop guy but I will say the loop on my ac30 did not sound good Ok so Korg is selling bajillions of units but they are seriously unreliable, they’re a bit expensive to produce, and the random added features were kinda crap. This is where the C series begins (C1 is 1x12 C2 is 2x12 etc) With the C series amps the first thing anyone should notice is the solid state rectifier. In order to cheapen production and improve reliability the C series changed from tube to solid state rectifier. This is kindof a big deal for the sound. An ac30 gets really saggy when it’s really cranked up because of the tube rectifier. The solid state rectifier provides tighter faster transient response. The C series saw a marked improvement to the solid state reverb driver circuit. It went from being literally unusable trash (CC series) to decent but nowhere near as good as fender (C series). I’d have to check the schematics (which as noted is an issue with Korg) to compare power sections but I want to say the power amp was biased just a bit colder on the C series to prevent so many power tube failures C series also had what would generally be considered better speakers compared to CC TLDR Vox was never a fender copy, new Vox has increasingly less in common with old Vox, and Korg Vox is extremely low quality. When a Chinese Korg Vox has an actual problem you will absolutely struggle to find a tech who can help. The newer Korg Vox improved reliability by making an amp which is less similar to an ac30 as an aside, notice how the hardwired ac30 doesn’t have tremolo or reverb or effects loop etc. What you get there is the best ac30 copy that Korg could legally make at the time and it is actually very good. Super important that it isn’t loaded down with all those extra crap features and the construction is actually serviceable

I don’t remember where I got the schematic for the ac30cc1/2 but it is technically correct. It’s a really badly designed amp to work on though. as I was getting into that amp I actually just threw all of the pcbs in the trash and salvaged the transformers, chassis and cab. I drew a tag board layout for a more stripped down version with the old ef86 and top boost preamps. At the time I was really hot on adding a tube driven trem but I should let that go. There are already a lot of tubes and it’s just more complication for a feature I don’t actually care about much. Since I was scratching my head on the tube trem and then moved apartments that project kinda fell by the wayside. I gotta get back to that project. The sound and power level of the ac30 tend to be just right for me.

Neither of you have argued with me if that’s what you’re implying. I’m talking about ease of repair, you keep going on about ownership and gigging. Its ok. Amp techs don’t like Mesa for obvious reasons which have already been discussed. That’s it.

You’re gonna have to try a lot harder than that to convince me that my ac30 isn’t a pile of ****. It’s a great sounding pile of **** that I’ve gigged for years

Ok now that I’ve seen that picture I’m convinced that Mesa amps use only components with infinite lifespans and in the impossible event of repair it would be a piece of cake

I should probably seek counseling for how much I dislike this song. That guy sounds like a 2” tall dancing monkey selling his soul for a dollar it sounds like it sounded bad, then they turned up the tape speed a bit

Murph is dead wrong about Mesa. The amp probably sounds great and fires up reliably. Nobody is arguing that. Point is a tube amp is like a car in the sense that it requires maintenance. Mesa doesn’t use magical pots and switches and caps with infinite lifespans. If you have to send your car to Italy so they can remove the whole engine to do an oil change that’s a shitty design. That’s what you get with Mesa. Obvious difference is that I burn through oil a whole lot faster than I do pots, switches, and caps.

lol you sure got that wrong The ac30 is widely known as being one of the least reliable amps in history. The power tubes are essentially about to fail at any moment. On my ac30 you have to remove the chassis just to replace tubes. Inside said chassis is a disaster of Chinese PCB assemblies cutting costs absolutely everywhere possible. I was able to find Korg’s schematics which actually do match my amp but it kinda sucks because they had to draw in all the ribbon connecters etc for all the PCB assemblies so the whole thing looks unusually messy and disjointed That said, it would be 100% fair to say that korg puts absolutely ZERO effort into ease of maintenance/repair. I’d argue that they’re worse designed than Mesa but with less features. So with less features there’s a bit less to work on overall The newer versions of the ac30 which you may be more familiar with addressed those problems. They basically just made a new amp and sold it as an ac30 for people who don’t really care I haven’t cracked open a fender tone master or anything but let’s not be silly. That whole class d power section is going to be full of smd and if you’re doing it there why not elsewhere. I guarantee that if something goes wrong with at least the power amp there is no repair to be made, only replacing entire PCB assemblies. my twin reverb reissue is something I’d be happy enough to work on as far as modern amps go. It’s not the current model, not sure how much has changed.

That’s only like $21.50 per foot. That’s a good price for van der hul with fusion technology

I’m so picky with amps, especially combos. I hope this is great but I have low expectations to be honest. Very few new amps excite me

Just got the email that the IR-2 shipped. Can’t wait to get my greasy mitts on it

Dang these kids are smoking me left and right

Flawless take on U2/Bono from HR

HR is good but too angsty for me. Nervous Breakdown with Kieth Morris is the best

Exquisitely played indeed. Thanks for sharing!