Larsongs Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 Yeah, Techs hate Mesa Amps.. Many won’t work on them.. Gibson would be smart to simplify their new Amp design so they’re easier to work on. Fender & Vox must be doing something right.. Also, making them Price competitive.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt. Pepper Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 (edited) On 1/10/2024 at 8:30 AM, Murph said: It's called capitalism. It's great. Perhaps you prefer the alternative, which is communism. Most Fender and Peavey and mainstream amps are now made in China or Mexico and they're cheap because of cheap labor. Kudos to Gibson and Mesa for building gear in the U.S.A. So your gonna get a few and make Cesar who is hurting for cash richer I suppose? I’ll bet no, just another Gibson thing to gush over? Edited January 11 by Sgt. Pepper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 14 hours ago, ghost_of_fl said: Just about every single flagship smart phone including the iPhone is made in China. That must be why they're so cheap. 🤠 Phones? Phones are disposable. Only an idiot pays full price for the latest flagship phone. An American built tube amp has a soul and can last several generations. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt. Pepper Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 (edited) 3 hours ago, Murph said: Phones? Phones are disposable. Only an idiot pays full price for the latest flagship phone. An American built tube amp has a soul and can last several generations. Back when Rock was new, and guitarist blasted their sound from the amp, most played Marshall (British), and Fender (USA). You saw a few who played Orange (British again), Vox (Damn the Brits made some amps) and Hi Watt (Yep British). I don't think Gibson amps were involved in much of the sound we know and love from early rock records or concerts we went to. Now its boutique stuff, the old stuff (called vintage now and bought up by Joe Bonamassa), and people are using Fractal type amps, and what ever the new things are in boxes that are as big as a modern day Blue Ray player. Edited January 12 by Sgt. Pepper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 23 hours ago, Larsongs said: Yeah, Techs hate Mesa Amps.. Many won’t work on them.. Gibson would be smart to simplify their new Amp design so they’re easier to work on. Fender & Vox must be doing something right.. Also, making them Price competitive.. 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. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 2 hours ago, Dub-T-123 said: Murph is dead wrong about Mesa. Yea, the internet knows WAY more than someone who owns them and gigged them for years and years and years and years... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 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 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt. Pepper Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 PS I forgot modeling amps. I want to sound like EVH circa VH II and all at the push of a button or plug in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larsongs Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 (edited) I have Fender, Vox & Marshall Tube Amps between 20 & 40 years old.. I play literally everyday. Very little maintenance.. A Reverb Tank in my Twin. I have replaced a few Tubes.. But, that’s it. I have friends who have older Tube Amps than mine that don’t require major maintenance & sound really great! Everything is rebuildable if need be & can last forever… A few years ago I bought some X Vive wireless rechargeable Remotes for Guitar.. Last week one of them wouldn’t hold a charge. I tried to figure out how to change the battery.. There is no way to change Batteries? You just throw them away & buy some new ones.. Like so many other modern High Tech SS Digital products….. Including digital Amps at some point.. Edited January 13 by Larsongs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 6 hours ago, Larsongs said: I have Fender, Vox & Marshall Tube Amps between 20 & 40 years old.. I play literally everyday. Very little maintenance.. A Reverb Tank in my Twin. I have replaced a few Tubes.. But, that’s it. Hell yea, my Mesa is nearly 30 years old and has never had anything changed except tubes, and even then just because I wanted to. I have a Champ that's 50 years old and has never had a pot go out. Works and sound just fine. Now that I think about it my Prosonic is pushing 30 years old too. With zero maintenance. A tube now and then. Don't argue with the internet, Lars.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larsongs Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 I would love to see Gibson make a USA Amp about the same size & Watts as a 65 PRRI with similar features competitively priced.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 On 1/12/2024 at 11:11 AM, Dub-T-123 said: That said, it would be 100% fair to say that korg puts absolutely ZERO effort into ease of maintenance/repair. Yeah. Anything that's sold through Korg USA? - Fughettaboutit. They're worse than Mesa Boogie. My advice is to throw it out. Those guys not only won't give out schematics, they'll get you peeved at the same time. At least Mesa is purely transactional. KorgUSA is like "Eff you, eff us, eff everybody, eff our customers." I told them I'll just refuse to work on their stuff and they said fine, we're still not sending you a schematic. Now I just work on old Fenders. Anything else just enables bad behaviors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 1 hour ago, badbluesplayer said: Yeah. Anything that's sold through Korg USA? - Fughettaboutit. They're worse than Mesa Boogie. My advice is to throw it out. Those guys not only won't give out schematics, they'll get you peeved at the same time. At least Mesa is purely transactional. KorgUSA is like "Eff you, eff us, eff everybody, eff our customers." I told them I'll just refuse to work on their stuff and they said fine, we're still not sending you a schematic. Now I just work on old Fenders. Anything else just enables bad behaviors. 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveFord Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 (edited) No schematics? Shoot, there was this one guy building expensive stereo preamplifiers and not only no schematics but he wouldn't let anyone even publish a photo of the insides of the unit. I did a see a picture and he has since passed away so here it is: Edited January 14 by SteveFord Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 Dumble was always secretive about his designs, too. This is nothing new. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larsongs Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 19 hours ago, badbluesplayer said: Yeah. Anything that's sold through Korg USA? - Fughettaboutit. They're worse than Mesa Boogie. My advice is to throw it out. Those guys not only won't give out schematics, they'll get you peeved at the same time. At least Mesa is purely transactional. KorgUSA is like "Eff you, eff us, eff everybody, eff our customers." I told them I'll just refuse to work on their stuff and they said fine, we're still not sending you a schematic. Now I just work on old Fenders. Anything else just enables bad behaviors. I thought old Vox & Marshall were pretty much based on old Fenders? They were created during the embargoes when the Brits couldn’t get Fenders. If they could they were really expensive.. Vox & Marshall filled that void… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 3 hours ago, Murph said: Dumble was always secretive about his designs, too. This is nothing new. Yup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 2 hours ago, Larsongs said: I thought old Vox & Marshall were pretty much based on old Fenders? They were created during the embargoes when the Brits couldn’t get Fenders. If they could they were really expensive.. Vox & Marshall filled that void… 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larsongs Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 My comment about Vox & Marshall designs referred to their early design of AC10’s & AC15’s.. Way before AC30’s existed.. I have a modded AC-10 & an AC15 with UK Celestion Alnico Blues. I play them equally to my Fender 65 PRRI & Fender 65 DRRI.. Which is almost every day... I don’t need an AC30.. Too big, too heavy & too loud for my needs.. The AC10 & AC15 are super loud enough! I’ve upgraded Tubes in both.. I replaced the Spkr in the AC10 with a Special Design Weber 10” that does an excellent job of replicating a Celestion Alnico Blue.. Which Celestion doesn’t build.. I’ve had my AC15 for 13 yrs & my AC10 6-7 yrs.. Neither have had any repairs or problems.. Both sound great.. That said, I want one of the AC15 HW’s…. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 Your ac10 and ac15 bear very little resemblance to their original counterparts except maybe cosmetically. The originals were not Fender copies either Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 (edited) There's definitely going to be a market for reissues of the old Gibson amps. Like the Falcon. They'll definitely sell. Maybe not in high numbers, but there's definitely lots of vintage Gibson amp fans out there. There's not a lot of old stuff for sale, and I don't think there's ever been a reissue of the Falcon. Here's a Skylark that came through our shop for some work - Edited January 14 by badbluesplayer 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 Love it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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