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Mercury magnetics?


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Hey guys, im looking into a new amp and ive been thinking about a few things. One thing I was thinking about was just upgrading my VJr with the mercury magnetics mods, both the regular transformer mod and the 6V6 mod. Does anyone have any information or experiance with this? Its a pretty expensive mod, so im just kind of wondering if it would be worth it.

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I'm sure a lot of folks will chime in on this but I dare say that the general

consensus will be that you can do a lot more for a lot less. Even when VJ's

come up on Ebay with the Mercury stuff; comments are made about what could

have been had for the same amount of funds. Lurk here a tad and I think you'll

discover better ways to skin that cat. While I haven't done the 6V6: most of the

tone mods coupled with a better transformer will yield an entirely different beast

than what was pulled from the original cardboard box. To put that into perspective

my parts cost: (including a Hammond125 ESE and JJ tubes) was well under $100.

 

Wedgie

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The MM 6V6-converted VJ amp is the wildest sounding amp I'ver ever heard. I first heard it at the MM display at the LA Amp Show in 2007. Both my buddy and I thought it was THE best sounding amp there, overall, but I personally ended up buying the Vox AC15 Heritage for other reasons (the Vox had the best sound of any of the regular production amps there). Last October, when my friend and I went to the 2008 Amp Show, the best sounding amp again was the MM 6V6 VJ conversion. We also sampled the Orange Tiny Terror, and we spent a fair amount of time with the Egnator Rebel 20. The Egnator was, IMHO, the best of the small production amps in that comparison. But, what we have here, is the sound difference between standard production amps and modified amps, which is simililar to the difference between a standard production automobile and an automobile modified for racing. They really are in different worlds. Now, the Mercury mods are expensive. You have to pay to play, and if you want to play at a higher level, you have to pay for it. There's a falling-off point in any mod project, where your bang-for-the buck ratio starts flattening out, and you have to pay, let's say, 20% more money to realize a further 2% increase in sound quality, as opposed to an initial cost increase of 50% for a 50% increase in sound quality. So whether the MM mods are worth your sacrifice financially is your decision.

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MM iron is very good quality. No doubt about that. But the bang for the buck factor IS the pertinent question. Is it better to pay through the nose for the brand, or suffer the social slings and arrows for the sake of saving a buck with a less elitist brand that happens to sound every bit as good and capable of dropping just as many jaws on the floor?

 

Honestly, at the level of quality tones we're talking about, any subjectively preferable tone difference of one 'good' brand versus another is truly minuscule at best; provided of course, that we're talking about the right iron for the right job in comparison. Such an apples to apples comparison might be between the MM VJr OT, versus the Hammond 125CSE, versus the v3 VJr OT. Even the Hammond 125DSE and ESE only offer very small increases in bottom end, and the actual bang for the buck factor with the Hammond 125ESE is still tiny (that's why they're not recommended for version 3 VJr's unless there are plans for using a very large octal power tube).

 

Paying such an extreme upcharge for the MM OT makes the bang for the buck factor practically non-existent! Even if you're buying only for the sake of the name recognition, it still doesn't make a lot of sense, or cents. Try following a few sales on fleabay to see how often MM modded VJr's bring in more cash than Hammond modded VJr's, then do the math and see if it was worth it for them. #-o

 

Gil...

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