Swart AST + Vox AC15c1 = bazillion tones

[Ryguy]

I have been gigging hard with my AST solo, (or maybe hooked up with a backline cheapo) for a year so; I have used it alone from bars to 3000 seat theatres, and outdoor festivals, and finally got tired of fighting for volume in at the larger venues, poor monitoring, etc.,

So I decided to pick up a cheap second combo to use in stereo and as a backup, and got a new Vox AC15c1. I used it alone the day after I got it at a low volume gig with a B3 trio, and had zero issues dialing in a good tone after only about 3 minutes of tweaking, which was cool. Then the next day I used it in stereo via an El Cap delay with my AST at an outdoor jazz fest on a big stage where I could open them both up, and it sounded enormous. We didn't have enough time at the sound check for me to tweak much, so I probably had some crappy tone moments via needless overdrive (I only have two dirt pedals, and they both pretty much do the same thing, so...) but overall it sounded fantastic.

Today I finally had some time to sit down with the Vox. Great amp; big bold base tone with the master up, tons of sounds available, KILLER grind, and very nice tremolo. The reverb has an annoying long and muddy decay, hopefully a pan change will help there though. Greenback is stiff, but sounds good, I will try the Weber alnico Blue Dog I have in the Swart in it at some point. BTW it matches up perfectly to me with the Swart.

One cool thing I found with the stereo setup was to put an ABY switch between the delay and the Vox to have both the normal and top boost channels. So I would use the Swart and the TB channel, and then add the Vox's normal channel for a big mids boost. I found dozens of different cool sounds and options with this setup, and am excited about dialing in 4-5 different sounds between the amps that I can use live.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to share this. I'll post pics of the rig tomorrow, and try to get some clips up soon.

[Ryguy]

Bump. Forgot to ask how many people have swapped out the reverb tank on their Ac15c1, and whether it helps with the decay problem.