I had givin it to my brother years back. It was a gigging amp for him for a while and he loved it. It died on him so he asked If I wanted it back since I'm fairly handy with amp repairs sometimes. I tried it and there was a channel cutting in and out and it would die alltogether and finally stopped alltogether. I tried jumpering the left and right loops (a known sometimes fix for this problem) to no avail. I then plugged the right and left outputs from my Zoom G3 into the EFX returns and the power amps worked fine. So I knew it would be in the pre or input stage. I took the amp out of the head and removed the Main power amp circut board and found several cold solder joints. (as that amp line has been plagued with these problems I chanced to look and happened on them). I then removed the input pcb and the grounds were nearly disconnected. So I resoldered them too. I put the amp back together and thoroughly cleaned all 1/4" jacks (there's a lot of them on this amp as it it has four speaker outs, Four EFX loop holes, Two Line out holes, two input holes and a Phones jack).
I sat the amp on top of my 1970s era Marshall 4x12 wired in stereo loaded with Celestion GT1275s and fired her up.
Worked excellently!!!
Those old Blue Grille Valvetronix amps are Deffinately no comprimises tone. Best Modelling amp ever. Too bad they used such sloppy soldering machines and cheap ass jacks. I guess at the time the production costs of an amp that well designed were very very high and Vox quickly killed them rather than charging a few hundred more for a more robust design.
What I did learn from being inside the amp is that there are only a handful of potential problems that with a little effort can virtually bulletproof these fine amps. I will order all new Neutric jacks for them and hot glue down ant caps and components thae look like they would benefit from it. But I'll wait untill it actually needs it as I may just need to clean the jacks from time to time.
As I said earlier in this post, These blue grille Valvetronix amps really hit the nail on the head with their modelling capabilities. I sat there trying to find a niggle with the sounds and couldn't. It is that good.
I sat the amp on top of my 1970s era Marshall 4x12 wired in stereo loaded with Celestion GT1275s and fired her up.
Worked excellently!!!
Those old Blue Grille Valvetronix amps are Deffinately no comprimises tone. Best Modelling amp ever. Too bad they used such sloppy soldering machines and cheap ass jacks. I guess at the time the production costs of an amp that well designed were very very high and Vox quickly killed them rather than charging a few hundred more for a more robust design.
What I did learn from being inside the amp is that there are only a handful of potential problems that with a little effort can virtually bulletproof these fine amps. I will order all new Neutric jacks for them and hot glue down ant caps and components thae look like they would benefit from it. But I'll wait untill it actually needs it as I may just need to clean the jacks from time to time.
As I said earlier in this post, These blue grille Valvetronix amps really hit the nail on the head with their modelling capabilities. I sat there trying to find a niggle with the sounds and couldn't. It is that good.
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