Wtd: music man amp. Or Vox ac30 tb(x) amp.

[Sea Chief]

Hi chaps,

wanted- music man amp. Not a 2 -12. UK only as its surely £bonkers shipping from usa.

not sure if this is the best place on the site for a 'wtd', but a bit exhausted with preamp tube woes plaguing me.. so I want to try a musicman. Going full circle as I had one years ago.

Or a vox ac30 tb or ideally tbx (not the cc chinese one). I know.. its got lord knows how many tubes in! (So a bit more reluctant).

Grateful for any reply. SC

[J M Fahey]

Not sure what "wtd" means:

Want to buy would be "wtb", while "WTD" hints at "want to donate" ... clearly not the case here.

[glebert]

If you want something with like a Music Man in the UK look for a KMD GV60 or GV100. I think they were made in the UK, there must me some there.The power amp is basically a clone of the MM amps (with the 750+ voltages on the plates). Great clean sound (very SRV) and a pretty good drive channel, basically a TS9 sort of circuit IIRC. I had a GV60D and couldn't give the thing away. They are ugly, so I think that is one reason they are cheap.

[J M Fahey]

Oh now I see, wtd mans wanted.I read it as 3 separated letters.

IF you hate preamp tube trouble, get a JCM900.

Main sound SS with a little tube flavouring thrown in at the end, for distortion only.

I once asked Steve Grindrod (JCM900 and Valvestate designer) why did he use that un-tubish way to make them, and he answered: "Late 80s early 90s Soviet Union was crumbling down, tube quality was TERRIBLE, they were unusable, Factories can not depend on NOS (ultra limited quantities and unreliable supply) so I designed an SS preamp for all the critical high gain low noise stages and reserved tubes only for distortion , very late in the chain, where microphony and noise do not matter"
As you see, a very similar situation to what worries you now ... and for very good reason.

Even worse: the triode stage + cathode follower which is typically the only tube stage used in hybrid amplifiers specifically for clipping, DOES NOT DISTORT , it has huge NFB, gain reduced to only 3X, and actual distortion comes from a diode clipper at its grid, go figure.

They also had to switch from EL34 to 5881, for similar quality control issues.

[Sea Chief]

Hi glebert, interesting idea & I'll keep an eye out for a cheapo as a spare or something, but dang theyre ugly. I just couldn't have that in my house.

Thanks though.