King Tut Posted October 4, 2020 Posted October 4, 2020 (edited) I'd been following the thread on the PMT sale and had almost pulled the trigger on the Ashdown 300W valve head. Ive been gassing for an all valve giggable head for a while. I play in a Classic Rock band touring medium sized venues and had been using either a Trace 300W head or my Bugera Veyron 1001T - both of which have served me well, but neither of which thoroughly scratched that itch. I'd been put off using an all valve amp due to weight and cost. Well weight isn't too much of an issue as we have roadies, and when I saw a Peavey VB-2 in the sale - B-Stock - for £389, the cost argument went out of the window also. So I pulled the trigger last Thursday but didn't honestly expect to get the amp given the amount of people who'd posted about not having their order fulfilled. I phoned up on Friday and they confirmed that the order was indeed mine and that it'd arrive on Monday. To my surprise, I got a message from DPD yesterday saying it would arrive in the afternoon. It arrived safe n sound in a Yamaha box with no instructions but well wrapped. No tinkling thank goodness and absolutely immaculate - not a mark on it. I immediately set it up on top of a Big Baby 2 and started to have a play. My first mistake was to plug into the low gain input. Underwhelmed by the volume I realised I need to put it into the high input and all was good. Ive had a further play today and so far so good. It's incredibly versatile but takes a while to get to terms with the EQ. It's got low, mid and high controls with a four way selectable mid set at 2, 4, 6,and 800Hz. However what isn't in the manual is that altering the mid frequency also alters the frequencies the low and high controls work at. The EQ on this reminds me of the EQ on the Hartke LH500 where if you turn all the controls to zero the volume pretty much disappears. There's also a bright switch along with Presence and Resonance controls. According to the manual, these act like high and low controls on the power amp side. Talking of the power amp, this utilises a 12AT7 driver tube/phase splitter, 6 JJ EL34's and an oversized power supply pushing out 225W. It's certainly not short of volume. i've no doubt this will provide enough volume for any of the gigs I'll do. Usefully it will also drive cabs down to 2 ohms using the three way resistance sector. Pre amp is served by two 12AX7 tubes. It's a two channel amp with an overdrive channel that has it's own gain control. This is switchable from the front panel or a (not supplied) footswitch. I didn't spend too much time on this. I wasn't too impressed - sounded a bit fizzy to my ears and not overly versatile without it's own master control and eq. Plugging my Precision in and the gain set to full on the clean channel, I could get that lovely, just slightly breaking up tone. Less so with my Ric, which isn't as hot as my Precision, but I've no doubt that once I've got my pedals in front of it I could dial in drive to taste. I had a play with the all the settings and tried the suggested settings in the manual. I t didn't take long to find the tone I was after, which for me centred around boosting the mids on the 200Hz setting. I think the thing with this amp is to not be afraid of using extreme settings on the tone controls - they work well giving a wide range of tones. On the back there's two speaker outs on jacks, an XLR Di with pre and post switch and level, sockets for a footswitch and tuner out and a selector for 2, 4 or 8 ohms along with a power input and mains switch. While I had it set up, I thought I'd see how it compared with a real old school valve amp and my Bugera Veyron BV1001T. I have an old Laney Supergroup 100 from the late 60's in the arsenal. It sounds lovely but I've always struggled to get volume out of it without it breaking up at gigs. Having had a play with it today I've realised that using the bass input rather than the treble input, gives me less top end but lets me get it louder before breaking up. It's obviously nowhere near as versatile as the Peavey, but the tone is to die for - really mellow and rich, very hard to describe though. As for the Bugera - this is pretty versatile too. Again not as versatile as the Peavey, particularly in terms of mids and tops, but the tone is definitely nice and valvey. What it lacks though is the dynamic range of either of the valve amps. Even with the compression off, it kind of sounds dynamically smooth - and not really in a good way (in comparison) whereas both the valve amps - hard to describe - you can kind of feel the notes coming and going . . . . dare I say . . . . .exhibiting heft! It has to be said that all this waffle has been done on the basis of playing this stuff in my spare room at relatively low volume levels. Nonetheless, i think it's fair to say I'm pretty happy with my purchase and can't wait for all this covid malarkey to be over so I can get this bad boy out into the environment it was built for! Edited October 5, 2020 by King Tut 9 Quote
spyder Posted October 4, 2020 Posted October 4, 2020 Fantastic review and a bargain at the price you paid. 😀 1 Quote
Ed_S Posted October 4, 2020 Posted October 4, 2020 Certainly was a bargain! If I hadn’t already got one I’d have been after it myself 🙂 I paid a couple of hundred more for mine back when the peavey warehouse got cleared out and everything was being auctioned off. Think that possibly makes it either a return or a repair but it’s been fine for the last few years so I can only imagine that if it did once have a problem it was sorted. I don’t get to play it as often as I might, but every time I do it’s good fun. If I was to offer any small piece of advice, I’d say don’t run it for 3 hours and then immediately pick it up and carry it to the car with the back pressed tight to your body. Those power valves are close to the grille and damn near melted the elastane in my comfy stretch jeans! 2 Quote
danbowskill Posted October 4, 2020 Posted October 4, 2020 Sweet!.... I um'd and arrr'd over this head, it was on the pmt site for quite a while at over £500. Bargain what you paid. 1 Quote
King Tut Posted October 4, 2020 Author Posted October 4, 2020 1 hour ago, MacDaddy said: Ok . . . . Tomorrow, Quote
King Tut Posted October 5, 2020 Author Posted October 5, 2020 13 hours ago, MacDaddy said: Done 1 Quote
MacDaddy Posted October 5, 2020 Posted October 5, 2020 3 hours ago, King Tut said: Done That is a monster 🥰 1 Quote
King Tut Posted November 7, 2020 Author Posted November 7, 2020 Quick update on this. After my initial delight I've found I've been struggling a bit to get the awesomeness I was expecting. Having done a bit of digging, I've found some of them shipped with the wrong type of valve in the phase splitter position. I gingerly took the back off mine and investigated and sure enough, there was a 12AX7 instead of a 12AT7. I ordered a new valve and the difference is night and day. More clean headroom, much nicer, less fizzy sounding distortion channel and even the eq sounds more powerful. A little bit of lockdown happiness for his tutness! 3 Quote
MoonBassAlpha Posted November 7, 2020 Posted November 7, 2020 Glad to hear my old Laney is still going! . I too found it broke up before going too loud, but I never used it on a gig in with bass... Quote
King Tut Posted November 7, 2020 Author Posted November 7, 2020 1 hour ago, MoonBassAlpha said: Glad to hear my old Laney is still going! . I too found it broke up before going too loud, but I never used it on a gig in with bass... My son revalved it and did some magic inside so it's very useable now. I've been recording some tracks for the new Stray album with it. The early break up works really well for recording as I can get THAT tone without blowing the windows out. I have been tempted to sell as it's worth a fortune now but shall keep as an investment. It's also what the original bass player in Stray used. I might see if at can be fettled for more Headroom! Quote
stewblack Posted November 7, 2020 Posted November 7, 2020 Firstly congratulations on the new valve loveliness. The tone controls you describe put me in mind of my CTM100. If I had roadies I would use my SVT exclusively, so I totally get why you've gone this way. Oh, and speaking of amps... I haven't forgotten about the behringer. My amp kitty has been low, the effects kitty seems to be up and down like a yoyo. Maybe time for some creative accounting. Quote
King Tut Posted November 7, 2020 Author Posted November 7, 2020 16 minutes ago, stewblack said: Firstly congratulations on the new valve loveliness. The tone controls you describe put me in mind of my CTM100. If I had roadies I would use my SVT exclusively, so I totally get why you've gone this way. Oh, and speaking of amps... I haven't forgotten about the behringer. My amp kitty has been low, the effects kitty seems to be up and down like a yoyo. Maybe time for some creative accounting. No worries Mister! Quote
King Tut Posted July 2, 2021 Author Posted July 2, 2021 I finally got to use this last night. We were rehearsing for our slot at The Sonic Rock Solstice Festival in Bromsgrove on Sunday. I, and the rest of the band, are extremely happy with it. It seemed really easy to get a good tone from, enough tonal variation for me and bucket loads of HEFT!! Looks great on top of my 4 x 10 and heavy enough to p**s the roadies off! Roll on Sunday! 2 Quote
King Tut Posted July 5, 2021 Author Posted July 5, 2021 Essential accessories pictured doing their stuff and set up on stage with my Bugera on top as a spare. Very pleased with the amp so far after the first gig! 4 Quote
King Tut Posted July 5, 2021 Author Posted July 5, 2021 2 hours ago, bartelby said: a mic'd bass cab! The legends are true! I had to ask! He took a DI too and blended them. Sound engineer was very happy! 1 Quote
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