Amp Head Room - Who Needs It?

[(rkbsound)]

For the punk rockers: Been playing my Vox AC4TV a lot and it does a great job sounding really nasty with no pedals in front of it. It is not an expensive amp ($250), and it plays it's part very well. It has 3 settings: 4 watt, 1 watt and 1/4 watt. At the 1/4 watt setting, you can get some very natural, but nasty sounding overdriven sounds. Harsh? A bit. Shrill? Maybe. Irritating? To some. Heavenly? Yes! This amp is what it is, and sounds great for just letting it rip. It's great at the 1 watt and 4 watt settings, but don't look for too much headroom -- it wants to growl! I've heard some critics say it needs more headroom. To them I say: Buy yourself a bigger amp and just let the Vox AC4 do it's thing!

[(antipodean)]

Good point! Little amps can produce fabulous tones. Sadly, not so practical live unless you have a decent front-of-house to play through....or you shoot the drummer.....

[(Len)]

I am with you. For home use especially I only need a few watts. Now if you want a screaming deal on a screaming point to point hand built amp, check out http://www.youtube.com/user/dlab500#p/search/0/cdVYu_hu_kM

Terry is a guy in Michigan who builds and mods amps. I have one of these Dukane amps (and a bigger D-Lab too) and it kills at low volume. His videos do not do justice to the amps.

[(whojamfan)]

The AC4 is a great little amp. The people requesting more headroom are usually just looking to make it louder before it breaks up, and are hoping to make it a litle more chimey. Great in all settings, but seriously, get the 112 extension cabinet, and you will be surprised at how truly awesome this amp sounds. It's also one of the best amps to try out your different overdrives and stuff in, really quite a tone monster! I got some serious sweetness at bedroom levels using some od pedals and nailed some great rock/blues tones out of it.

[(whojamfan)]

Now that we have such wonderful things like the Freyette Power Station and the Bad Cat Unleashed v2, you can plug your little guy into one of these and have up to 100 watts to get that small amp sound at Enormodome volumes.