My new AC4 baby

[chrisb]

Just wanted to share with you all (ie show off) some pics of the Vox AC4 chassis (with mods) that Terry at D-Lab amps built for me to fit into my old radio cabinet.

I can't say enough about how fantastic this amp sounds! And the little mods he did make it so flexible, I'm having a great time experimenting with different tones...

Here's a shot of the front (click for full size):

Not sure who made the original table radio, but all the guts are in a box in the garage (not working). The only identifying mark is the S on the dial plate. Input jack, Volume, Gain & Tone are on the front. Grill cloth is from a '50s Hi-Fi someone gave me that's out in the garage (working OK, but cosmetically destroyed). Footswitch & handle are new Fender.

Here's the back:

Tremolo controls & power switch are back here. You can see the short jumper I put in from the jack I installed on the front to the input on the top of the chassis. That's a Weber 8" alnico Blue Pup speaker, which sounds very much like the vintage 12" Vox alnico speaker in my AC15. Another great value!

The chassis out of the box:

Tubes are 12AX7 preamp (though I have a 12AT7 in now, and will try a 5751 soon), 12AX7 for tremolo, 6X4 rectifier and EL84 power tube. Trannies are NOS USA made. 4 & 8 Ohm speaker jacks, line out jack & footswitch jack are on the back.

Here's the guts under the hood:

Look Ma, no circuit boards. Nice layout!

And here's a closeup of the controls:

The knobs are pirated from my B&K tube tester.
The gain knob (center) is VERY interactive with the volume knob (left). I can use them to control how much I feed each tube to get as much saturation as I need exactly where I need it: If I want warm preamp distortion I can crank the gain & cut the volume, or I can dial the gain knob to where it's clean and then crank the volume knob for that famous Vox crunch, or I can dime them both for a sound that dwarfs a Big Muff. Of course clean tones are chimey & beautiful too!
The tone control is a simple but effective high cut similar to a tone knob on a guitar. Perfect.

I know I sound a little like an ad here, but I'm just one very satisfied customer! And while I'm at it, here's Terry's website so you can check out more if you want: http://www.d-labamps.com/
Terry's a great guy who knows his stuff and his prices are unreal!

I hope to have some sound samples soon, which I'll post links to here.

[scott_s]

That is a very very cool setup. The antique radio is classy as all get out, and I dig the blue filament wires. (He ought to have used some slip-on insulation for some of those resistor leads though -- from the pictures, it looks like they could contact other components if jostled enough.)

When you have a simple enough circuit, it makes a lot more sense just to do point-to-point rather than making an eyelet board. Heck, for my next amp build, I'll probably just use terminal strips rather than an eyelet board, even if the layout ends up the same!

- Scott

[paologregorio]

Lovely amp. Thank you for sharing all of the detailed photos and information about the amp.