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I took this amp in a trade over the weekend, and I like it. I know some consider it to be the ugly duckling of the Vox range, but after replacing Power amp tubes with a set of reissue Mullards (no NOS money here) and doing the bright cap mod (removed completely), it's a perfectly fine amp.

Right now it's got a set of JJ's in the preamp, but I've got a few spare tubes in that family at home from when I experimented with my Kustom Defender.

Namely a Sovtek 12AX7, a JJ 12DW7, an EHX 12AY7, and an EHX 12AT7. I might get a set of Tung Sols later and go more traditionally Vox, but for now I want to play with what I have available to me at home.

I was thinking of dropping the 12AY7 into the V1 slot and try to increase the clean headroom, and play around with the 12DW7, since that's just a weird tube, and I'm curious how it'll react.

But if anyone has any suggestions I'm listening

for V1 I would go 5751 for more clean headroom... the 12at7 will cut out some of the mids....the 5751 sounds almost identical to a 12ax7 with just 30% less gain.

I recently put a 5751 in V1 on my TH30 and it has a much better clean and takes pedals well now.....

I've never played with a 5751 tube before but I put a 12au7 in place of a 12ax7 in the amp I built and it really added a noticeable amount of clean headroom.

I've been toying with the idea of putting new tubes in my new ac15 as well, I love the amp, but I'm sure I'll be even happier with better tubes seeing as how I usually always hate chinese tubes and that's what it comes with stock. I was considering either the mullard reissues or the JJ's for power tubes, good to hear that you like the mullards!

check the gain rating chart on the rightside of this PAGE.

It shows all of the tubes gain ratings to help pick whats best for you. Obviously less gain = more clean headroom; but in most case these will change your tone too

Final Verdict - JJ 12DW7 in V1 and JJ 12AX7 in V2 = the secks.