Vintage Vox Project: Taking the long way home...

Well this personal project is coming to completion. The VOX Vintage amp project, which started in 2014, is coming to a close very soon. Well One of the biggest issues with the project I did not know my endgame. Why am I restoring this amp, was the $64,000.00 question that I could not answer.

First of all the amp has history and it was owned first by Hendry Gross of Sha Na Na. This amp saw the stage of the Fillmore East when they opened up for Frank Zappa and the Mothers and the first Woodstock. Breaking even would have been very difficult since VOX material for restoration is extremely expensive and the amp was still a large black box if I decided to keep it. So after many hours of reading on solid state amps and there benefits something struck me. When these amps are produced they all have the exact same sound across the board. You can have a tube Mesa Boogie and each one has a very slight different dynamic about them because of the tube technology I found this to be the case when I purchased my Boogie in 2000. With this fact about solid state amps I had an apiphany; Since I did not hear the amp at all since I got it I could hear what the amp sounds like from other VOX Viscounts on YouTube. So I spent more countless hours listening to videos of VOX Viscount demos.

I came to the conclusion in December that I was going to keep this amp and keep it as a conversation piece as well as a device to make music with. Indecision is over and now what do I do. I went to my lovely bride and asked her a convoluted question that went sort of like this; If we were making music late on a Saturday night and I left my amp in the living room and the next day we had people visit what color combination for the amp I should do so it doesn’t look like a big black box that is an eyesore?

I showed her choices of tolex covering and grill fabric combinations and we arrived at a compromise. We decided to make it the brown country western tolex with a golden beige grill fabric. This started a crazy ordering of parts to complete this project that started on the night of January 12^thwhich lasted till tonight February 23^rd where I purchased the speakers on Reverb.

Last week I was invited over to the home of my friend Jim who is restoring the electronics of my VOX. He told me to bring one of my guitars so I can play through a Marshall head. After about 25 minutes I blew the fuse. At first I felt awful but he confirmed me that this is what he wanted me to do. Anyway I enjoyed the Marshall she was loud and packed a punch that I have not had felt in many years. Once he was done with what he had me do he put the unit aside and pulled out the VOX electronics and we hooked them up.

First of all the Normal channel did not work, the Brilliant and Bass channel worked but with a very bad hum. After about two hours and changing out a bunch of capacitors the hum was gone and I found the amp to be loud as the Marshall head.

Now Jim moved to the normal channel and he got it to work. He explained that he will change all the capacitor on the Preamp side and the two large ones on the Power amp side. This guy is doing a Stella job and he knows what he is doing.

A week earlier after a day from hell at work, my leather handles from China came in and there was nothing to break my spirits that evening. That weekend I work my butt off on this amp. First on Friday night I watched videos on re-tolexing amps I wen to bed quite late that night.

The telexing job went well the cold of the winter helped extend the time of the setting of the Wellbond Adhesive by about ten minutes. I used my wife’s rolling pin to get out all the bubbles. She was not too pleased with these creative methods of mine along with having to have the door of the basement open to the yard in 26º F weather to mitigate the stench of the adhesive.

All went well so judge for your self.