Fender or Vox?? Buddy Holly vs. The Beatles and The Shadows amps...

Fender or Vox??

I can't make up my mind which sound I prefer. There's the punchy, chiming, jangly, glassy sound of the Vox and the crisp, delicate growl of the Fender. I have both, but what if you had to choose? Attention guitar geeks!!! What's your choice???

 

I am a wantabe guitar player with a Marshall JPM 800 Lead head and dual 12" base. My good friend a guitar aficionado said it is the best sounding amp he has ever used. He had dropped by with his new vintage Rickenbacker.

Why not pick one up and have a 3 way decision?

 

I totally agree, but what if you had to choose? You're on a desert island and you have to pick one amp and one amp only. But in the real world, there really is no way around it. You've got to have both. I used to use an AC30 exclusively, but it's really hard to be practical in small clubs because they are so dang loud. I hung up the AC30 and started using a '65 Pro Reverb live, but still a compromise. Then I got a '65 Pacemaker that was chewed up. I recovered it and put in a 12" Blueback and a pair of 7189s just to make it a little hotter. It sounds incredible. It's the perfect recording amp and also is great paired with a Fender for playing live. My current amps are: '65 Vox Pacemaker (hotrod), '64 Fender Bandmaster w/cab(blonde), '64 Fender Bassman w/cab, '65 Fender Pro Reverb, '64 Fender Reverb Unit, '6? Silvertone(small combo w/ 10"), and a Vox AC1(novelty practice amp). With these, I can pretty much get any sound that I want. The Bassman does the Marshall thing and the Bandmaster has a bypass mod so that with the flick of a switch, I've got a screaming AC30esque tone. The closed back cabinets really add definition and punch to the typical floppy and thin Fender sound. The Pacemaker, of course, is pure Vox tone. Just not quite as loud and ballsy as the AC30. I swear, more than half of THE Vox tone is in those Blue Bulldogs.

Also, are you sure about the Buddy Holly sounds you are hearing? He used his Ampeg almost exclusively. To my knowledge, he never used a Tweed Bassman, but occasionally dabbled in the Tweed Twin action, but I could be wrong.

Here is a great site if you are a gear jackal and a Who fan like me, for example "Sell Out"; I was shocked to find the seemingly claimed, total lack of Vox on that album. I figured it was littered with Vox amplification. That's what it sounds like to me:

http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/equipment.htm

 

Prix,

If I had to choose between Fender and Vox, I would choose a Fender amp, preferably pre-CBS, mainly because they are very versatile amps. One of my favorite combinations is a Gibson Les Paul cranked through an early '60's Fender Twin Reverb or possibly through a late '50's Fender Bassman.




Ed Hurdle
HeavyDistortion

 

Steve, I was thinkin'......didn't the Shadows use AC15s rather than AC30s? Also, what is your favorite Beatles AC30 useage? The reason I ask is because believe it or not, they seldom used them other than in the '64-'65 period, I don't think. I was surprised to find out that a lot of my favorite Beatles AC30 sounds(Revolver) were not AC30s at all, but other Vox or Fender amps, or worse yet, Vox solid state stuff.

 

AWESOME!

 

????

 

YES! almost arousing!!!!

Behind me sits my Fender Deluxe Reverb, and while I do love it.....it's TOO DAMN CLEAN! I hate having to use pedals and doodads to get some dirt out of it, but I'm not spending anymore money on GTR stuff. I love the sound of Vox's. But my fav is of course Jimi's Strat thru a Marshall.

 

I have a '59 Champ, '65 Bassman head & a Clark Beaufort ('59 Deluxe clone)... Does that answer your question?

Though, I do love that EL84 tone of the Vox!

 

Have a JCM 800 "Split channel" combo here. Once you get them broken in (High volume for 4 to 8 hours... EL34's of course) they absolutely smoke, tonewise. A truly underappreciated amp.

 

Steve, isn't it funny that we seem to like so much of the same music and same guitars and amps, but for totally different reasons? My love of the AC30 was originally inspired by listening to the Church, Tom Petty, Queen, The Jam, and Tom Verlaine, rather than the British invasion groups. My favorite Beatles guitar tones come from "Revolver", "the White Album", and "Abbey Road"......the PHENOMENAL, chiming nirvana of "Rain", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "She Said".....the dark and brutal chord stabs and solo of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"......and what about the rhythm guitar for "Oh Darling", the swirling arpeggios of "She's So Heavy", the god-like smatterings of riffage in "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window", and John's raw and filthy segment of the dueling guitar solos in "The End"? Those tones are all fantastic and I don't think any of them come from AC30s other than the solo for "Taxman"! Other than "I Feel Fine", George's 12-string action, "Nowhere Man" and probably a couple other examples, I have never seen(heard) the charm in the primordial bark of the early Beatles guitar sounds. But that's just me and I suspect you and a few others probably think I'm a bit goofy because I LOVE the way "All Things Must Pass" is produced and mixed.

Hey, check it out.....this post is the one after 909!

 

Tom's the man.
I always loved the sound of the guitars on Jammin Me....not dirty, but still HEAVY!

 

Can never come to grips with the Vox sound. I take either a 58 tweed deluxe or 65 Super Reverb.

 

That's awesome! I would love to meet Tom Petty. In fact, he would be in my top five list of celebrities that I'd like to meet. Tom also uses a Fender Bassman head quite a bit. Live, as I'm sure you know, him and Mike play through a whole stack of various vintage Vox and Fender amps, and the AC30s are always up there. I think "Listen To Her Heart" qualifies as one of those "that's a Rickenbacker 12-string" errors just like the solo to "Nowhere Man". Many folks mistake these tones as being the product of the Ricky 12. Just as "Nowhere Man" is John and George each playing their Strats in unison through AC30s, "Listen To Her Heart" is Tom and Mike playing in unison, I believe. When I saw them live, that's how they played the riff. Now what puzzles me is that on the recording, I'm pretty sure the signature riff is in one channel, indicating one guitar. Not only that, but it doesn't necessarily sound like a Tele. At times it sounds like a strat such as during the bridge, but I'm thinking it's a Ricky 6 string with toasters. I say that there's no twelve string on that entire track. What do you think?

 

Wow, that's some fantastic Shadows info! Thanks for that!!

I CAN'T BELIEVE THOSE ARE DUMMY AMPS TOM IS USING!!!That is amazing! They sound so good. Okay Steve, we HAVE to find out what those amps are, who makes them, etc. Can you give Tom a call? I have a friend who's good friend with his daughter. I could try to have her ask him??

I agree with Hank Marvin. The Strat sounds lame through Fender amps. A Strat with an AC30 is a match made in heaven. The Jazzmaster sounds good through both Fender and Vox. Another nice combo is Gretsch and Vox. My Gretsch sounds awful through my Fender amps, other than the Bandmaster, but it sounds incredible through the Vox.

 

I have always had a love affair with Fender amplifiers ever since I ditched my first amp, a Peavy solid state model for my very first, and still favourite, Fender Super 60 tube amp like 14 or 15 years ago. Since then I have purchased and played many other amps, including Vox's, which I also love tremendously. For me, however, in a completely unlikely 'desert island' scenario, I would have to go with Fender. Any guitarist worth his salt in the real world, however, would have to at least have a Fender, a Vox, and a Marshall.

 

The killer tone for me is Waylon through his Fender amp (it was apparently a Fender head with a custom cab). Whether it be 63-about '90 with stock '53 pickups or '90 or so onwards with EMG-Ts (I have some.. they rule), that Tele twang through a Fender amp is TOO cool

All I can afford is solid state, but I'm purdy darn happy with the clean tone of my Fender Deluxe 90.

 

Totally agreed

I have a reissue Vox AC-30 "blue" and 1964 Fender Super Reverb and as I mostly play "clean" guitar, this is all I really need. I use vintage Fender, Rickenbacker, Vox and Gretsch guitars and the sound combinations with these amps are heaven...

 

I see you, like myself, fit my previous statement perfectly:

BTW, I play Gibson, Fender, and Guild guitars and basses.

 

I've had many amps in my days and played through most well know and little known brand names. Every kind or style of rock, blues and jazz and whatever else it could be branded as far as a style of.

I will however lean towards a 2 - 12" speaker Fender style amp. Give me a good clean TWIN Reverb. I also did own and play for many years using the PEAVEY style Twin 12 amps which were Hybrid amps one was the DUECE and the other was a MACE. These were very good amps.

I only missed one thing on the Peavey's that the Fender amps had. This was the nice Tremolo control.

Using the Speed and Vibrato controls I used to get some wonderful pulsating sounds that couldn't be found in any type of effects pedal out there.
This was great for comping chords on ballads and very nice for some nice effective weepy sounding lead guitar parts!