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INTRODUCTION
Congratulations on your purchase of an AC30 Custom Classic. This amp is the culmination of over
45 years of manufacturing expertise and high quality, guitar amplifier design. We have taken the best AC30
designs and added a number of useful and interesting features to give you the most tonally flexible AC30 to
date!
We’re confident you will find these improvements extremely useful and that your new amplifier will give you
many hours of tonal pleasure. Your AC30 is equipped with a number of modern features and conveniences
like blend-able channels, a true bypass FX loop and master volume, to name a few. Please read this
manual carefully so that you can familiarize yourself with them.
In order to ensure that this new AC30 meets exacting standards for tone, quality and reliability, it has been
built entirely in our vertically-integrated manufacturing facility, a facility capable of many processes not
usually found in guitar amplifier factories. We design and manufacture our own transformers, speakers
(except for the venerable Vox “Blue” made in the UK by Celestion), cabinets (all birch construction) and
electronics. What this means to you is that the sound of your new AC30 is second to none.
The birth of an amp…
The AC30 is one of the most quintessential guitar amplifiers of all time. The legendary combo amp
made its debut in 1959 and its unique tone has helped define the sound of modern guitar for more than 45
years. Although the VOX brand has been owned by numerous companies, and even though each of them
has made some changes to the AC30, the amp itself has remained basically unchanged since 1965. This
in itself is a glowing tribute to the original product designed by Dick Denny when VOX was part of Jennings
Musical Industries.
There are very few guitar amplifiers still selling today that have not undergone massive changes in their
basic design format. In fact, most vintage style amplifiers available today disappeared from sale for many
years and have only just been re-released in a re-issue format; the basic AC30 has always been available.
As stated, every new owner of the brand made minor changes to the construction or electronic design.
While some were arguably good changes, some were not so good, but the basic format of the amp re-
mained the same.
What makes the AC30 so revered? Its unique and warm tone, its player friendly “feel” and its very simplistic
circuit design. Even with the simple “what you see is what you get” control format, the AC30 found favor
with artists since its inception. VOX basically owned the “British invasion” of the 1960s and the AC30
continues to be used by a diverse group of artists that span a wide range of musical styles.
The one drawback to this wonderful amp is that, though it has features and facilities that were well founded
and useful for bands in the late ‘50s, in this day and age these same features are regarded as “quirky,” at
best! For instance: there are three channels with two inputs each. Namely TOP BOOST, NORMAL, and
VIB/TREM. By far the most commonly used is the TOP BOOST channel, as this has the most pleasing and
varied tonal spectrum, especially for today’s players. Coming second in use (but a long, long way behind)
is the NORMAL channel. Although this channel only features a volume control and nothing else, when
coupled with a certain treble boost pedal, this setup is an integral part of Brian May’s killer tone. Thirdly the
VIB/TREM channel finds very, very little use these days, except for accessing the VIB/TREM circuit itself.
The VIB/TREM channel, tonally, is very poor in relation to the other channels and rarely gets used for its
sonic performance – yet it has more electronic circuitry than the rest of the amp put together!