I had one of the new Pignose G60VR amps trickle in this week,
after having ordered two of them more than 4 months ago. I
don't usually order new guitar amps for my shop, since I mostly
concentrate on PA gear and the vintage stuff, but the advance
airware on this one looked pretty good and the price was right.
First of all, this amp is made in China, and as far as I can
tell, all of the parts used in its construction are Chinese.
It's a good-looking amp, though...the tolex is neatly done, the
joinery is reasonably accurate, and the grill cloth is tight
and evenly stretched. The grill is removable, and is affixed
to the front of the cabinet with four pieces of Velcro-type
stuff. Controls from left to right are a Sensitivity switch
(HI/LO), Volume, Master Volume, Treble, Middle, Bass, Presence,
and Reverb. It also sports a single input jack, a pilot LED,
and a power switch. No standby switch, however. It has black
metal corners, plastic feet, and a medium-duty strap handle.
The tolex and the chassis face are black, as are the knobs.
(A welcome change from the standard Pignose moldy-turd brown.)
Dimensions are 18-1/2" tall, 17-1/2" wide, and 10-1/2" deep
at the bottom, tapering to 9-3/4" deep at the top, which
produces a barely noticeable slope to the front of the amp.
On the back are two output jacks (your choice of 4 or 8 ohms)
a set of jacks for the effects loop, and a fuseholder. Rated
power is 60 WRMS, into a (Chinese Eminence copy) 12" speaker.
As far as I could tell, it was around a 40-oz mag with a 2" VC.
One thing I was impressed with was the fairly stout louvered
metal back panel, which will do a great job of keeping the
tubes from getting broken when the amp is hauled around.
(Are you listening, Hartley Peavey?) The line cord is only 5
feet long though, so it'll need to travel with an extention
cord.
I took the amp apart before I listened to it, so that in case
it sounded great I wouldn't be tempted to go easy on it. Lead
dress is, well...non-existent. The inside of this amp looks
like an explosion in a spaghetti factory. In fact, the leads
from the effects loop jacks were so tight they actually rang
when I plucked at them. (A few moments with my soldering iron
cleaned that up.) There are three PC boards in the amp; they're
made of some fairly thick-looking green fiberglass material. I
wasn't able to check the thickness or the neatness of the copper
lands, however, as there were too many flying leads coming from
the boards to make turning one over anything but an hour's work.
There is one board for the pots in the front, one for the preamp
and reverb circuitry, and one for the power supply. With the
exception of two or three 1/4-watt carbon-films on the pot board,
all the resistors in the amp are metal film or metal oxide. (Yay!)
Most of the caps in the preamp are green-drops. ("Chicklets.")
The power supply is chokeless, and contains seven 100 uF/400V
radial caps and a bunch of 2-watt metal-oxide resistors. The
bias supply is also on this board, and is derived directly from
the HV AC winding on the power tranny via a dropping resistor
and a diode. There is no bias trimmer. (Boo!) Tube compliment
is two 6L6GC and four 12AX7s. I was surprised to see that the
reverb is tube-driven, by means of a small tranny similar to
the old Fender type. I was expecting to see one of those
IC-operated reverb rigs, like they use in the shitty PCB Fenders
these days. The tank, which is mounted to the floor of the amp
with wood screws and uses no isolation bag, appears to be a Chinese
copy of the Accutronics type 8 'shorty' tank. I didn't pull the
tank to eyeball the springs, because it would have been necessary
to remove the speaker in order to obtain clearance for the screw-
driver. The reverb sound is not bad at all; not as good as a BF
Fender, but better than the IC-driven stuff you find today. I
was perplexed by the fact that no jack for switching the reverb
on and off with a footswitch had been provided; after all, the
only thing necessary to implement this feature is a jack and two
pieces of wire. For Chinese parts bought in bulk, call it a
nickle. SHAME on you, Pignose! Easy enough to install one your-
self, however...all you need to do is wire the jack across the
output of the reverb tank and let the footswitch dump the signal
to ground. The effects loop output is taken directly from the
Master Volume pot's wiper, which normally connects to the input
of the phase-inverter stage. No buffering or loop level control
is provided, so results will be iffy, depending on what you insert
in the loop. (It looked like an afterthought to me.) A footswitch
jack for the reverb and a standby switch would have been a lot more
useful.
I pulled the power tubes and plugged 'em into my matching rig. They
were dead on matched for plate current, and within less than 1% for
transconductance. That's much too close for pure luck, so I reckon
they installed a matched pair on purpose. They were the standard
straight-sided Chinese 6L6GC, exactly like the ones Mesa-Boogie
has been using for too long. The preamp tubes were Chinese 12AX7A,
from the now-defunct factory where the STR7025s were made. (These
were the ordinary version.) They all tested very high on my Hikock,
and were relatively free from microphonics when operating in the amp.
All the tube sockets are the ceramic variety, which I don't especially
care for. The pre-tubes all have shields, and the power tubes are
held in place by Fender-style butterfly clips. (These clips have been
upgraded from the ones used on the first batch of the smaller G40V
amps, which were very brittle and broke off the first time I tried to
remove the tubes.) Once I had all the tubes re-installed in the amp,
I powered it up and let it sit for ten minutes. I observed that the
idle current drawn (from the wall) by the amp was on the low side for
a 60-watter; only 450 milliamps. This led me to suspect that the
amp was biased on the cold side. I loaded the output with 8 ohms
(resistive) and ran the amp up to a soft clip at 1 KHz and backed
it off a tad; output voltage was 21 VRMS, wich works out to 55.13
watts RMS. Close enough! Plate current as measured by the output
tranny shunt method was 27.1 mA on one tube, and 27.9 mA on the
other, for a quiescent dissipation of only around 14 watts/tube at
the measured plate voltage of 522 VDC. On the cold side, as I sus-
pected. Screen voltage was at 511, with the bias voltage at -56.8.
The amp drew 1.4 amps AC from the wall at full output; I'm not sure
why they specified a 3-A slo-blo fuse for this unit, as a 2.5 or even
a 2.0 would provide better protection. I left the bias at factory
stock and reassembled the amp for an audio test.
BRASS TACKS: EAR TIME
Luckily, there were a couple of gee-tah pickahs in the joint at
the time, or I'd have had to listen to myself play. (Ugh!) One
of the dudes was a jazz player, and he had his Gibson 335 with
him; with the Sensitivity switch set on "Low" he was able to get
some fairly respectable volume out of this little amp, with decent
low end. The Presence control didn't seem to do much, though.
The reverb was juicy and fat. We unplugged the internal 12"
speaker and plugged the output into a Marshall 410 cabinet I had
on hand, and it was *tone city* from there on out. Evidently,
the Chinese speaker in the G60VR is on the crummy side, because
this amp was a *monster* through the Marshall 410 box. Tons of
fat low end, good mids and crisp highs. The noise floor was
acceptable, too. Everyone on hand was knocked out by the clean
tone this amp could produce through a good speaker box. Next
guy up was a metal player; he had some kind of purple Charvel
something-or-other with one humbucker and one single-coil on it;
with the Master Vol down a bit, the Sensitivity switch in the "HI"
position, and the "Volume" knob dimed, he got a fat overdrive tone
with lots of singing sustain. The reverb didn't sound that hot
with these particular settings, however. (He turned the reverb
all the way down after a few licks.) The Presence control had
more effect now; I think the combination of the bassy tone the
jazz guy was using and the Chinese speaker just didn't let us
hear that anything was happening. We unplugged the amp from the
Marshall cab and hooked it back up to the internal 12-incher,
and the tone was still pretty good, although much of the low end
went away. Still, the amount of sound that came out of this
little amp was fairly impressive. If it came with a really good
speaker in it, it would kick come *serious* ass right out of the
box. BTW, this amp is light...it weighs less than a Deluxe Reverb.
Drop a Celestion or a Weber VST into this baby and you'll really
have a nice rig...very loud for its size, and if you use it with
a big cabinet, it'll keep up with any Marshall half-stack. It
needs a reverb F/S jack and a standby switch, both of which could
be easily retrofitted by anyone with hobby-type tech chops. An
adjustable bias control would help things greatly, too...when I
get time (hah!) I'll dummy one up and post the details on how to
do it. As yet, I don't have a schematic for the G60VR, but I'm
working on it.
SHOW ME DA MONEY
The G60VR retails for $600. Look for street prices in the $350-
$400 range, however, because the margin on this amp is pretty fat,
and it doesn't weigh much so the shipping is cheap. I'll sell 'em
in my joint for $379 for the dead stock unit; mods/upgrades will
be extra, of course. I highly recommend a better speaker. There
is supposed to be a head-only version of this amp called the G60VRH,
but I don't have any pricing info on it. My guess would be that it
retails for about $100 less, but don't hold me to it.
Lord Valve
Visit my website: http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/lord-valve/
Good tube FAQ for newbies. Click the e-mail link and request a
tube catalog. I specialize in top quality HAND-SELECTED NOS and
current-production vacuum tubes. Good prices, fast service.
TONS of gear and parts in stock...let's DEAL!
"I'm not an asshole, but I *play* one on the Internet." - Lord Valve
I'm Muhammad Arfan I'm Job Saudi arabia I'm LABoRER and cook and gypsum board steel and pick picker please job me Canada via me