Vox VX50-AG amp for Squire Bullet Tele

[Sandy36072]

I do small nursing home gigs using this lightweight (9 lbs) 50 watt amp. I do 50/60/70's music with a Taylor 310-CE and a phantom powered Encore Blue Condenser Live Performance Mic. which are both unbelievably crisp and clear on this amp. Since I'm playing for audiences of about 30 or less I can have the amp facing myself and everyone can still hear me. Feedback is not a problem because I use a boom mic stand and a LuteHole sound hole cover on the guitar. For $299.99 this little amp packs plenty of punch in it's 9 pounds. I decided to add some Venture's style music using my Squire Bullet Tele. The amp has an AUX input for my IPAD backing tracks. I plan to crank up the AUX volume to the max on the both the IPAD and the amp then adjust the level of each track during the performance using an unpowered Volbox inline audio volume control 3.5mm attenuator. I tested the Squire and as long as I keep the gain at a reasonably low level it sounds not the best but as well as could be expected on the acoustical speakers. I would appreciate any advice as to how I could fatten the guitar sound using a Zoom MS-70CDR multi stomp pedal. Ideally I would like to alternate the Taylor and Squire songs in my set list without switching any cables between songs. If I have a 1/4" guitar cord on each guitar do they sell any kind of box where I can plug both guitars into individual 1/4 inputs with a knob controlled singled 1/4 output cord to the amp? In the Squire chain I'd have the Zoom pedal which I'd find a single setting (hopefully with your help) for all the Squire songs. I guess the alternative exists if there's no such box that I can do all the Taylor songs first then take a moment to switch cabling for the Squire. I'm retired and perform as a volunteer for community service so the main emphasis is that we all have a good time reminicing the oldies. Before the music I give the residents blown up balloons and teach them how to twist their own balloon dogs. During the music portion the residents are laughing, popping balloons and having untwisted balloon sword fights (which I take care of in an after music fix-er-upper). I don't want to be overly concerned about this Taylor/Squire setup but as a musician I want to give them them the best overall sound possible.

 

[mexicanyella]

I can speak to some of this. I have been curious about, but have not yet seen, any of the Vox VX50 series. They look cool and ultra-portable.

As to getting a better electric guitar tone through a more or less full-range acoustic combo amp: the main things you are missing to get it sounding and feeling more like a clean electric guitar amp are EQ and compression, and your Zoom should have what you need.

I’d suggest setting up a user patch with gentle compression and an EQ that rolls off frequencies below 100 Hz and above 4 kHz, as an initial starting point. The compression will make it feel more like a clean electric guitar amp and the 100 Hz/4 kHz EQ roll offs should be a good first step toward mimicking electric guitar speaker response.

You can play with those EQ points and how aggressively you set the amount of roll off…maybe you’ll want to bump the high slope up to 5 K or down toward 3K, or make the “slope” more or less aggressive, etc. Maybe you’ll like the low roll off raised or lowered too.

Then with that in the ballpark, and depending on the guitar you use, you might want a gentle boost in the 1-2K range and a cut in the 350-450 Hz range (that works for me on my solidbody guitar, and might work for you too as a starting point).

At various times I have experimented with doing this kind of thing, only on my case it was with a Fender Acoustasonic Jr. amp or a Zoom B2 or G1Xfour. I’ll have a look at the MS70 manual online and see what its compression and EQ choices are and if additional ideas occur to me I’ll put them in another post.

With an ABY switch you could run each instrument to its own input on the box, then run the Vox’s output through the Zoom on its way to the amp. An instrument change would then involve stepping on the ABY switch to kill one input and activate the other, and then you’d step on the Zoom to switch from one user patch to another. That should be manageable once the individual Zoom patches are set up and saved.

 

[mexicanyella]

A quick scan of your Zoom’s effects list shows numerous compressor and EQ options. Some of them look similar to what is offered in my G1Xfour, which is roughly from the same time period.

I’ll look in more detail later, but I’d probably start with setting up a user patch that begins with either the Dyna-Comp or Ross compressors for electric guitar, followed by one of the graphic EQ choices. Put the sliders at a gentle “frowny face” so you end up with a bit of cut on the outer bands and a bit of a boost somewhere in the 1-2kHz range. Sort of a lopsided frowny face, or maybe you could visualize it as an Elvis sneery face.

There look to be several choices of graphic EQ, with different center frequencies…that will take some experimentation and you may end up preferring a different type of EQ altogether, maybe a combination of parametric bands or something. But pick any of them and play with the frowny face thing as a starting point.

 

[Sandy36072]

I can speak to some of this. I have been curious about, but have not yet seen, any of the Vox VX50 series. They look cool and ultra-portable.

As to getting a better electric guitar tone through a more or less full-range acoustic combo amp: the main things you are missing to get it sounding and feeling more like a clean electric guitar amp are EQ and compression, and your Zoom should have what you need.

I’d suggest setting up a user patch with gentle compression and an EQ that rolls off frequencies below 100 Hz and above 4 kHz, as an initial starting point. The compression will make it feel more like a clean electric guitar amp and the 100 Hz/4 kHz EQ roll offs should be a good first step toward mimicking electric guitar speaker response.

You can play with those EQ points and how aggressively you set the amount of roll off…maybe you’ll want to bump the high slope up to 5 K or down toward 3K, or make the “slope” more or less aggressive, etc. Maybe you’ll like the low roll off raised or lowered too.

Then with that in the ballpark, and depending on the guitar you use, you might want a gentle boost in the 1-2K range and a cut in the 350-450 Hz range (that works for me on my solidbody guitar, and might work for you too as a starting point).

At various times I have experimented with doing this kind of thing, only on my case it was with a Fender Acoustasonic Jr. amp or a Zoom B2 or G1Xfour. I’ll have a look at the MS70 manual online and see what its compression and EQ choices are and if additional ideas occur to me I’ll put them in another post.

With an ABY switch you could run each instrument to its own input on the box, then run the Vox’s output through the Zoom on its way to the amp. An instrument change would then involve stepping on the ABY switch to kill one input and activate the other, and then you’d step on the Zoom to switch from one user patch to another. That should be manageable once the individual Zoom patches are set up and saved.

 

[Sandy36072]

Thank you for this very helpful information. I have a Fender Squire Bullet Tele on which I installed a Certano G/B bender. I've been using the MS-70CDR presets and have not attempted to do any tweaking of them. To be truthful I don't understand much about the basics of EQ and compression and didn't even know I could adjust them with the Zoom pedal. There's lots of YouTube videos on these subjects but I get completely overwhelmed in the first minute or so. If you know of any resources for an absolute beginner I would appreciate your feedback. My main go to guitar is a Taylor 310-CE and with the VOX or any of my other amps I just had to worry about the treble, middle, and bass knobs. I recently got the surprise of my life when I turned the Vox with the speaker facing towards me instead of away like I normally would at a vocal/guitar jam. I thought I always sounded half way decent with the speaker facing out but was I wrong. Hearing myself from the front I could adjust the mic and guitar so they blended together nicely. I had to adjust my mic stand and start using a sound hole cover on the Taylor to eliminate the little feedback I was getting. I crank up the Master Volume slightly so everyone facing me can hear. The next step I'm anxious to undertake is learning the principles of EQ and compression for when I use the Squire. Again, thanks for your advice.

 

[mexicanyella]

Happy to help if I can; my Zoom G1Xfour is over at a friend’s house at the moment but I might
Be able to retrieve it this weekend. It doesn’t have exactly the same effects in it, but the basic idea is similar. Maybe with that in hand I could help get a few user patches set up, and make it seem less confusing at first. Once you get the hang of it the way those units work is pretty clever. They can do A LOT. I usually use mine as a bass guitar preamp, driving a power amp and 4 x 10 bass cab:

Edit: actually I think some of the effects are the same.

 

[mexicanyella]

I mis-typed earlier when I was attempting to describe the ABY switch usage. Let me try that again.

I have an old Carvin ABY switch; it’s just a small pedal-sized box with a foot button on it, and two 1/4” jacks on one side and one on the other.

It can be used to route one guitar to either of two amps (or both at the same time) OR either of two instruments to one amp…it’s a passive device. Just a switch in a box.

What I meant to describe was, Taylor and Tele each to their own switch input, then a single cable out of the switch box to the input of the Zoom MS70, then from the Zoom’s output to the Vox amp’s input.

I’ve just spoken to the friend who has my Zoom G1Xfour and I will pick it up this evening, look over the MS70 manual in more detail and maybe I can help show how to set up a compressor + EQ patch and save it in your Zoom so you can play with it, and then I can help tweak it further as needed.

Basically what’s going on is, that Vox amp is a tiny PA system in an amp-shaped box. It has a full-range speaker with a tweeter mounted concentrically in the center, so it reproduces frequencies waaay higher than what we are used to hearing from guitar amps…and the woofer part of that concentric speaker might be “tighter” and more hi-fi sounding than a lot of guitar speakers too. With no compression or EQ help, you are probably getting sort of a stiff, sterile, overly bright sound with your Squier Tele. The compression can help the amp behave more like an electric guitar amp in terms of response and a sense of sustain; the EQ will limit the excessive (for electric guitar) lows and highs. And with some tweaking and listening it can also boost some mids in a way that should warm up the sound and make it feel and sound more like an electric guitar amp. A little tinkering and getting used to those kind of adjustments will be useful on other things you might plug into also.