2018 Vox MV50 Clean 50w Nutube Hybrid Amplifier Head



This amp has been a champ! I recently got hooked on a combo amp, so this little head is surplus to my needs at the moment. There are innumerable reviews of the MV50s out there (some blurb on them courtesy of myself), and I've been gigging with one form or another of them for 2 years, now. 

They're cheap, they sound excellent, and their emulated-speaker line-out/headphones jack on the back is perfect if you want a decent-sounding direct-in solution for electric guitar. In fact, it sounds good enough that my buddy and I recorded a whole album using the direct-in from a pair of these (MV50 Clean and MV50 AC) for all the guitar, bass, and electric banjo parts.

Aside from line-out, the sound is faithful and tube-like in articulation when plugged into a cabinet. Better cabinets and speakers gain you a ton of tone, too. I was using this with vintage, ply and pine cabs with Jensen 1x12" speakers in them and was getting a pretty Fender-ish vibe out of this for what it's worth.

These are hybrid amps so the preamp is fed through a Nutube (very low-output vacuum tube) while the power section is solid state.

Where these amps drag is in heavy distortion or heavy drive, where they can start to sound a little fizzy direct-in but still sound good through a cab. For light drive to a mild crunch, they sound great overall. The attenuator switch on the back of the amp also lets you get a bit more grrr at lower volumes, too. I always kept this one in the "middle" attenuator position to drop some power and get a little grrr going from the heat of my P90 pickups, rather than play it squeaky-clean in the full-on position and volume lowered.




I recycled the original box, so it comes in the nude with its power supply. The only real evidence of the use I've put it through is the that "bass" label on the front panel has been worn-off. I had a small dot sticker to mark my control point and it pulled the label up when I took it off. Oh well!

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