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70's Ampeg VT-22

I just purchased a vintage Ampeg VT-22 bass head and was wondering if anyone can give me any insight as to how good (or bad) these heads are.

Also, I will be running it through an Ampeg 6-10.

Will these be compatible?

Thanks!
 

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I used the VT-22 head section from the guitarist's combo to drive a 2X15 cabinet one time. I think the cab had a pair of JBL K 140 speakers. It was okay and reminded me of the V4 head, which we also owned, although I didn't have much time to tweak the controls for the optimum sound. So I imagine the VT-22 head would be the same. It should drive the Ampeg 6x10 as well as the V4. Basically it's a 100 watt tube head. Too heavy to carry for me these days and 100 watts, even though they are legendary Ampeg vintage "tube watts", is not a whole lot of power. But if you can get by with that (and lots of guys seem to think it works for them), then you should be happy.

To me it's a good head for a 100 watt tube head. Our guitar player never really liked it for guitar because he couldn't get a Fender guitar amp overdriven sound from it. His VT-22 combo was loaded with JBL 120s. Very clean for guitar and would stay clean at very loud volumes. But that was for guitar. For bass a lot of guys want lots of clean power for the bottom end.
 
Could be a VT22 in a V4 head box. These things happen sometimes. Same amp anyhow.. The chassis used to be labeled V4 / VT22.

The one he's showing is probably labeled like that as well. From the cosmetics, it looks to be a 73-75. I own one from the same run and its labeled as such.

I've started using mine a lot recently for practices. Sounds great, and is plenty loud for that application (unless you're playing with three screaming loud metal guitarists or something like that). I don't think I'd want to lug it around with me to play gigs though...at least when I wasn't absolutely sure about the P.A. Its very heavy and underpowered when compared to a lot of stuff.
 
I used my V4 (which should be the same exact thing as yours) with an ampeg 610HLF and it was fantastic. As stated above, the VT-22 was just the 2x12 combo version of the V4 and they used the same chassis.

I just looked at your gear, I was using an SVT-CL/610HLF before I got my V4 and ended up selling the CL because the V4 sounded better to me and I haven't had any problems volume wise playing medium/larger clubs with good PA support, and smaller clubs without PA support.
 
If you dig the V4 grind, it's the best. Frankly, I've never used anything larger live. In small to medium sized clubs with PA support, you'll be fine (provided the rest of the band understands the value of dynamics).
 
The 70's VT22 and V4 are identical guitar amps.
The VT22 is in a 2x12 combo and the V4 is a separate head.
Both are almost identical to the V4B except the V4/VT22 had reverb and I believe the V4B had an Ultra-Lo switch.
I used to have a V4B and a V4 and I remember they used the same pc boards but the v4B didn't have the reverb circuit populated.
If you like an old V4B for bass, you'll like the V4/VT22.

I just purchased a vintage Ampeg VT-22 bass head and was wondering if anyone can give me any insight as to how good (or bad) these heads are.

Also, I will be running it through an Ampeg 6-10.

Will these be compatible?

Thanks!
 
I just purchased a vintage Ampeg VT-22 bass head and was wondering if anyone can give me any insight as to how good (or bad) these heads are.

If you dig the way your CL sounds at louder volume levels, you'll probably end up liking your V4/VT-22 more for low to medium volume level situations, and possibly discover (like me) that it may not always have enough clean headroom for loud bands.

Here's a bunch of older T/B threads with lots more V4 info:
http://www.google.com/custom?domain...;S:http://www.talkbass.com;LP:1;FORID:1&hl=en