My New (to me) VBA 400 came in today and I tested it through a pair of Genz Benz 1288T Uber Quads using my Yamaha TRB6P.
This amps sounds fabulous, but I don’t think it sounds particularly British. To me, British voicing tends to be sort of brash and aggressive. Think classic Marshall, Hiwatt, or Vox.
My first thought is the VBA reminds me a lot of my Mesa 400+. However the VBA is warmer overall, and the highs are fairly reserved in comparison. It’s sort of like someone applied a tilt EQ to a 400+ to favor the lows more and the highs less. The VBA does have similar smooth and sweet upper mids, with a little bit of glass and air up high. So the VBA has nice extended highs, just not a lot of them.
The VBA’s low end is very full and dynamic. It has a nice woody resonance in the low mids and huge kick down low, like the 400+, only bigger. When you pluck a note, you really feel it; even at relatively low volume. I expected the low end to be a bit woolly, but it seems surprisingly centered and focused with clear pitch definition, similar to the low end of a Trace Elliot V6.
As you might expect, the VBA has massive clean headroom, but I don’t think you need to push it into beast mode to get a nice warm tubey sound. If you crank up the preamp gain, there is a lot of sustain and the tone has a smooth vocal quality. But the sound is also thick, full, and sort of bloomy down low.
I cranked the gain all the way up and the preamp stayed clean. I also tried maxing out the Master and running the gain low. This changed the tonal balance and shape of the note envelope fairly subtly. However, even with the gain dialed way down, the sound still seems fairly compressed and smooth to me. My point here, IMHO you don't necessarily have to push the amp to it's limit to get a nice tone...but YMMV.
The dynamic envelope of the notes is somewhat of an enigma. The low end jumps out, but then the sound smooths out and has massive sustain. IMHO, it has a nice, rich singing quality like some pushed tube amps…even when you are barely tickling the output section. This reminds me of the dynamic envelope of a pushed Reeves 400...but the VBA does it without being pushed.
The amp idles very quietly. It seems to produce less hum and hiss than many of my other amps.
Unfortunately the VBA has a pretty obnoxious fan that rivals the vulgarity of the fans in my vintage SVTs. The fan has two speeds, but I found the low speed resulted in a very audible and IMHO irritating whirling sound. The whirling diminishes greatly when the fan is set to high, but of course you get more white noise. I prefer the high-speed setting.
The tone controls are pretty limited. Plenty of low end, but adjusting the mids and highs produces subtle/subdued changes. The tone network resembles a Fender tone stack, with an added voicing network that changes the tone contour. The voicing network has three presets that seem mostly to modify the amp's baked-in mid-scoop.
I no longer perform, so I won’t be able to test the amp in a band setting. My impression is it sounds fabulous in my basement and would probably record really well. I would describe it as huge, sweet, warm, clean, clear, smooth. I suspect the overall tone would be bit too dark for me in a live environment, but I tend to like what most would probably consider an overly bright and somewhat lean sound on stage. This allows me to hear better at a relatively low volume.
If you like a nice warm sound on stage, the VBA would probably work really well as long as you like the basic voicing and don’t expect the amp to produce any sort of drive or gank. If you want to push the output tubes to the point where they start getting a bit ratty, you will blow the roof off the joint. At sane volume levels, the amp feels like it has infinite headroom: big, clean, and warm.
When I picked it up for the first time, it felt really big!
This amps sounds fabulous, but I don’t think it sounds particularly British. To me, British voicing tends to be sort of brash and aggressive. Think classic Marshall, Hiwatt, or Vox.
My first thought is the VBA reminds me a lot of my Mesa 400+. However the VBA is warmer overall, and the highs are fairly reserved in comparison. It’s sort of like someone applied a tilt EQ to a 400+ to favor the lows more and the highs less. The VBA does have similar smooth and sweet upper mids, with a little bit of glass and air up high. So the VBA has nice extended highs, just not a lot of them.
The VBA’s low end is very full and dynamic. It has a nice woody resonance in the low mids and huge kick down low, like the 400+, only bigger. When you pluck a note, you really feel it; even at relatively low volume. I expected the low end to be a bit woolly, but it seems surprisingly centered and focused with clear pitch definition, similar to the low end of a Trace Elliot V6.
As you might expect, the VBA has massive clean headroom, but I don’t think you need to push it into beast mode to get a nice warm tubey sound. If you crank up the preamp gain, there is a lot of sustain and the tone has a smooth vocal quality. But the sound is also thick, full, and sort of bloomy down low.
I cranked the gain all the way up and the preamp stayed clean. I also tried maxing out the Master and running the gain low. This changed the tonal balance and shape of the note envelope fairly subtly. However, even with the gain dialed way down, the sound still seems fairly compressed and smooth to me. My point here, IMHO you don't necessarily have to push the amp to it's limit to get a nice tone...but YMMV.
The dynamic envelope of the notes is somewhat of an enigma. The low end jumps out, but then the sound smooths out and has massive sustain. IMHO, it has a nice, rich singing quality like some pushed tube amps…even when you are barely tickling the output section. This reminds me of the dynamic envelope of a pushed Reeves 400...but the VBA does it without being pushed.
The amp idles very quietly. It seems to produce less hum and hiss than many of my other amps.
Unfortunately the VBA has a pretty obnoxious fan that rivals the vulgarity of the fans in my vintage SVTs. The fan has two speeds, but I found the low speed resulted in a very audible and IMHO irritating whirling sound. The whirling diminishes greatly when the fan is set to high, but of course you get more white noise. I prefer the high-speed setting.
The tone controls are pretty limited. Plenty of low end, but adjusting the mids and highs produces subtle/subdued changes. The tone network resembles a Fender tone stack, with an added voicing network that changes the tone contour. The voicing network has three presets that seem mostly to modify the amp's baked-in mid-scoop.
I no longer perform, so I won’t be able to test the amp in a band setting. My impression is it sounds fabulous in my basement and would probably record really well. I would describe it as huge, sweet, warm, clean, clear, smooth. I suspect the overall tone would be bit too dark for me in a live environment, but I tend to like what most would probably consider an overly bright and somewhat lean sound on stage. This allows me to hear better at a relatively low volume.
If you like a nice warm sound on stage, the VBA would probably work really well as long as you like the basic voicing and don’t expect the amp to produce any sort of drive or gank. If you want to push the output tubes to the point where they start getting a bit ratty, you will blow the roof off the joint. At sane volume levels, the amp feels like it has infinite headroom: big, clean, and warm.
When I picked it up for the first time, it felt really big!
. So why do I want to try it 
.
