I found this in a local (Utah) thrift store and thought it was worth the $100 risk. It has been used for a number of gigs and has held its own for sure. It would be fun to put it together with the appropriate head to see how it feels. What do you think it's worth? Has anyone else played one of these and has some good insight?
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Official AIMS Amps Thread
- Thread starter SpankyPants
- Start date
I just picked up a VTG-120 combo on Craigslist, and went looking online for information about it and found this thread. I think it must have been a dedicated bass rig, because it doesn't have the reverb / tremelo dials on the second channel inputs, but since I'm using it for bass, that's fine. I followed Mr. SpankyPants' suggestion of patching the two channels together and am getting fantastic tone out of it.
One thing I notice, though, is that I have to have my active pickups completely shut off, otherwise I get a woofy slapback sound or some pops and crackling if I hit a note too hot. Because this amp is so bright and present, it still sounds fine with the active pickups off. I just had the wiring in my instrument redone, so I don't think it's on the input side, just wondering if anyone else has run into this issue.
One thing I notice, though, is that I have to have my active pickups completely shut off, otherwise I get a woofy slapback sound or some pops and crackling if I hit a note too hot. Because this amp is so bright and present, it still sounds fine with the active pickups off. I just had the wiring in my instrument redone, so I don't think it's on the input side, just wondering if anyone else has run into this issue.
If I had to guess I think you're probably overloading the input because the actives are too hot a signal for the amp to handle without a pad like modern amps have for active basses.
Also possible is that old tube amps don't generally have any subsonic filtering so the amp is seeing a full range signal and is simply trying reproduce everything. A good HPF (high pass filter) would tame those super low frequency peaks that have little use in the real world and stress your speakers.
If you don't know about HPFs Google fdeck he's a member who builds them and has a site explains usage.
A combination of both of these conspires to stress speakers and works the amp unesasarily hard.
Also possible is that old tube amps don't generally have any subsonic filtering so the amp is seeing a full range signal and is simply trying reproduce everything. A good HPF (high pass filter) would tame those super low frequency peaks that have little use in the real world and stress your speakers.
If you don't know about HPFs Google fdeck he's a member who builds them and has a site explains usage.
A combination of both of these conspires to stress speakers and works the amp unesasarily hard.
First post here. I was recently given a re-badged AIMS VT-100 tube PA, sans tubes. It's an early model with turret board construction.
There's a lot of bad info floating around re: AIMS. It was NOT started by disgruntled former FMIC employees. That's not to say there weren't people that migrated from one entity to the other. Despite one particular Reverb ad for an AIMS amp, Leo Fender never wired any of these. I'd love to see documentation to the contrary, though. Just some background on this company from a local source, though it deals more with the fallout of the divorce of the proprietors of the landmark local music store where AIMS was born. AFTER 33 YEARS, THE MUSIC STOPPED
There's a lot of bad info floating around re: AIMS. It was NOT started by disgruntled former FMIC employees. That's not to say there weren't people that migrated from one entity to the other. Despite one particular Reverb ad for an AIMS amp, Leo Fender never wired any of these. I'd love to see documentation to the contrary, though. Just some background on this company from a local source, though it deals more with the fallout of the divorce of the proprietors of the landmark local music store where AIMS was born. AFTER 33 YEARS, THE MUSIC STOPPED
New to this site. Have been an owner of an Aims Eclipsor 4 X 10 since '73'. Haven't used for many years in process of re-capping and fireing it back up. Have a question though, would anyone know what the resistance of the photocell in the tremelo circuit is. Need to replace it, the leads have pulled out of it. I will also start a new thread on this issue. Thanks in advance
Hi there, I recently acquired an AIMS VTG-120 sight unseen and it looks as if someone tried to power it up without looking at it first or putting it on a variac, and they blew a ton of resistors and a screen resistor among some other parts. I'm looking to replace them, however they're so burned that I cannot read the color codes, and the few pictures of the turret board that I can find online show the VTG-105 model which looks to have completely different values in place. So therefore, I'm having trouble finding the right resistors to replace these burnt ones with. I'm still learning to read schematics so I'm having a little trouble following the one I have, and on top of that my schematic says has the VTG-120, 105 and dual twelve listed on the same schematic but I'm not sure they use the same value components. Is there anyone with an Aims VTG-120 that can take a picture of their turret board that can give me a visual reference of what value resistors I need to buy to fix mine. I don't want to take a chance on ruining what seems like a fairly rare amp by guessing, and I just can't find much in the way of photos or reference online regarding mine. I'll be replacing the electrolytics and bias capacitors but those I'll have no problem with as they're clearly readable. I just need the right value resistors to buy for the ones that got badly burned.
