Well if anyone needs one I have a 120 head I'd be willing to part with.
It's in excellent condition cosmetically, but I haven't used it much.
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The Acoustic Club
- Thread starter The Owl
- Start date
It's in excellent condition cosmetically, but I haven't used it much.
I'm all for vintage Acoustic gear going for premium $$$, it's good for me, but man that's crazy. Probably 3x the going rate for a typical used Acoustic 15 plus about double what the shipping should be to the east coast. Yikes.
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Hello Folks.
I've been going through some trials and tribulations trying to get my hands on another ACC bass amp.
I thought I had snagged a 230 in good shape, but it arrived and seems it had been fried so I sent it back.
Now I have a 126 head that a seller took out of the combo and shipped me. Its in excellent shape and overall, sounds good. I initially had some problems with some fuzzy distortion. I suspected the main power switch after some probing around. I temporarily wired it out, and sure enough it all but cured the problem, BUT, it's still not as clean and loud as my 120.
I did notice some white powdery stuff leaking from two domed chrome components on the central circuit board ( see picture) Any ideas or suggestions?
I've been going through some trials and tribulations trying to get my hands on another ACC bass amp.
I thought I had snagged a 230 in good shape, but it arrived and seems it had been fried so I sent it back.
Now I have a 126 head that a seller took out of the combo and shipped me. Its in excellent shape and overall, sounds good. I initially had some problems with some fuzzy distortion. I suspected the main power switch after some probing around. I temporarily wired it out, and sure enough it all but cured the problem, BUT, it's still not as clean and loud as my 120.
I did notice some white powdery stuff leaking from two domed chrome components on the central circuit board ( see picture) Any ideas or suggestions?
The white powdery stuff is normal and keeps the transistor casings from shorting to the heat sink.
I'm no tech, but I do know that these old ACC amps fuzzing out when they should be clean is often a biasing issue. Godspeed.
The fuzz issue resolved itself after the Deoxit D5 evaporated. I plugged it in the next day and its perfect now. Loud and clear! I'm a happy ACC boy now.
Did you remove some components to work on this amp?
Because the inside of my 220 head pretty much fills the entire space, it also has some large blue devices (reservoir caps I believe) in there I do not see with your amp.
I've got the workshop manual for my 220 I will go back and see what those parts are but your amp looks empty inside in comparison.
Analogeezer
What he has looks just like other pictures of 120 chassis I've seen. The 120-series didn't have the chassis mounted screw-terminal electrolytic cans like the 220/320/370 etc. Those two silver radial caps mounted on the 120 main board were used for power supply filtering, and evidently there was no output cap.
EDIT: To be clear, this applies only to the 120 and 122 chassis. The 124, 125, and 126 chassis did have the chassis-mounted screw-terminal power supply cap.
EDIT: To be clear, this applies only to the 120 and 122 chassis. The 124, 125, and 126 chassis did have the chassis-mounted screw-terminal power supply cap.
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No, that is exactly as the amp comes. I've never opened up my 120, or my 220, but I've read that the 120 and 126 are the same amp, just the 126 was the combo version.
What I can tell you is, and Ive done direct comparisons, other than volume, the 120 and 220 sound exactly the same. I assume the pre-amps are close enough that tone wise, you wouldn't know the difference.
I really like the 120 because you can turn it up to the point that the response and articulation is there, without upsetting band mates and venue owners. On the other hand, I can barely get my 220 to the point where it feels right before I get the "You need to turn down" complaints coming in.
Then on top of that, the 120 is allot lighter!
Very likely something I wrote, forget I said that.
I had previously thought the 120, 122, 124, 125, and 126 were all identical, but when this came up again I took a closer look and discovered the two later edition 120 & 122 models had changes in the power supply and power amp sections and there was no separate EQ board. One thing that threw me off was all five models were rated the same 100 Watts output (despite the marketing guys bumping it up to 125 Watts in the catalogs).
Changes to the 120/122 amps include later generation Motorola output devices, PC board-mounted filter caps, and unlike all other Acoustic amps I've seen, a dual-polarity power supply (which probably explains why there's no output cap). I don't have the preamp schematic, but evidently they integrated the EQ circuitry onto the preamp board to eliminate the separate EQ board found in the 124, 125, and 126. All in all, the 120/122 chassis were new and improved and lighter weight.
It should be noted that all five of these models are only safely operated down to a 4 ohms load, minimum.
EDIT: Wow, I just came-to and realized that @Syncopation's photos are of his 126 chassis, not his 120 chassis. This must mean that at some point Acoustic began using the upgraded chassis in the 126 and possibly the 124 and 125 too. Never knew that there were different versions of the 126.
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Looks like I'll be saying so long to my ACC 120. It's being sold to another TB-er and ACC fan.
I still have 2 heads. A 330 and a 270, and 2 cabs 406w & 402, as well as a 126 combo. I love them all.
That 330 would work great for my Ric-O-Sound when using one head!
Absolutely true, but one thing to keep in mind is that when the 330's Master Volume circuit is activated it flips the phase of the channel it's assigned to. This makes combining channels a bit more "interesting". As long as you don't perfectly match the volume and tone controls of the two channels you may never hear it, otherwise you'll probably hear some cancellation.
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That 330 looks mouthwateringly clean. I'm jealous! So many tonal possibilities.
I used to do this with a 320 and I really loved it. Killer sound.
Led zep iv through the 330 406 & 301 haha
Left unused for almost two years, a bit saddening. I need to sort out the turntable as only one channel appears to be working, and then I can set up two 220s for a stereo rig. I'm not into HIFI I just want to crank these things loud and cut most of the highs to cope with my hyperacusis.
