Junction
Well-known member
Well I moved to Sydney recently, all my amps are in a shipping container waiting for me to buy a house. I hand carried one guitar with me, but have been without an amp for 4 months now. I couldn't wait any longer I had to buy some cheap crappy old tube amp ... I missed out on a couple of reasonable buys on Ebay at the very last second of bidding so went out today and bought a Bugera V5, just to see me through for another couple of months, until my amps arrive.
The first V5 I tried had a microphonic 12AX7, next one kind of rattled at higher volumes, the 3rd one was okay. Bashed around on it at home for a few hours today, pretty good for what I think is the cheapest tube amp on the market. Loud, yeah, tubey, yeah. It's a little bit lifeless compared to other Class A's I've tried, a little bit thick and not as chimey as I kinda expected with an EL84.
It's got a Gain control which pushes the pre into nice saturation, so I can surive without my overdrive pedal. 1 x tone, 1 x master volume, they work. It has reverb, can get very wet but obviously not a spring. Has a 5W, 1W and 0.1W switch on the back, this was real useful for shredding in the bedroom, works well at 0.1W!! Can easily get it into feedback.
Had to see what was under the hood. PCB obviously, all cheap caps, lots of 1/4w carbons, the reverb is on a plug in daughter board, shitty looking pcb mount pots, but have seen these on newer Marshalls and Fenders anyway. Shouldn't be difficult to service, but a thin board, easy to damage one thinks. Has a nice Blue Jewel on the front, with a led behind - thats neat, no more changing 6.3V lamps. And a headphone socket. A neat build, nice cabinet with two tone vinyl, very solid, crappy looking speaker but it sounds better than it looks. You could easily swap it out with a 10inch speaker for a bit extra grunt, I imagine it would sound pretty big into an extension cab.
All in all, for the price, a great buy. A good practise amp and for first tube amp buyers.
Gonna go an make some more noise.
The first V5 I tried had a microphonic 12AX7, next one kind of rattled at higher volumes, the 3rd one was okay. Bashed around on it at home for a few hours today, pretty good for what I think is the cheapest tube amp on the market. Loud, yeah, tubey, yeah. It's a little bit lifeless compared to other Class A's I've tried, a little bit thick and not as chimey as I kinda expected with an EL84.
It's got a Gain control which pushes the pre into nice saturation, so I can surive without my overdrive pedal. 1 x tone, 1 x master volume, they work. It has reverb, can get very wet but obviously not a spring. Has a 5W, 1W and 0.1W switch on the back, this was real useful for shredding in the bedroom, works well at 0.1W!! Can easily get it into feedback.
Had to see what was under the hood. PCB obviously, all cheap caps, lots of 1/4w carbons, the reverb is on a plug in daughter board, shitty looking pcb mount pots, but have seen these on newer Marshalls and Fenders anyway. Shouldn't be difficult to service, but a thin board, easy to damage one thinks. Has a nice Blue Jewel on the front, with a led behind - thats neat, no more changing 6.3V lamps. And a headphone socket. A neat build, nice cabinet with two tone vinyl, very solid, crappy looking speaker but it sounds better than it looks. You could easily swap it out with a 10inch speaker for a bit extra grunt, I imagine it would sound pretty big into an extension cab.
All in all, for the price, a great buy. A good practise amp and for first tube amp buyers.
Gonna go an make some more noise.
