NAD: Vox Pathfinder 15r. Very impressed.

JamesSGBrown

Well, as the title says! Picked her up for very cheap and I must say I'm incredibly impressed. Awesome clean sounds, lightweight, seems like it might even be gig worth into an ext. cab or as part of a 2 amp setup.

I'm not looking to mess with it, but as I use my amps as clean pedal platforms is it worth doing the LED mod or replacing the stock Celestion/Vox Bulldog with a more efficient speaker? 

Winny_Pooh

Lots of info on these on TDPRI, IIRC most keep the speaker stock.

ICBM

Unless you're intending to modify the baffle and fit a 10", don't bother changing the speaker. My experience with the small Vox amps is that the speakers are very well-chosen, and it's difficult to improve on them - this is one of the main reasons the amps sound good. If you do want to try it, the Celestion Eight 15 is probably the best candidate.

Personally I wouldn't remove the LEDs either - they do limit the headroom slightly, but that's intentional and possibly a bad idea to bypass - that would let you push the power IC harder, which they don't always like. If you were going to do that I would probably want to replace the TDA2030 with a TDA2040 or TDA2050 (higher rated).

Flanging_Fred

Great little amps. I like mine a lot. I might even gig with it this weekend as the venue is so small and we need to keep the volume down. Saying that, it’s pretty loud for a 15w ss amp.

As has been said already, there’s plenty of instances over the years of people trying to mod them and do speaker swaps and as far as I can see, the conclusion is to just stick with the original as it suits the amp so well.

just play and enjoy!

JamesSGBrown

I just did a rehearsal and paired it with a Supro Jupiter- bloody ace! Going forward I may pair it with a Princeton for a pedal-friendly, stereo rig that fits in a boot!
@icbm would increasing the LED rating give me more headroom without danger of slamming it too hard? I use pretty intense fuzz pedals see 

ICBM

JamesSGBrown said:

@icbm would increasing the LED rating give me more headroom without danger of slamming it too hard? I use pretty intense fuzz pedals see 

It depends whether the gain has been properly calculated to make the LEDs clip just before the power stage. If so then there's no advantage to increasing the LED voltage since then they won't clip before the power stage does. You would need to scope it and find how much of a gap there is between the LED and the power IC clipping.

builttospill

JamesSGBrown said:

Well, as the title says! Picked her up for very cheap and I must say I'm incredibly impressed. Awesome clean sounds, lightweight, seems like it might even be gig worth into an ext. cab or as part of a 2 amp setup.

I'm not looking to mess with it, but as I use my amps as clean pedal platforms is it worth doing the LED mod or replacing the stock Celestion/Vox Bulldog with a more efficient speaker? 

Hi there, how much did you pay for it? and do you reckon it’ll work for small gigs or rehearsal? kind of swaying towards solid state now and this thread has got me thinking - tempted by Roland JC- 22 also

Branshen

I have one. The trem is nice, but the reverb is bit too mild. I am big on nice clean fender tones, but this amp does not do that. The tone is too middy to achieve that. In any case, it is still a decent amp, especially for the price. 

JezWynd

builttospill said:

JamesSGBrown said:

Well, as the title says! Picked her up for very cheap and I must say I'm incredibly impressed. Awesome clean sounds, lightweight, seems like it might even be gig worth into an ext. cab or as part of a 2 amp setup.

I'm not looking to mess with it, but as I use my amps as clean pedal platforms is it worth doing the LED mod or replacing the stock Celestion/Vox Bulldog with a more efficient speaker? 

Hi there, how much did you pay for it? and do you reckon it’ll work for small gigs or rehearsal? kind of swaying towards solid state now and this thread has got me thinking - tempted by Roland JC- 22 also

Having had both those amps, I'd go with the Vox. The JC-22 is very much a practise amp, with little to no bass output. I'd been lusting after a JC-22 for years as they're so cute but the reality was a disappointment.  There's a noticeable hum from the amp (not loud but annoying) and the core tone with no sweetening provided by the chorus section can only be described as nasty imo. The Vox 15R on the other hand, can def be gigged if you mic it up, or if required take the output to a bigger cabinet. It has a lovely tone and valve like response to picking. The gain section is not great (rather raspy and quite noisy) and the reverb is mild but effective to give your sound a 3D effect. But the core clean tone is a very nice sound. I used to run a pair in stereo a few years ago, it was one of the best sounds I've had.

Branshen

At some point, the reverb on mine quit working completely and I was toying with the idea of swapping it out for a bigger, nicer reverb tank to give it a much bigger reverb sound.

When I opened up the amp to take a look at the tank and try to figure out how that could be done, I noticed that a full sized roach had managed to get inside the reverb tank and died there, jamming up the springs in the tank. I managed to remove the roach with some chopsticks and got my reverb working again!

ICBM

Wow! I've seen spiders cause problems in amps before, but never one of those.

Worth noting for post-Apocalyptic scenarios... the only thing that will kill a cockroach is a Vox amp .

Branshen

ICBM said:

Wow! I've seen spiders cause problems in amps before, but never one of those.

Worth noting for post-Apocalyptic scenarios... the only thing that will kill a cockroach is a Vox amp .

This amp is in Malaysia, so our roaches get quite a bit bigger than the garden English variety. 

builttospill

JezWynd said:

builttospill said:

JamesSGBrown said:

Well, as the title says! Picked her up for very cheap and I must say I'm incredibly impressed. Awesome clean sounds, lightweight, seems like it might even be gig worth into an ext. cab or as part of a 2 amp setup.

I'm not looking to mess with it, but as I use my amps as clean pedal platforms is it worth doing the LED mod or replacing the stock Celestion/Vox Bulldog with a more efficient speaker? 

Hi there, how much did you pay for it? and do you reckon it’ll work for small gigs or rehearsal? kind of swaying towards solid state now and this thread has got me thinking - tempted by Roland JC- 22 also

Having had both those amps, I'd go with the Vox. The JC-22 is very much a practise amp, with little to no bass output. I'd been lusting after a JC-22 for years as they're so cute but the reality was a disappointment.  There's a noticeable hum from the amp (not loud but annoying) and the core tone with no sweetening provided by the chorus section can only be described as nasty imo. The Vox 15R on the other hand, can def be gigged if you mic it up, or if required take the output to a bigger cabinet. It has a lovely tone and valve like response to picking. The gain section is not great (rather raspy and quite noisy) and the reverb is mild but effective to give your sound a 3D effect. But the core clean tone is a very nice sound. I used to run a pair in stereo a few years ago, it was one of the best sounds I've had.

So tempted @JezWynd and will use it as a back up for my Princeton, I owned a Vox Da5 mini amp quite a few years back and the clean and crunch tones from that were quite remarkable for such a small amp. Even my old Line 6 M13 sounded glorious through it.

JezWynd

There's a YouTube video were they compare Princeton Reverb and Pathfinder 15R.. amazing how close they are at times considering the tech and price differential...



The speaker/cab on the Pathfinder is either a happy accident or genius design, 'cos it does sound remarkably good. It doesn't have quite the rich chime of the Fender but then; that's what you pay the extra 900 quid for.

ICBM

JezWynd said:

The speaker/cab on the Pathfinder is either a happy accident or genius design, 'cos it does sound remarkably good.

One of the things I've noticed is that as well as usually having good speakers, Voxes usually have smaller ones than you would expect from the cabinet size, and I think this may improve them rather than the other way round.

I have a Mini5 Rhythm, which I experimented with fitting better 8" speakers into than the stock 6.5" one, and none of them even sounded as good. Whether that would still apply if you went from 8" to 10" in the Pathfinder, I don't know.

kreggs

I have one and have been tempted to buy an ac10 as an upgrade of sorts. Would it really be worthwhile as the pathfinder sounds great anyway. How much more are you getting with an ac10? 

builttospill

JezWynd said:

There's a YouTube video were they compare Princeton Reverb and Pathfinder 15R.. amazing how close they are at times considering the tech and price differential...



The speaker/cab on the Pathfinder is either a happy accident or genius design, 'cos it does sound remarkably good. It doesn't have quite the rich chime of the Fender but then; that's what you pay the extra 900 quid for.

That’s not bad at all, thanks for that

builttospill

Branshen said:

ICBM said:

Wow! I've seen spiders cause problems in amps before, but never one of those.

Worth noting for post-Apocalyptic scenarios... the only thing that will kill a cockroach is a Vox amp .

This amp is in Malaysia, so our roaches get quite a bit bigger than the garden English variety. 

I’d honestly never seen a proper english cockroach until last summer. We were at a relatives 60th b’day dinner at the botanical gardens in brum. My kids were playing with the balloons whilst we waiting for our cream tea and sandwiches to be brought out and my eldest shouted “look at that big beetle that’s just crawled from under the kitchen door” after a close inspection from me and even a confirmation from a sheepish looking waiter nearby “That’s a cockroach sir!” My inner OCD and anxieties kicked in that evening and so I passed on the food that night.

mbe

Bought my Pathfinder 15R off @JezWynd and I love it.

These amps are worth £100 all day long. I have disabilities, yet I find it manageable to carry it into the local jam session and it holds up with the rest of the band just fine for my purposes.

I think serendipity is the best word I could use to describe it. For a basic amp it stands out against similar solid state amps. I'm not tempted to mod it either.

Flanging_Fred

So I had a gig in a tiny pub last night so thought I’d give the pathfinder a go. Seems a bit weird plugging in 1.5k worth  of pedal board into an amp I got for 60 quid, but for the size of the pub it worked really well.

Sometimes you don’t need a sledgehammer to crack a nut after all.

thecolourbox

Flanging_Fred said:

So I had a gig in a tiny pub last night so thought I’d give the pathfinder a go. Seems a bit weird plugging in 1.5k worth  of pedal board into an amp I got for 60 quid, but for the size of the pub it worked really well.

Sometimes you don’t need a sledgehammer to crack a nut after all.

Looks right at home in there to be fair, I bet it sounded great.

My recollection of the one I had was that it loved Big Muff type fuzz as well