NAD - VHT Special 6

ninjaking67

ninjaking67

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I just picked up a used VHT Special 6 combo this weekend at a price I couldn’t ignore. Should be a great practice amp.
It is unmolested and in very good condition. I have wanted to get one for a while now as they sound great and are excellent mod platforms.
For those that don’t know, these are MIC, hand wired turret board circuit construction and feature a single 12AX7 in the preamp and a single 6V6 output tube for a blistering 6 watts! They are known to be very mod friendly and have oversized power and output transformers that can take a beating.
I already have a few mods in mind but will wait until I play it for a while and get a feel for it.
 
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Mr Grumpy said:
HNAD. :dood:

A very nice purchase - a home friendly 6V6 has to be a winner. Can you mod it with a gain and/or master volume just to give it a bit more variety of sounds at low volume?

How is it sounding thusfar?
Click to expand...
It is sounding pretty good Mr Grumpy. The hi power mode tends to sound much better than the low mode.
It is possible to add a master volume. I will have to do more research about a possible adjustable gain mod.
It gets surprisingly loud and sounds stellar through a 1x12 open back cab I have, loaded with a Celestion Vintage 30.
I am considering the addition of a second “channel” with JCM900 style distortion. Also have to add an adjustable control for the volume jump when the boost is selected. Currently it is too pronounced.
 
Sounds like a lot of work...

Full power mode sounds better than attenuated power on all the amps I've had with various multi-power modes. Even at a constantish volume, as long as there's pre-amp and power-amp control settings then the hi power mode just has the best sound - the trick is to get that sound at an ok volume.

Pleased to hear (so to speak) that it's sounding good. :dood:
 
The switch just changes the output from triode to pentode operation, effectively halving the power.
It sounds less open to me in low power mode. Still fun to mess around with though.

We are still in lockdown here in Ontario for the next week or so. Once we are getting back to something that resembles normalcy I hope to try this little beastie out at jam night with member Leedspool and the boys. I very much doubt I willi be able to keep it clean at the volume needed. There’s not tons of clean headroom available and the since there’s no gain control, the higher the volume, the more breakup.
 
A question for you amp Guru types:

If I modify the amp to allow the use of an EL34 or 6L6 instead of the 6V6 (approx 11W versus 6W) will I gain more clean headroom or will I just get a small bump in volume with the breakup occurring at proportionally about the spot on the volume dial?
 
I had one of those amps, It was my pay from a guitar store when they went broke.
I had it for a while, then Adrian had it for a while.
It may have ended up at Jimmy's Vintage Music, not sure.
It was a solid beast. I ran 6V6 and 6L6 in it with no ill effect what so ever.
Also rolled every 12AX type preamp tube that I had, in it just for fun.
 
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