Vox

Vital Stat's

• Condition: Excellent+
• OEM Carrying Bag: Included
• Original Street Price: $499.00

Fat Sound's Take (April 2009)

The new Night Train head from Vox is an ultra portable, great sounding amplifier with very portable dimensions.

Vox calls it an "Armored Lunchbox".

The greatest thing about this job is discovering a new product that is a true game changer; an item that is so cool and so inspirational that we get lost for hours just playing guitar without ever thinking about turning a knob or tweaking a setting. This was our reaction when Vox kicked off the "Lunchbox Amp" craze with the release of their Night Train model.

In April 2009 our Vox rep stopped by with what at first we were ready to dismiss as a gimmick. It was an ultra-diminutive, brushed chrome amplifier head that reminded us of a half sized THD Univalve.

Plugged in to the new Vox Night Train for about 5 minutes we quickly came to the conclusion that this $500.00 gem was a complete game changer in the amp world. It sounds fantastic, is reasonably versatile, well-built, inexpensive and.........Tiny!

This little guy is rated at 17 watts when run in Pentode mode and roughly half that when run in Triode. Despite its small size it can be plenty loud for most modern club environments, yet is also capable of superb lower volume tones.

With the amp set to Pentode, Bright switch engaged and with Gain at 9:00 and Master at 12:00 the cleans are huge, sweet and lush with zero nasty crossover distortion. Just big, bold cleans. As you increase the Gain knob the true clean morphs gradually to a beautiful, dynamic, pushed clean and then ultimately in to a wonderfully rich, thick crunch.

Throw the Bright/Thick switch to Thick and place the Gain control at 1:00 or above and you begin to get in to a range of moderate, uncompressed distortion to smooth, creamy, slightly compressed high-gain that sustains infinitely, yet still cleans up with a roll off of the guitar's volume knob.

We tried this amp through three of our reference cabinets: Bogner Cube 112 with a G12H30 / Port City OS Wave 112 with Vintage 30 / Dr Z Z Best 212 with Vintage 30 and G12H30

The Night Train proved equally excellent sounding in both Clean and higher gain, Thick, modes through all three of these references cabinets, but simply gained in volume and "size" as we went up in cabinet size and speaker count.

Triode mode reduces volume beautifully and when combined with higher Gain settings and lower volume setting creates perfect tones for low volume situations.

Features and Specifications

• Dual EL84 Power Tubes
• Dual 12AX7 Preamp Tubes
• Power Mode Switching - 12 Watts Pentode / 7 Watts Triode
• Mode Switch - Clean / Thick (Thick "lifts" the EQ section for a considerably higher gain tone)
• Controls - Gain / Treble / Mid / Bass / Volume
• Tony Bruno Designed
• 17 Pounds
• 12"(W) x 6.5"(D) x 7"(H)
• Nylon Cordura carrying Case