VHT has announced the release of the first handwired amplifier from “The Standard Series,” The Standard 12. The Standard 12 amplifier is carefully handwired in the VHT workshop just outside of San Francisco, where experienced VHT designers are looking it over every step of the way.
All VHT handwired amplifiers are carefully pre-tested for quality. The Standard 12 uses 12AX7 tubes on the preamp side and 6v6 tubes for the poweramp and the rectifier tube is a 5Y3GT. The high-grade VHT finger-jointed birch cabinet houses a 12″ Celestion G12H30 speaker. All of the components of The Standard 12 were chosen to provide the ultimate in sensitivity and expressiveness to let the individual sound of each player shine through.
The Standard 12 sounds great for classic rock styles, breaking up easily as the volume knob is turned up. It also excels at overdriven blues sounds as it is extremely touch-sensitive and retains its chime throughout the entire volume spectrum. It does everything that a classic tweed-voiced amplifier is supposed to do. The Standard 12 has a very vocal clean tone with a powerful midrange and great headroom.
Although the design goal was to capture a vintage sound, the Standard 12 doesn’t “brown out” like vintage amps – the low end doesn’t become loose and muddy – the 12 doesn’t compress to the point where the low end gets mushy. It doesn’t sacrifice a “crunchy” top end in order to gain powerful midrange, but instead maintains articulate, sugary highs throughout the volume spectrum.
Click here for more details. Credit: VHT Amplifiers.