EKO Viscount Head

the other review discribes the details better then i could, only difference I see is mine's got 8 tubes instead of 4. on some label it says 80 watt's not sure if thats real tho. and I did get the speaker cab with it.
also, wierd thing is that although there's 2 channels, both of them with their own controls, they seem to affect eachother, i.e turning on the volume on channel 2 while plugging in to 1 will still make it go louder.

sounds really great though especially after being used to valvestate combo's

I'm using different guitars, a gibson flying V, a wierd homemade explorer with splitable coils and a epi lespaul. I play punkrock and in my spare time blues (hooker, santana ect)
for punk ect I run this through a digitech rp20 multieffect. sound is anything I want basically, for blues, just plug it in and turn the volume up on the amp and down on ur guitar sounds great.

really can't comment, eko doesn't really seem to be there anymore, not like back then atleast. and my italian blows.

After some research all i found is that Eko used to make guitars and effects for Vox, because vox's early guitars werent up to shit, they had all their guitars made by the italian eko and lable them as vox.
if you look on ebay, you'll find some vintage effects and other wierd stuff that eko made with vox parts, like vox wah pedals with distortions in it and stuff. this is probably something that has happened with this amp, a vox design put together in italy or something.

i'v been playing for a while, only started electric for about a year now. I only played valvestate amps and crappy solidstate ones, this is a lot better, cant even compare.
I like its simplicity, if you need distorion buy a pedal or turn up the volume. what i sorta dislike is the fact it doens't have a stand-by. ow and that the words on the amp are in italian. ow well...
great amp though. would buy anotherone if I'd come across it.
and No it wont get stolen, I'll see to that.

This head features 4 x EL84 powertubes and came with a 2 x 12" cabinet (I only have the head). It's got two channels, both with volume, treble, bass. There's one vibrato channel, no reverb, no mastervolume. Not really versatile but sounds really great! Read on!

The design of this amp (especially the cabinet) really got VOX AC30 written all over it. As a matter of fact, the previous owner told me that "Viscount" was the VOX brand name for the USA market. They didn't register the name in Europe so the Italians used it as a type name for this AC30 clone, because that's what it is! The inside of this amp is *very* similar to the AC30 schematic!

It's not very versatile but that's not a prob as long as it sounds good (and it does!).

I play rockabilly and blues using a '79 Strat and a '67 Gretsch 6117. I'm used to playing blackface(d) Fender amps (e.g. Super Reverb). I traded this one in on a Bandmaster, I was curious about EL84 tubes. This amp has got wonderfull warm tube sound, even at low volumes but I heard EL84 tubes are famous for that. It's only 30W so I really can step it on it's toes! Then it becomes a nasty little screamer!

Tone stack is very cool, don't know whether they did it on purpose or not. The bass control actually is call "bassi/medi" so it controls bass AND mids. When set to neutral position (5) it sounds normal. When you turn it down, it cuts some bass but adds screeming (VOX AC30) mid/high; very brutal sounding, typical Voxy! When you turn it up from the neutral position, it first dips the mids (5-8), but then adds bass (8-10): typical full clean Fender sound. Treble control is also very effective.

The tremolo is not opto-resistor I think, sounds more like the old fashioned way: end tube bias tremolo? I can have it sound like a VOX AC30 and I can have it (almost) sound like a Fender Bassman. Boy-o-boy! Never want to loose this baby.

8 means I *REALLY* like it
9 means I *LOVE* it (and/or it's 8 + Reverb)
10 is reserved for Fender Super Reverb only :-)

Yeah.. it's absolutely an 8+ for sounds, and I have high standards! Way to go Mr. EKO!

Very neat point-to-point handwired soldering work inside, perfect job! Looks reliable to me!

I'm self supporting when it concerns tube amps :-)

I've been playing for about 18 years. I never liked over-featured amps. Last years I've learned that you really don't need them. I also learned that I don't like preamp distortion so I don't need master volume, I like power tube distortion so I play "low wattage" amps and turn 'm up to 10. As far as I'm concerned an amp should have as less knobs as possible. I want a good warm basic sound when I turn it on without having to "program" it first. So.. this applies to my EKOVOX. They could have left out the normal channel, but maybe I'll use it to feed a reverb signal back in. I would have appreciated some Reverb though, but I guess the old AC30's also didn't have this feature.

I own several beautifull Fender amps and they're still my favorites. Nevertheless I really like my "EKOVOX", especially at higher volumes in "AC30 mode". Tried it with an Epi Genesis with hi-output DiMarzio's, unbelievable FAT tone!! I don't use this sound very often in my music, but nevertheless I really like it. You can also get a pretty good Fender sound out of it, but while I have plenty of Fenders amps around, I don't use it for that. If you can lay your hands on it for little money? BUY IT!