Vox V125 Head

Price Paid: US $400 used

Features: 7
One channel with 2 inputs: brilliant and normal. 5-stage equalizer w/ chickenhead knobs. Sensitivity and volume, master volume. This combination allows great shaping of tone, but it's a single tone and variation comes via pedals and guitar tone and volume. This is perfect for me, as I like to work of one tone center, but for others multi-channel might be essential, so too bad.

Sound Quality: 9
Used with PRS and McNaught humbucker-loaded guitars, and Fender custom Shop Strat single coils. Sounds absolutely beautiful, with depth and chime, clean or crunch; versatile controls (one channel, though) let you dial it in really well. And the way it's set up, you can get great, great tone at absolutely minimal volume -- or open it up and blow out the windows.

Reliability: 4
Oh, brother. At first, totally subject to the malfunctions described both others in this forum; died twice. Had excellent tech Jerry Blaha of Amp Crazy look at it and he made some repairs and modifications that eliminated faults that I think were both mechanical (age) and design in nature. Now it pumps and seems solid.

Customer Support: N/A
Well, Vox exists, but the guys who built this puppy don't. Look elsewhere; find somebody who knows older tube amps.

Overall Rating: 10
Oh yeah. Tremendous deal, though I've seen these go from a bit less to more than twice what I paid. Power and tone both -- hard to beat. I'm unaware of anything of this type that is available at a price like this. But: I think many of the 125's out there have problems and faults, and all bets are off if you get a junker rather than a winner.

Submitted by padraig at 12/10/2004 11:53

Price Paid: N/A

Features: 9
I bought this new in 1980 after meeting with VOX in a hotel room at the Chicago NAMM show. I had just played a gig at (get this) a drag race and playing with my old 68 Super Reverb my sound basically disappeared . NOT SO with the LEAD 125! This has got to be one of the loudest amps on the planet. It is one channel (2 inputs, normal and brilliant). I believe it does have the real Vox sound, though I don't know all of the electronics particulars. The rep at the show said this would "Kick a Marshall's A**" and also said this one was built up on a Super Beatle design. It's all tubes, simple as can be (power (mains, of course!), standby, volume, master volume, "sensitivity". Can be switched 120/240. Out put is 4 or 8 ohms (separate plug.) The tone comes from 5 EQ pots with chickenhead knobs. I have the matching cab, too, but this guy BLEW out the original speakers long ago!!! So, feature wise, none of those hard to follow nuanced electronic gobbledegook modelling things you need a manual for. Turn on, turn up.

Sound Quality: 10
Mostly have played with an ES330 from the 60s - P90s - Lots of tone and feedback galore. Rich Vox feedback (see Paul Weller circa "The Jam" with amazing sustained single lines. Works fine with a Rick 12 string and responds LOUD with an SG or LP. If you are in a big room, your options are unlimited. If you are in a small room, your ears will probably bleed before you can sample all of the tonal depth. The EQ (I admit I never liked this) can give a full range of sound, but it is a little tweaky and it is easy to go to far. Better just turn it up and let the natural harmonics kick in. If you crank the sensitivity you can get ferociously BUZZY but I wouldn't call it a "good" distortion like a maxed out smaller amp (had a 64 Fender Bassman but that's another story!!!). Clean is clean but the earwax will grow so quickly that it could get muffled. Like above, if this is the sound (classic VOX AC30 times, oh, 100) this is the amp.

Reliability: 6
No. I'm not sure if this was one of the first off of the line, but in the ~24 years (OH GOD I'm OLD!) It's needed some work. But the funny thing is how easy it is to snap back into shape - seems that some of the simple things (Black plastic plugs, the wall plug, plastic fuse holders, etc.) started out as cheap components and tended to fail. Luckily simple fixes. Oh, yeah, did I mention that the speakers went pretty fast? I know eveyone is hot and bothered over "vintage" Vox speakers but the original ones were not very tough. The cabinet is 2X12 with a big ol bass port. (Pics on the inner sleeve of the Jam's Sound Affects LP...). Great amp if you can use a soldering iron. Runs pretty well now, but I really want to clean it out someday.

Oh - I have dropped it on stage twice - once the stage deck titled it over (ever seen the headstock come off a 12 string? WOW!!!). One time, set it back up and kept playing, another time had to resolder the Mains switch. The second time was my wife's fault.

Customer Support: N/A
It's hard enough to find someone who has heard of this amp. It is a great lost Gem.

Overall Rating: 10
I love this amp but no longer play in big situations, so I'd probablyreplace it with an OLD AC-15. I would hate to get rid of it because, it DOES have an amazing sound and a lot of history. Funny, I ditched an AC-30 which was released at the same time, as well as the afore mentioned Bassman. Kept this because, if you need a loud amp with tone, I find it hard to beat.

Submitted by Hank at 10/25/2004 12:14

Price Paid: 200 (GBP) used

Features: 8
This amp came to me 2nd hand so I'm not sure when it was made, but I'm guessing it's around 20 years old (Vox site says it was introduced '81). It's a one channel monster which is just obscenely loud. I've never had this thing on full volume, but my reasons for this aren't just to preserve the sanity of my neighbours. It's got a standby switch, 5 band eq, another volume, and a sensitivity control. It's an all tube effort. 4 EL-34s, 2 12AX7s, 1 12AT7 and a 12AU7. Channel switching would be nice but I have some nice pedals so I'm happy with it.

Sound Quality: 10
I play either through a Godin radiator, (two singles) or a Epi SG (two humbuckers). My budget is rather limited as I play Piano/Synths, saxophone and oboe also and I'm still in 6th form, but that's no reason to assume my opinion bears less weight. I'd like to think I'm not as simple as your average 16 year old, and I've been playing for around 7 years. The amp goes through a hand built 2x12 open back cab loaded with celestion silver series drivers. If you show this amp any form of interence from a distance of 4km and it will still amplify it. I can thoroughly recommend having a mobile phone in you pocket if you want to add some insanity to your impromptu prog rock jam sessions. I play a whole load of stuff which usally degrades to low quality funk. It's more than adequete for this. The 5 band eq combined with the normal or brilliant imputs means you can shape your sound in any way so please. The sensitivity knob is completely insane, I think it's some kind of pre-gain knob but this isn't going to make you sound like Eddie Van Halen, it makes this really dirty flappy shit sounding distortion, similar to a ripped cone type sound, whether or not it's supposed to sound like this I've no idea. The amp came with no tubes in it, so I had to analyze the free schematic from the vox website and compare it to the chassis of the amp to find which pre-amp valve went where, and I'm not 100% confident that they're in the right holes. It was at this point that I discovered that it's almost exclusivly hand soldered. Only a slight hint of PCB. The sound this thing emits at high volumes is completely different to that produced at low volumes, and the sound it makes is only vaguely related to the settings you've dialed in, so you just have to tweak to find the sound you want. I have a Akai Shred-o-matic distorion pedal, cheesey name but a quality pedal in my opinion and because of its real valve drives the beast real nice. If I put my old marshall drive master (the old black square type) with the sensitivity on about 3/4 it produces a real nice distorion also. My V-wah pedal (only used for the low quality funk aformentioned) sounds ace ace ace through this. Overall, great; if you have the time to play.

PS. If you want to make some really insane stuff try putting a synth through it with shit loads of delay.

Reliability: 3
This thing is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot is useful. I'm pretty sure it's plotting to sabotage my playing everytime I play it. It's only catastrophically failed about once, but sometimes it will just do some really random things. Like on one occasion I was just seeing exactly how much headroom I had, turned pre-volume up full, and the was turning the master up gradually and it just went dead.

Crap.

Turned it off and ran away to cry in the realistation that I'd have to go back to playing my Marshall Wankstate 2x12 combo. Turned it on the next day and it worked fine. The worst case was when I flicked it off standby and it started spitting proper lightning bolts around the inside of it. It was at this point I soiled my pants, but having said that it's worked fine for a couple of months now.

Customer Support: N/A
It's second hand and older than I am. It was made under the rose-morris era of vox so frankly I don't expect much customer support, and It's always more fun to fix it your self.

Overall Rating: 10
If it was stolen I'm sure it would kill the theif as I'm pretty lucky to be alive, but I love it. Ace.

Submitted by Tom at 06/13/2003 12:17

Price Paid: US $1200 used

Features: 10
This amp was built circa 1981 or so. All tubes on PCB (I know... ick). Only one channel basically, with either normal or brilliant input. No effects loop. This is where the description gets weird. This thing has essentially a 5-band EQ, and what seems to be TWO preamp-stage volume controls in addition to the master volume.

This ends up yielding what seems to be never-ending combinations available for tone and gain. Pretty darned sweet, although likely I'll end up just settling on one grouping that works for me 99% of the time and leave it.

Versatility wise, this amp has no switching, so whatever you set it to you're pretty much going to leave it at during a gig, so stomp boxes will be key there, but really there are so many available configurations in the tone stack and volumes that you can find pretty much most any sound you'll need.

Oh, and it is LOUD. Clear and loud.

Sound Quality: 9
I primarily play a Fender Texas Special Fat strat thru this amp, along with a junkyard dog washburn electric with a seymour duncan humbucker in it (mostly use the strat). I have found so many different tonal ranges this amp is good at, from jazz to jangly, from rock to =ROCK=, this thing is making me very happy that I purchased it.

It does seem to be a bit noisy at high gain volumes, but once you start playing, this noise is not going to be a factor at all. At normal volume levels its not noisy at all, and is a bit of a sleeper.

The tubes in this thing let your clean notes ring with almost flange-like harmonics. Absolutely beautiful. At the same time, crank the gains and this thing has a gorgeous tube crunch that takes newer amps to school.

Reliability: N/A
I've not had this amp for very long, but its in awesome shape and sounds amazing for an amp that's 22 years old. On top of that all the guts seem to be original equipment, so I will assume that it will take care of me for a while. Considering that I baby my equipment, this should hold true, but I really can't give a numerical value to this category.

Customer Support: N/A
Never had to deal with them, and wouldn't get very far if I did, seeing as how Korg probably wouldn't support a Vox Limited product...

Overall Rating: 10
I've been playing guitar for close to 17 years now. If this amp were stolen, I'd be very distraught, coz you just don't see these very often and the chances of replacing it exactly as I have it now are practically nil. I'd darn well try, though!

Overall, I'm VERY glad I bought this amp. It normally only comes with one cab, but I've got a second one (which is lucky since I can't seem to find the original cabs anywhere) to make this thing a full stack. Major azz kickage.

Submitted by Todd at 05/29/2003 12:19

Price Paid: US $400 used

Features: 8
I believe this amp was made in the mid 70's. The amp is semi versitile, it's loud as hell. The only normal guitar amp I've had that is louder would be a peavy Mace. I play in the band "I Love Lucy" & we play rock music. Stuff similar to the ramones, the living end, sonic youth. It satisfies me very well. No channel switching, no reverb, no dist, not many features. It's similar to an orange amp in that way. I wouldn't want anything else. I'm all for external pedals, MOstly electro harmonix, mxr, stuff like that. I use this amp practicing & gigs. It's my favorite, I'd take it over a marshall any day. It's all tube. The eq section helps versitility.

Sound Quality: 10
AWSOME! THICK! It's not marshallish, & not fenderish. It's got a thing of it's own. I use the brilliant input exclusivly. I use a 70's ibanez lawsuit tele (well whats left of it) most of the time. The single coil bridge pickup has high output & almost sounds like a p-90, that goes into a sustain punch modified ealry green big muff. The amp is not very noisey with most guitars. Sometimes it will pick up a buzz from another amp or something but I don't mind at all. The closest thing to this amp that I have ever heard would be a 79' mesa boogie mach 1. One of those can be heard on that weezer blue album.

Reliability: N/A
I can't say, it's blown an output fuse a couple times but I think it was because of my lack of knowledge of vox amps, they are wierd. & I havn't had it long enough to really know.

Customer Support: N/A
I wouldn't know.

Overall Rating: 10
I've been playing for about 5-6 years, I own a fender strat, an Ibanez lawsuit tele, a 59' dano/silvertone U-1, a P-bass special, a green muff, lots of other non guitar related & un important stuff (drums, cabinets ect.) If this amp were stolen or lost I would not rest untill I found another, I only payed 400 for it but I've only seen 1 other & it was at a music shop in berkely for $1000. I love everything about it. I hate that the handles where removed by someone & it's a bitch to carry. I've compared it to marshall plexis, ampeg v-4s, & fender bassmans, but I choosed this one because it was wierd & thick & it blends perfectly when you play with another guitarist who has a marshall. I wish I had a ventura les paul gold top.

Submitted by SHANE R. at 11/16/2001 19:47