# Interesting... Trace Elliot TVT9 Studio 80/30



## Greg Ellis (Oct 1, 2007)

I saw an interesting combo go by on ebay yesterday. It looked like a super deal at first, but of course it spiraled up out of my budget range by the time it was done.

I'm curious if anyone has ever encountered one of these.

Trace Elliot is well known for their bass gear, of course, but this was a guitar combo.

The preamp was all tube, 2 channels, 8 ECC83's in total, plus an EM84 as a sort of a saturation display. 

- Voicing switches ("British vs American") on both channels
- separate level controls (in addition to gains) for each channel, to ease level matching between the clean and dirt sides
- parallel effects loop with a blend control (100% wet = series loop, I guess)
- footswitches are standard 1/4" stereo jacks (2 of them) change channels, effects loop on or off, voicing change on the lead channel, extra gain for the lead channel.

The power amp was a separate unit, mounted in the bottom of the combo, and was solid state. I believe they did this to allow for easy customization at the factory (something like 6 different power stages were available, but only the one preamp).

In between was a single Celestion Vintage 30, G12 16ohms.

I've never seen an amp that was anything like this. Some rack gear, sure, but a combo? Wow.

Has anybody played one of these amps? Anyone know when they were made? Was that preamp available as a separate unit? It seems very rare, this is the first I've ever seen.

Here's a couple of shots:


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

May I assume correctly that this is a pre-Gibson TE?


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## Greg Ellis (Oct 1, 2007)

I'm not sure when Gibson took over. I would guess that this is early 90's, but that's a wild guess based on nothing in particular. I was hoping someone here might know.


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