# VOX Night Train - clean headroom



## pipelinepete (Jul 17, 2015)

Hi all, I recently picked up a used Vox Night Train head, as I've always wanted a tube amp. It's an all tube, 7.5W/ 15W switchable amp. I've got it hooked up to an old Traynor cabinet (BW-1). It sounds great dirty, but there's very little clean headroom....this amp wants to distort, and fast. Is it possible to gain more clean headroom by changing out the tubes? If yes, any ideas on what tubes I would be looking for? Thanks!! Peter.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

pipelinepete said:


> Hi all, I recently picked up a used Vox Night Train head, as I've always wanted a tube amp. It's an all tube, 7.5W/ 15W switchable amp. I've got it hooked up to an old Traynor cabinet (BW-1). It sounds great dirty, but there's very little clean headroom....this amp wants to distort, and fast. Is it possible to gain more clean headroom by changing out the tubes? If yes, any ideas on what tubes I would be looking for? Thanks!! Peter.


The traditional strategy for providing less preamp breakup/grind is to switch from a higher-gain preamp tube to a lower-gain one. Conversely, those who want more grind switch from a lower-gain to higher one. In the universe of 12A?7 tubes, we have 12AX7 - the hghest gain, which the NIght Train uses - and 12AT7, 12AY7, and 12AU7 (in order of decreasing gain). The stock tweed Bassman - which is not as clean as a Twin - but not a pure grind machine either - uses an AY7 in the first gain stages. I'd suggest swapping one of the AX tubes for an AY.


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## GTmaker (Apr 24, 2006)

Before anything else, I would try a more efficient speaker cabinet...
Bring the amp to a music store and try a few different cabinets...

G.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

I've got a NT. On the clean setting (Bright), I get clean headroom up to about 10 o-clock with a hb-guitar, a little higher with sc's. Much less on the Thick setting - it gets gainy very early on.

Barely enough volume to jam totally crystal clean with a drummer, can get by with a more dynamic player but not so much with a hamfisted metal basher. As GT mentioned, speaker efficiency has everything to do with how loud or quiet you are at these settings.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i had a lil nite train, and it had almost zero headroom


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