Freddie Sipo has a 1964 Vox AC30 head with an interesting provenance (I heard that on Antiques Roadshow last night). He bought the classic head from Eddie Van Halen's guitar tech. And he used it on his whole new record.

"The head is a 1964 Vox AC30. Jennings Musical Instruments had only been around for six years and the early/mid sixties are when the best Vox tube amps were made," he says. "This is a true british Vox amp, which only exist from the JMI era. I have tried many AC30's over the years from different periods, and although there are some very fine sounding ones, nothing touches the sonic bliss of this tone!"

And that is what it is all about--tone. Being an engineer in addition to a musician and songwriter, Sipo, comes at music from all the angles. He can also describe tone in words that makes sense!

"Its clean tone is full and warm with the right amount of presence. It has tons of character and magic. For a modern rock clean guitar tone its the best. Its overdrive is harmonically complex and rich, a classic rock sound, but can sound very modern with any other distortion pedals, " says Sipo. "I love using this amp with a 60 Les Paul custom I have, a 74 Strat, and a Tele with humbuckers in it. It also sounds amazing with the fretless Fernandez I use. It warms up Strat's, thickens leads and makes them soar, has beautiful bell like tones, and makes Paul's and Tele's sound lush."

He doesn't have the original cabinet (which he says was originally paired with two Celestion Alnico 12" speakers). He has used the cabinet with a variety of cabinets.

"I did use a 2x12 blue bulldog cabinet during the recording of my album. I also used a 4x12 JCM800 cabinet extensively as well. An odd pairing for sure, but it gave me what I was looking for in a purely digital home pro tools studio," says Sipo. "In a proper studio the nice selection of outboard gear. mic pre's, and consoles help warm up the guitar tones, but when it was time to record my album in my home studio all the amps I tried missed the mark without the help of the studio signal path. The vintage AC30 was the best remedy I could find to battle digital sterility, and the 4x12 cab for certain guitar parts helped out even more. It made the guitars sound more open and smoothed out the upper mid frequencies that tend to get icey and brittle in the digital domain."

The amp is also a simple piece of gear to use but it gives variety as well. He loves the sound so much, however, he isn't going to risk gigging with it.

"It has three channels, Vib- Trem, Normal. and Brilliant, with two inputs each. Vib-Trem has a Volume knob, Vib-Trem Selector, and Vib-Trem speed. It is a great vintage trem sound with more character than any trem pedal I've come across to date. The Normal Channel has a volume knob only and the Brilliant channel has a volume knob, Tone cut, and Treble and Bass knobs on the back of the unit. I used both the normal and brilliant channels equally, but stuck to the brilliant during overdriven guitar parts," he says. "I miced it up using a Shure SM57 halfway between the center and the edge of the cone on axis directly on the grill without touching. I used guitar pedals to get all the sounds on my album. I didn't use any effects plugins and did very minimal signal processing once in pro tools during the mixdowns. I have never played live with the amp. Not worth it when the ReIssues sound good enough to gig with and you can abuse them and not worry about it."

When you have an older piece of gear you also need to worry about maintenance and durability. The AC30 gets good grades on both counts.

"This amp is pretty easy to maintain. Same as any other head. I take it to a tech about once a year to change tubes, fix leaky caps, etc. Other than that it's rock solid and holds up like a tank--its been 44 years!! I was engineering an album for a band a few years ago and Eddie Van Halen's guitar tech, Matt Bruck, came down to help out with guitar tones," he days. "He brought a selection of cream of the crop amps in and dialed all the guitars to perfection. That was when I was first exposed to JMI Vox's. He fixed up one of my guitars for me and sold me one of his Vox's as well. To top it all off he invited me over to 5150 to pick it up and showed me around. That guy rules!!"

Sipo says it is the best sounding amp he has ever used.

"Being a sound engineer as well I have recorded a lot of guitar amps - Bassman, Twin, Champ, JCMs, Plexi, Matchless, Boogie, HiWatt, Orange, Sound City, Divided By 13, Bogner, TopHat, Fuchs," he says. "And while I love all of them for what they bring to the table and would one day love to own each and every one, if I could have only one amp it would be a JMI AC30."

Sipo's new album, Year of the White Rose, is out now.