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Sovtek 100w Modded Tube Guitar Head The VodkaSonic - $1,695 (North Chatham)
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I call it the VodkaSonic.
This amp started as a bass head that I used for a time while I played bass for Carr Amps' founder Steve Carr in the X-Rayons (Google us - you won't regret it!). Anyway I got the amp via Steve (he was/is a Sovtek dealer as he gets a bunch of tubes from them) at dealer cost. And, yes, it was originally a bass head with a circuit not dissimilar to a 100w Marshall Major bass head. The big difference is that it comes with 5881 tubes.
Initially I was not well chuffed with the sound as a bass amp. It had a very hard to define stiffness to it that I described to Steve and his then #1 tech Tim. They cracked it open and to their surprise they found lots of sloppy wiring and cold solder joints everywhere. And the caps were Soviet era crap. As it is wired point-to-point, they cleaned up the wiring and solder as, in their words, this amp was probably completed on a Friday afternoon after the workers had a vodka-soaked lunch break. Steve then replaced the caps with his specially designed Mallory 150 signal capacitors. Now with these mods - BOOM! Instant creamy, snarly bass tone! Loud as bombs and that Jack Bruce/Noel Redding/JPJ tone was right at my fingertips. With my Gibson EB2 I rumbled many club stages in North Carolina. As they were buttoning it up Tim told me this amp is a great modding platform and could be converted to an even more brutal guitar head as it it is essentially a MiG100 with some re-routing.
Cut to some years later and the X-Rayons were in a hiatus and I was now playing guitar in my own band. I remembered Tim's suggestion that I could make it a guitar head that would be the destroyer of worlds, I took it to him for a big mod party. Tim by then had his own amp mod/repair business Superfine Ampworks of Durham, NC.
After a short time I took delivery of what I now dubbed it THE VODKASONIC. I don't know the exact type of mod that he did - something about routing an extra gain stage or two into the HIGH input. I also had him add a power cut switch in the back so I could run it at 50 watts which still melts faces but doesn't destroy eardrums quite as fast as at 100w.
So the HIGH input is akin to a JMP or JCM 2204 but less fizzy and with the ability to push a bit more of a refined and tight low end. It's not Dual Rectum Fryer high gain but it has plenty of gain for hard rock and classic metal. Backing off the VOLUME you can get more AC-styled jangly tones but it never gets clean.
However, the LOW input is unchanged and this channel is kinda my fave as a pedal platform. When pushed with an OD pedal it shines. This is also the input I used for Rickenbacker 4003 or P-bass when the X-Rayons did a bunch of reunion shows in 2010 and 2015.
I have included a link to a video where you can hear it put thru its paces by the stellar Larry Burlison of The Bleeding Hearts. It's run thru a Marshall 4x12.
I've played this amp a fair bit. I've taken it into small beer halls and on large festival stages. It can handle both situations. I often used it with a 1x12" cab as well. There is a fairly new quartet of 5881s in there. My tech thinks they're not super well matched for 100w use but they sound fine to my ears. The 12AX7s are around a year old. The Tolex show some wear and as it's that cheap Russian gunge, It's not super robust.
It hasn't been used for a gig in about 6 years. It's been in the studio I work at since 2017. It appears on many records but with all the other amps and sims we have it doesn't get much use these days.
The Sovtek logo is long gone. It will come with a Carr Amps logo on it but I blurred it our because I don't want to run afoul of Steve and his fine company.
I'm putting a high price on it so that the tire kickers might be weeded out but PLEASE - make an offer!
Happy to answer questions but I am a player, not an amp tech, so I will do my best.
No trades unless you have a Rickenbacker bass to offer.
https://youtu.be/Fuj5ZBhCiDI?si=8VxMCBnLqxZmF0yh