Grouse Guitars, your favourite vintage guitar dealer
Grouse Guitars - previously your vintage guitar, bass and amp dealer (now closed). Click the 'back' plectrum to go back to the previous page, or click the "Grouse Guitars" nameplate above to go directly to the Grouse Guitars homepage.

Here we have an example of the amp that I consider to be the best bass head ever made in Australia, and one of the best on the world. And a very original and unmolested example it is too.

Vase amps display exceptional build quality and attention to detail, and are typically 'over-engineered- to ensure reliabilty. This build quality is the equal to, and in many ways exceeds, that of the best of the hand-built boutique amps available today, making the amps both desirable and a very cost-effective alternative.

Vase amps were made in Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) by Tony Troughton, a former chief engineer for the Western Electric Company in the U.K.. Tony began making his consistently rugged and high-quality line of Vase guitar, bass and PA amps in the early sixties. Brisbane was arguably the ‘rock capital’ of Australia in those days and VASE sold incredibly well.

Now four decades later, we are starting to finally realise just how good our home-grown products really were, and luckily some great examples survive.

This 120-watt head works beautifully, having recently had a re-cap. It is powerful, full of the most amazing tone, and has the "pull" tone pots for which Vase was well-known, where if the boost to treble or bass was not quite sufficient in the normal sweep of the pot, the control could be pulled for what is effectively a second range, which starts where the first left off.

I've used this head with 4, 8 and 16-ohm loads, and it appears to be freakishly happy with all three, especially for bass use. For guitar use (this is a truly GROUSE guitar amp), feeding into a 4-ohm quad box is tone heaven, with great saturation and overdrive.

Sold to Nico


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