I'm starting to believe that Bugera is putting the best amps on the market at this point

[jhall]

I Kid you not.  Every Bugera amp I've had has been very very good with great tone.

My current one  (a 333-XL) is just unbelievable if you get a chance to really crank it.

On top of my Marshall 4x12 with well broken in G12-75ts it sounds excellent with the master at 5 or above

The one thing I can't really get with it is that just a little past the edge of breakup sound but that's what my JOYO british is for into the clean channel.

The reverb is voiced just right.  You can hear the bonecrushing bass and the clear highs.

 

  I was not really interested in one of these 120 watt Bugera heads because of their tendency to flame out. 

But this dude had this one and it was broken and I took it for a song on a whim figuring that I could at least strip it for parts.  I did some research on this amp and the big Bugera amps problems and came across the most common one being the molex connector burning up.  I opened it up and lo and behold it had the telltale

burnt spot on one of the filament wires.  What happens is that these connectors are way underrated to carry the current that the heater wire supplies and it tends to fry the foil that is the contact in the molex connector. 

I cut the whole connector off and wired all the transformer wires directly to the PCB pins.  Turned the amp on and bada-bing the filaments lit right up.  Problem solved.....  Permanantly.

This amp screams with tone and even the lead channel with tons of gain is very articulate.

When it is cranked to the point that the cones are working it sounds unfreeking believable.

Poor guy I got it from even went so far as to have it re-tubed with a quad of Ruby BMSTR EL-34s thinking this would be the fix so It has a brand new set of power tubes.

I did notice that the pots on this amp are very little plastic shafed pots that wire directly to a daughter-board on the PCB and would be a pita to replace if broken (which looks like it'd be quite east to do if you knock it about).  I'd think that with some care and spare time you could do a higher quality replacement but

I suppose they needed to keep this amp at the sub-$600.00 mark.  As for me I got it for $150.00 + about 45 minutes of my time to fix the bull{censored} designed molex connector and I have a screaming toy!! 

[tlbonehead]

not a fan of the two I've played thru.

[Viesczy]

My 333xl stacks up well against my xxx.

The stronger build quality of the XXX is about the only "better" there is about it, tonally they both sound amazing.

I cannot wait to try the Trirec, comparing it againsts my Mesa RKII to see how that stacks up.  I dunno if I'm buying gen1 Trirec though.

 

Derek

[buckethead99]

They make some good stuff no doubt,Just got a tube combo and its up to par with my Marshall.