Carvin V3M

I'm not a big fan of EL84s, but I have seen with the Mini Recto can do. Just curious if anyone here has played through the Carvin V3M (mini V3).

Wayyyyy better value for your money than a Mini Recto in my opinion. . The V3M sounds really good, has 3 channels, line out, 50/22/7 watt options, and reverb for half the price of the Mesa. It's built in the USA also.

I thought the V3M sounded horrible. I had a V3 which I liked. I much prefer the mini rec.

Had one and sent it back. It could not do the low end, palm muted chunk thing for me. Read a lot about changing out tubes but I ran out of time trying it out and sent it back.

I bought a V3MC not too long ago. I did not opt for the V30 as those are probably imports from China and not the good ones from the UK. Yes, the V3M does need some tube changes. I found it rather harsh at first. Discovered the EL84 bias was not correct and put it where it should be and all was good. Still the two lead channels did nothing but feedback. I was not ready to give up so I replaced all of the preamp tubes. Trick to this amp is V2, that needs to be a 12AT7 if you want good base response and adjustable gain. Now the V3MC can recreate some vintage tones and still crank out some heavy tones for metal. Also replaced the speaker with one that was not as efficient. Since I bought a WGS Black Hawk HP100 for my Mark IV, somehow I believe the Mark IV was a bit too much for the WGS speaker (kept heating up the voice coil). Actually there is nothing wrong with the Carvin GT12 speaker, sounded great in my extension cab and the Mark IV. The WGS BH HP100 is now in the V3MC. This little amp works great, sounds decent. Only issue I can see is the acoustic cavity of the amp is too small for a 12 inch speaker. I ran the amp through a 412 with V30's (Mesa originals that I mounted in an Egnator cab) and it rocks. Also plugged it into my extension 1x12 cab and used the on board speaker in parallel, competes with the Mark IV very well. I basically bought this amp for travel since the Mark IV is too heavy to carry and too loud for practice at my friends house. Why we do it after all the kids are put to bed I am not sure (oh wait, never mind, when they are up all they do is interfere with their dad, pull the chords out, turn off the amp, and just mess with him for attention).

My first impressions, should I send it back? after tweaking the amp, heck no, its a keeper! I was considering a TA-30 but for the price the V3MC is a great amp with the proper preamp tubes (and correct bias set for the EL84). Quality wise, not bad, (Mesa would be better quality, at least my MKV, MKIV, RA100 and the old MKIII are top notch). I would prefer toggle switches for power selector or output impedance than the slide switches (must be made from CSW since they have the same feel (open frame slide switch are okay but do not have precise detents and feel loose, believe it or not, they are not cheap switches and have used them in the past and now at a new company we use them as well). The clean channel is nice and has a few voicing switches as do the other two lead channels. However, effects of the different settings are more appreciated with an extension cab or 412 than through the combo speaker due to signal cancellation. The power cord seems a little thin so I am using the old one from my Mark IV (I replaced it with a longer one). Foot switch works well, boost also is a great feature. Effects loop is also great. The digital reverb is also nice (be weary of EBAY as some of the early production units had some feedback issues which caused a motor boat sound, I can dial this in with all of my digital delays if feedback is set too high, also called decay). The cabinet of the V3MC is made from multi layer plywood. I did have some vibration between the metal cover plate and grill plate. I was able to fix that with rubber sealing tape to dampen the sheet metal vibration. This occurred after I removed the amp from the enclosure to check tube bias. Overall, not a bad amp to have.
There are probably other amps that are just as good or better, but I chose this for the 3 channels, overall weight and final cost.

Thanks, Bandit! As always, a thorough, insightful post!

I bought the V3m New at approximately $743 (need to buy the footswitch separate). For a combo in a small package, Mesa amps were $1000.00 more than I wanted to spend. I am sure they are worth the extra money but for $1750 I would rather put that towards a Mark V, RA100, or Triple Rectifier head. Of course there are similar tube amps like Marshall, Fender, Vox, Blackstar and Peavy that offer tube amps in the $500 to $800 dollar range that may be good candidates or not. The V3MC was not player ready out of box due to the factory bias (may have changed due to shipping and vibration but unlikely). I just retubed the amp and put the original speaker back in (tone of the WGS was not what I wanted which took a few days to mull it over). I tried to adapt to the higher gain with a 12ax7 in the 2nd tube socket but 12AT7 was the best option. I could have tried the other options from the list above. I heard someone play through a VOX and that sounded very nice for the blues and jazzy tones, but for heavy metal, not sure....

The V3MC when hitched up to an extension cabinet (deep 1x12 with a neo driver speaker, I use this with my Mark IV and it really provides a full tone similar to a 412 but only two speakers) the small anemic combo becomes alive and will rival the Mark IV in both the lead channel and clean. The little amp has some power and will deliver with the right speaker arrangement but on its own as is the case with most single speaker combos, it lacks some depth. So far on a small scale venue = band practice at reduced dB levels it may be too loud even at the 7W setting. If I was in the market for another amp, I would definitely shop around to compare features and flexibility. So far I am happy after tweaking the amp. Don't let that bother you, I had to tweak the Mark V as well as it was a bit over the top in the treble range that needed tone adjustment by tube rolling. The Mark IV on the other hand, not much you can dial in or out since most of the preamp tubes have dual roles (current driver and gain stages). What I like about the RA100, the Hi/Lo preamp tubes are separate from the clean channel, primary for high gain channel is V1 and the primary for the clean is V4, so changing preamp tubes if you want a specific tone for the high gain channel you can accomplish this without affecting the character of the clean channel. If the TA-30 had a similar preamp as the RA100 I would consider buying it even at the higher cost.

Tube tweaking doesn't intimidate me. I had to do a little of that with my Dyne. Thank you for your input!