Noone knows it ?

1) Tube issue is described here http://www.mcallister-productions.com/vox.php its a very easy fix if your amp hasn't been done at the factory.

2) All tube amps hum, The AC30HW is not a noisy amp in my experience.

3) The amps sound great by themselves (more blues than rock tones) but they take pedals well so getting a good rock sound would be pretty easy. It has a master volume so can be used at home, but these amps sound best when cranked up a bit, very loud ! The AC15 may be better at home which is what I chose.

4) The build quality of these amps is very high, much better than the Classic series. I have worked on these amps and they are very well put together.

I think I would recommend this amp to you. I´m from Germany, too by the way :)
In my opinion it´s very flexible and if you really know what tone you like you can still mod the amp (even it´s a great amp out of the box) to get your personal super amp. I do some classic rock and I´m really satisfied with the AC30HW. Few days ago I found a site called www.ac30-guide.com and there´s an article on HW mods. I did this and now I got a superb amp for my tone (specialized to my tone of course).
I also tried different speaker and I´m now with the Celestion G12H30 that fit my sound best.
By the way, Status Quo uses AC30s and Marshals in a mix but you can get great quo-sounds out of this standing alone.

Pro Quo and pro AC30HW :)

For the original discussion with a little more tech info on the mods:

http://vintageamps.com/plexiboard/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=99245

"The Fix" i simply moving the grid resistor from the turret board to the tube socket like in "the old days". It provides better noise isolation. The JJ tubes are a little more sensitive in that regard than some others. The JJ's are the only ones I tried that exhibited a noise problem. No sonic change (inprovement) in "the fix" it just allows the amp to use anyones EL84 now.

I own a vox ac30 hw2x. I absolutely loved it and played 3 mnths with no problems. Then i noticed that the treble started sounding terrible. Very icy and sharp when before it was smooth and warm.

Immediately i thought the tubes needed replace. I installed high performance matched jjs. It sounded good for about two days and then same thing. Terrible treble sound, the natural breakup of the amp was horrible to get it to sound good i had to turn down the tone cut and take out most of all the treble. Thankfully my guitar is very well balanced with amazing pickups so i still can get a good sound from it. Now I took it to a tech and he said nothing is wrong with the amp. He then told me my tubes were burnt out. I had just replaced them! He said that the amp was fine i just needed new tubes.

Here is the kicker. The tubes that i bought originally in the amp were also new. They only lasted two months. The new tubes i put in only lasted two days. I am a very clean player and when i do overdrive its light to medium and i don’t ever get the chance to push the amp pass 12 oclock. What could possibly be the issue here? I know i am not hearing things, and the amp techs who are supposed to fix it are saying nothing is wrong. Clearly something is burning out my tubes! maybe a transformer? Please help!
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FROM VOXMAN: Please break up your post into paragraphs - I've done it for you this time. Otherwise it's difficult to read.

Is it just the Top Boost channel with the problem ? The reason I as is because V2 is usually the first tube to have issues in these amps and it is only used in the Top Boost channel.

Looking from the back of the amp v1 is on the left under the aluminium cover. you then have a further 2 pre-amp tubes and then the EL84 power tubes. (Tip remove the metal grill from the back of the rear panel of the amp and you won't have to keep removing the rear panel to change tubes)

V1 is shared by both channels, they use each half of the double triode respectively. This tube should last well as its not stressed much, it is the most sensitive in the circuit though so a good low noise tube is best. I prefer to use a TungSol reissue (russian) in here because they are bright and clean sounding.

V2 (the next tube along to the right) is only used in the TB channel. It is wired as a cathode follower which puts a lot of stress on the tube due to the large voltage between its cathode and heater (around 180v). It drives the tone stack. Many modern tubes don't last long in this position in my experience. I have had TungSol and Mullard reissue tubes fail within days in this position. I have found JJ and Chinese 12ax7B tubes to work well here.

V3 the last of the preamp tubes is the Phase Inverter that drives the power tubes. This should usually be replaces with every other set of power tubes as it does take a bit of a hammering but nothing like the cathode follower position of V2. I have used TungSol reissues in here without issues.

The power tubes are running as cathode biased and fairly hot, they won't last that long in these amps. It does of course depend how often and loud you play. It only takes one tube out of the four to go bad and cause the sound of the amp to change. If you still have the older tubes try swapping each one out. Don't worry too much about matching tubes, they don't stay matched for long in these amps ;-)

New tubes can fail very quickly if they have a fault and its not as uncommon as you may think. Just swap the tubes out one at a time and use a process of elimination to find the bad one. Remember V2 is only used by the TB channel.

I put JJ's EL84's in as the Ruby's were not much chop. I also did a mod so I could use the Normal input and click a two button floor pedal to switch to the Top Boost and the second button engages the Hot / Cool function (all optical switching). I also installed a volume pot on the back to controle how much the hot/cool provides.

Such an almighty gorgeous and usable amp now. Particuarly for Beatles which is all I tend to play.

Next step is replacing the Vox blues with UK ones as the China ones sound wooly. I will wait though as they are not completely broken in yet.

I found the Hot switch makes the amp harsh too, putting in a resistor or variable resistor to limit the effect is a good idea as it allows the tone controls to still have some effect. These speakers take a long time to break in, you can speed it up by playing an iPod through your amp during the day when you are not practicing.

I have the UK blue in my AC15 and just recently bought an AC30C2 with Chinese Blues and they are identical now. Just check your cones have the H1777 number printed on them. Early Chinese blues had the wrong cone but I think it was only around the CC era and didn't effect the HW series.

The Ruby (Chinese) tubes are great in the preamp.