← The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons
The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons
Ep. 136: "Release the Curd"
01:10:21
It's the 136th episode of the Truth About Vintage Amps podcast, where amp tech Skip Simmons fields your questions on all-things-tube amps! Want to be a part of our show? Just email us a question or voice memo to . Our...
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- [00:12]
A
Good morning. How are you?
- [00:16]
B
Life goes on, right? Exciting. Always something happening.
- [00:20]
A
Yeah. Is there a fire nearby?
- [00:23]
B
Chico has one.
- [00:24]
A
Okay.
- [00:25]
B
Yeah. Up in Bidwell Park. And yes, that's a. That's an issue. We have had, I think all of July was well over a hundred. Quite a few, like 110 and, I don't know, maybe other people. The weather doesn't affect you if you work in an office and live in an apartment or something. Man, it sure affects things around here where you've got to be outside a lot. Just few days and then a break is nice. That's the way it is in the Bay Area. It never gets hot for, you know, more than a few days. But, man, we've had, like, three weeks of just 75 degrees at 5am and that kind of saps you. How about you?
- [01:10]
A
I'm doing all right. Did you go see that train from last. The last episode? Did you get to go see it?
- [01:16]
B
Saw the train go by. You couldn't believe all the turnout. I actually managed to see it just rumble through Marysville. But everywhere you went, there was people lying in the line, in the highway and pulling over. It's amazing how much how many fans, like old cars, can't keep those train people down.
- [01:36]
A
Was it pulling anything or you just watched the locomotive go by?
- [01:39]
B
Just the locomotive and one car and this one thing behind it, which, like, we were talking about, probably full of water, 25,000 gallons an hour.
- [01:48]
A
So crazy.
- [01:49]
B
Or not 12,000, but still just a lot. So I have had a few people ask when we were gonna do another podcast, and I said, when Jason's ready.
- [01:59]
A
Oh, we're ready.
- [02:02]
B
Issue 54. Mindboggling as usual.
- [02:04]
A
Oh, thank you.
- [02:06]
B
Don't know how you did it. And if anybody says I'm messy, I'm going to show them pictures of that music store in England and just say.
- [02:14]
A
Yeah, yeah, I'm in good company.
- [02:18]
B
Exactly. There's. There is something to a certain amount of clutter for some people.
- [02:23]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I want to go check that place out. This is the 136th episode of the Truth About Vinny Jams podcast.
- [02:31]
B
Wow. I remember 100 seemed like just a little while ago.
- [02:35]
A
They keep coming. And anyone listening to this, you can be a part of this show. Send questions to podcastripboardjournal.com or record something on your phone as a voice memo and just send it to that email address. We also have a Patreon. I'll thank our sponsors. Get it out of the way. Grez Guitars. Our friend Barry at Grez Guitars, making some of the most beautiful guitars. No, nothing extraneous. They're just gorgeous. He's going to be at our fretboard summit in August in Chicago. Everybody go to fretboardsummit.org Sign up for that. Meet Barry Amplified parts, currently offering 20% off of Hammond Transformers, if anybody wants to jump on that. And then we've got Emerald City guitars where basically every Fender, Marshall, Gibson amp that we ever talk about, they probably have or can track down for you. They are also crushing it on YouTube. They've got this on the road series. It looks like it should be on the Discovery Channel, but you get to watch it for free on YouTube. Go follow them, go visit them if you're ever here in Seattle, Washington, Some of the best people in the business.
- [03:41]
B
Excellent.
- [03:43]
A
What's on your bench right now?
- [03:45]
B
Yeah, I. It's not on the bench right now, but I thought of it last week when I. Because you usually ask me that. And then I go.
- [03:57]
A
Let'S see.
- [03:57]
B
The great Bruce McMillan who owns the small, a cool music store in Chico called Music Connection and is also an unbelievable musician who played on that record with Joe Craven that where they did all the Garcia songs, which by the way, even if you don't like the Dead, that thing burns. That band is just hot. I think that came out right before the Plague. And if it had, if it hadn't been for that, I bet you they would have done a lot of touring, you know, at Grateful Dead E type places, because they were just check that record out. It's definitely a cut above. Anyway, there was a time in the 60s, believe it or not, when you could buy a guitar that had a little amplifier in the case so you didn't have to get your mom to buy you an amp, right? Mom. Mom, look, it's got an amp. And by far the most famous ones are made by Dan Electro labeled Silvertone. And they have those little black and white guitars, one pickup or two pickup and a little teeny tube amp stapled inside the cabinet. The Dan Electro ones are okay, but they're not much. But there's a Valco one, in other words, National Supro. And he found this thing in his cool yellow case with this big chrome V and it said airline. And in it was a Valco made little three quarter size solid body electric guitar and an amp in the case. But this amp is the small baby supra with a 6v6 and a 5x3 and a 6sl7, like an awesome amp. Whereas the Dan Electros are little Radio tube, no transformer type, cheapo, you know, amps. And that thing sounded. I wanted to figure out a way to hook the amp up to a bigger cabinet because flying it through my test cabinet sounded fantastic. And even through the little speaker in the case, it still sounded really fantastic. And it's just a trippy long box where the long skinny end lifts up and down inside. They tuck the guitar and the amp down in there. So that's what was on the bench. Actually, really what's on it now is PA heads. Everybody wants to get one fixed up. Which reminds me, I've been, I've been battling with raising my prices all my every. Everyone is just yelling at me going, what the hell are you? What do you mean? You know, I, I'd sell a PA head for whatever and there'd be one that sold for even more that no one had ever even fixed up. But I just have such a hard time keeping up to speed and not thinking it's 2000 or 2005 or whenever. So it was, it got hit home pretty hard. I gave one of my PA heads to a good friend who said he would try to sell it on reverb, which it did for like $1600 in 40 minutes. Whereas I would have said, boy, that seems like a lot, but, but it's not really, you know, you take that money to and go buy something new and you know you're not going to get anything like that, that's for sure. And I've had to bump up the prices and restore, bring some of that PA stuff. I used to say 250, but you know, when it's 10 hours of work.
- [07:35]
A
Yeah, you gotta raise your price.
- [07:37]
B
Yeah, yeah, I gotta, I gotta bump, I had gotta bump it up a little bit. But it was kind of fun to see one of the cool, rare Masco heads sell for some serious dinero real fast. And that was, that was encouraging because that's sort of the market I've slowly, patiently been working on over the years. And I'll tell you, there's a reason for that stuff. It's got the, it's got the ingredients and you do a good job putting something like that together and you've got something that sounds really good. Although here's a warning. Single ended baby Soundmaster, one of the rarest of the rare for Marcello in Italy, who I've done a few PA heads for before. I had just restored them and just done one little tweak or two to them. Usually like put a little, make a little bright Channel on one side. But I decided for this guy, you know, that we should really get serious about setting it up because it has two channels and doing something different, getting the widest range of tones that we can out of it. That thing kicked my ass for weeks. Like, you just can't change something to something else all the time without dire consequences. You know, the thing had noise, or it oscillated or it wasn't loud enough or it wasn't bright enough. And I tried all kinds of different stuff before I finally figured out a way to do it. So it's not that it's always easy. Any old pa, if it works, will. Will amplify a guitar and sound okay. But modifying them is tricky. And did I tell you this? So there's this Masco we were talking about, Ma 17. Ma 17 is the one. I mean, I never see him come back ever. So I got a Stromberg Carlson that had the same tube lineup, same. Basically the same thing. And I thought, well, why can't I just make this out of that? Two days later, No, I had to go and put this Stromberg Carlson back to stock and redo it like I normally would do a Stromberg. Because when you hooked it up like a Masco, there's just all these problems. So if you're getting into that, don't be discouraged that if you try to put a tone circuit in something and then you've got all this oscillation or hum or noise, that's the way it is.
- [10:05]
A
Okay, See?
- [10:06]
B
Amp encased. That was good. And I'm going to read something today which is pretty rare.
- [10:12]
A
Oh, wow.
- [10:12]
B
I love it. Let's see. I don't know. There's a pretty cool amp here called a Premier Twin eight. Two eight. And Premiere has these really cool colored knobs and they're real antique looking. If any of you. If anybody out there knows what that is, you might want to give me a call because a listener just sent it to me and said, here. And they go for a lot. They can go for 2000. But this guy wants to pass it along to a musician and willing to give somebody a really cool price for it.
- [10:46]
A
I love it. That's awesome.
- [10:48]
B
Premiere Twin 8. Check out the pictures of those things. They're wild.
- [10:52]
A
Yeah, I'm looking at it online. They're beautiful.
- [10:54]
B
They're super wild. You know, I've also had two requests that we do the shirts again. And that's been in the. In the last couple of weeks, I think we had a couple of months or two ago where people said, could you do the shirts again? Does that camera ready copy still exist at the Silk Shop in Chico, California?
- [11:12]
A
Amron has moved on, but he just. We were just emailing last week because I said I'd love to, to do another batch. And so we will do another batch. And a dear friend of Tava who is based in Australia, Jack from Wandering Boy Guitars has designed a couple of new Tava shirts. So we've, we might have some new offerings. Maybe give me two weeks. I'll do it like a week before the summit when I don't have anything else to do.
- [11:45]
B
How about a week after the summit after you slept for a week.
- [11:48]
A
Well, that's who might be.
- [11:50]
B
That might be better. They have the original art still, I bet you. Right. And we can. And even though Cameron is not there, we can still advertise and commend and hype the Silk Shop in Chico and. Yeah, and the whole new way of doing it where nobody has boxes of T shirts in their van.
- [12:11]
A
Yes.
- [12:12]
B
You know, that's key. They had 10 XXXLs left over. The, the way they figured out how to do that where everybody can have just what they want, it goes right to them. And you know how shy I am and kind of being able to sell them for real money, you know, if they're at my house, I just say, oh you're a cool guy. Take it. And that don't feed the bulldog, as Matlock would say. Right. So getting the pricing out of it, out of my hands was, was really helpful for me. You know, kind of like I'm having to learn to charge more for the work and yeah, we'll do a batch. Yeah, so that'd be fun. I know there'd be a few people that would say great to that.
- [12:57]
A
Even after 130 of these episodes, people keep saying they've discovered it for the first time. So it's totally over.
- [13:03]
B
There we go. There you go. There you go.
- [13:07]
A
You mentioned the dead. I've got some news. Maybe this isn't news, but it seemed like it was news. Tim Marcus over at Milkman Amps in San Francisco just announced he's doing a faithful reproduction of the JBL K120 Alnico speaker. He's going to be magnetizing, testing and assembling them all in San Francisco and warranting them. And it sounds like he's going to put these in his Jerry Garcia inspired amps at first and then he's going to sell them individually if anybody wants those so that I, I Saw that on the Internet.
- [13:41]
B
Does JBL have something to say about that? Well, they don't say jbl but. But what is it?
- [13:47]
A
They don't say jbl. They probably say Milkman, but he's trying to.
- [13:51]
B
Boy. So that's a really fancy cast frame, you know, heavy duty 12 inch speaker. That's a lot of work. Most people who say they make speakers actually have eminence make speakers for them. You know, the big companies. But like these guys, I mean they're going to be sand casting their own frames out in the sidewalk like Paul Bigsby or something. That's pretty far out. Pretty wild, right? Yeah, that is very.
- [14:17]
A
What else? Oh, and then somebody on Instagram at Vintage Tube Amplifiers wanted the world to know that he found someone to recone the 4 by 7 rolla oval speaker from a GA5. And the person who could do it and apparently can do a lot of stuff with reconing of field coil speakers and all sorts of weird speakers from the first half of the last century is hempopotamus speakers on Reverb. They're. They are in Ohio, so.
- [14:47]
B
Well, I'd be interested in more feedback from that. From that reconer.
- [14:52]
A
Yeah.
- [14:53]
B
On that topic, I saw some beautifully reconed oval speakers from my favorite guy, Weber. Oh. And I, I didn't know he had any oval cones, but he did and they were for a rare old harp amp for the guy who sold the one for so much money. For me on Reverb, that's Glen Sousa who's from a Brazilian guy, has a wife and kids and a full time job. But he's such a good harp player and a good guy all around that he hosts a weekend jam in San Jose which is the North Norcal kind of hub of blues. A lot of it to do with Kid Anderson being there, Greaseland Studios and a lot of the good harp players like Aki Kumar and guys like that. And he runs that jam which shows you that not only can he play, but he can force people to get along as well. And he sent our man at Weber some ovals and they came back just neat and tidy. But I'm always interested in hearing more about more speaker guys because as we've discussed before, most of them are pretty nutty.
- [16:01]
A
Yeah, I wonder if Tim will turn nutty having, making. Making these JBL reproductions.
- [16:06]
B
Hell no. He's got. He knows what he's getting into. I hope he can get enough for him to make it worthwhile. And that, that dead. Yeah, that dead thing we. When I was in bands If I drug out pictures, you could see some real Olympic cabinets that a friend of mine got when they, when they brought back a bunch of stuff from a Europe tour in the late 70s. And a lot of it was banged up but the, the speaker, the big clamps, you know on the front that you just stick the speaker in really fast. It was like an Allen wrench aluminum thing and we actually had a bunch of those and they're still around in the Bay Area. I them off to people who dug the dead tie dye grill cloth on one of them. So yeah, that's pretty cool. So all right, what about you? Are you going to contribute any more today or is it all about me?
- [16:55]
A
No, we've got lots of questions. I just want to, since it's exactly a month out from when we're recording this, just give one final plug. If anybody wants to get to Chicago, you can stay at your grandmother's couch, you can stay in your car, you can stay at some five star hotel. I don't care where you stay. But the fretboard summit is taking place August 23rd to 25th. Someone said, isn't that mostly an acoustic thing? And I just want to point out we've got a lot of electric players. We've got the vintage amps room this time helmed by our buddy Eric Coleman from Sumac. We've got Chris Benson from Benson AM showing up. Eli from two Rock representing Trevor from Emerald City Guitars will be there. Chris Vincent, DJ Lava Lamp, former Tava guest will be there. Josh Scott, Red Shop, Chris Young, Blake Mills is playing Collings guitars. We've got a whole bunch of electric amp content and it's going to be a blast. And this is not like the typical guitar show at the county fairgrounds. You, you pay a little bit more up front and then for three days you get to just be a kid at Disneyland and bounce from exhibit to exhibit and meet 80 guitar makers and see all the concerts and workshops and there's parties and it's a blast. So fretboardsummit.org my baby.
- [18:16]
B
Yes. Can't say from personal experience, but I do know that it's a, it's in an unusual niche. It isn't a bunch of people standing behind tables with their guitars like the guitar shows I go to, which, which are great by the way. Great place to see a bunch of stuff at once and to meet a bunch of lunatic guitar weirdos. But the, the FJ thing is almost like, I don't know, it's, it's, it's, it's huge, but it's small. I don't know. It's just like a perfect size where you have serious real people that you don't get a chance to talk to very often and all sorts of gear. And obviously not just a plaid shirt, Northwest, you know, flat top, bearded thing. Although they'll, they'll be there too.
- [19:07]
A
Hopefully there, there will be plenty of that. But yeah, it's. Somebody said it's like. It sound like it's like Comic Con. And I've never been to a comic Con, but I guess it is kind of like that in that you actually get to meet, you know, the folks who make Collings guitars or Bob Taylor from Taylor Guitars. The Martin guitar CEO is now coming and doing a talk. So it's kind of a cool way to meet people in the industry and that you've read about without having to go to like a namm. So it's, it's fun.
- [19:35]
B
The, the. The parking lot outside of NAMM was as far as I could go with Leroy Parnell. That's the crazy story.
- [19:43]
A
That's a big parking lot. I've been in that parking lot.
- [19:46]
B
Just. Oh man, that just sounds like hell on earth there to me. But, but Chicago. Still a lot of people in a room for me. But. And, but so concentrated and worth every penny. And I hope, I imagine you get some good feedback after every one that says how cool it was and how everybody had a good time.
- [20:09]
A
It's like a big family reunion. It feels like a big family reunion. And sometimes you'll see the introverted guitar geeks and you, me being the host of the party, I have to play matchmaker and say, go talk to that guy. He's got a fascinating thing. Have him open that case. You'll never see a guitar like that again, but it's a blast.
- [20:27]
B
Excellent. Yeah, I do that. At the guitar show, our last guitar show, there was a huge meetup of people who were part of the Davis, California scene in the 80s and 90s, which was big, like, and stuff like that. And they didn't know the other people were there. And I just. Hey, I just saw that guy. He's right over there. And. Oh, there was some. Some love.
- [20:48]
A
Yeah, I love it.
- [20:50]
B
I love it. Before, before you change the subject, before I forget, quite possibly I have a guy who I've done work for who got a cabinet with a real JBL D130F, which is the Fender D130 before the K series, like, Jerry was into.
- [21:09]
A
Okay.
- [21:09]
B
And his. And his question is, is There a new speaker of any cost that is comparable to that because he really, really likes it. And I just wasn't sure. I thought about maybe calling somebody like Lee Jeffries or a steel player who's owned a lot of D130s. But if anybody knows of a good modern version of the D130F, draw me a line and I'll tell that guy what you said if you sound competent. Right. So. And yeah. Oh, Music reference. Artie Shaw, Baronet player. I mean, Goodman. Super famous and unbelievable. Artie Shaw, he's like even more wild and quit early and really wild lifestyle. But Gramercy 5, it was a little small band of his. I think Barney Kessel was in that. I should have researched that. But if you want to go into a side door and get into some very approachable jazz. Artie Shaw. And thanks for the guy who too wrote me and reminded me I can't remember his name. I forgot to write it down. But I got an email that said don't forget to recommend that. And that's some. That's some good. That's some good stuff right there.
- [22:24]
A
All right, I have a movie recommendation, but maybe we'll do some amp questions first.
- [22:28]
B
Sure, I'm ready.
- [22:30]
A
Okay, this first one is from listener Dale. You can be a part of this show, folks. Just send us a voice memo to podcast@fretboardjournal.com.
- [22:43]
C
Skipping Jason Dale Grof with the dude from Kelso, Washington. I cannot tell you how stoked I was last episode to hear the designer and creator of the VHT amps I love so much. Coming up to help me with my question. Short update on that. The amp is working beautifully. What I didn't tell you guys is it spent the beginning of his life in a high school classroom, so it wasn't treated really well. But I did some extra tweaking here and there, reflowed a few more joints, replaced the tubes, and the tone knob is working exactly as described in your last episode. So thanks so much. I love this community, Love what you guys are doing, love everything that's happening. And so I have a quick one here on a. On a food recommendation. Like Skip, I have a dairy herd of goats. We show them, we sell them, we love them. I'm actually standing in the middle of my pasture right now getting ready to morning for morning chores. I'm also a cheese maker and I'm now a cheese judge. Eight time grand champion cheese making competition winner.
- [23:57]
B
Whoa.
- [23:58]
C
And I think everybody should try their hand at this. So get yourself a Gallon of milk from Safeway qvc. Wherever you qfc, wherever you get your milk from, get yourself a jug of white vinegar. Put the milk on the stovetop and slowly heat it up. About 180 degrees will do you, but if you don't have a thermometer, doesn't matter. Bring that up until it starts to boil. Take it off the heat. Slowly start pouring the vinegar in while you're stirring. As soon as the curd lets go, you're done stirring. Let it sit for 10 minutes. Strain it through a strainer, through a cotton towel, whatever you have on hand. To separate the whey from that curd, squeeze it nice and tight. Now you have yourself a beautiful cheese. You can have it with savory foods, you can have it with sweet foods. You can put honey and walnuts on it, have it for breakfast. You can slice it, put it on a sandwich, you can crumble it and you can fry it. This cheese doesn't melt when it gets hot, so you can fry this stuff up to a golden, crispy outside and a smooth, creamy inside. It's one of my favorite cheeses to make. You can make it in no time. You can do it with your kids. When you're having a slumber party over, all the kids will be grossed out and they'll go, ew. Because they'll watch that curd separate. This is a cheese that I do with all my classes. I teach agriculture at a local school district. And this is a cheese that I do with my classes. And the kids have a great time doing this unit every year. So everybody should go out, make themselves a little cheese just to see how it works. It works with any kind of food. And you guys have a great day and thanks again for all the help and all the wonderful information. Lastly, people who want to learn how to work on amps. Get yourself a VHT special six. Get yourself a vht. One of these little amps. They are hand wired there. There's turret boards. Everything's soldered point to point. There are no circuit boards. These are a tweaker's dream. You can pick these up for a couple hundred bucks and you can just tear into them with no guilt. These VHTs are amazing. Get into one. Have a great time. Bless everyone. You guys are all awesome.
- [26:05]
A
Wow.
- [26:06]
B
Wow.
- [26:07]
A
Yeah.
- [26:07]
B
Release the curd. Tweaker's dream. A couple of good band names right there.
- [26:14]
A
You would think a guy who eats a lot of cheese would be kind of sleepy, kind of like, like he had a big turkey dinner. But no. Dale's fired up.
- [26:23]
B
He's outstanding in his field.
- [26:25]
A
Yes.
- [26:26]
B
Right? Yes. Where does he live?
- [26:29]
A
I don't know.
- [26:30]
B
Eight time cheese making winner. That's it. That's not fooling around, right? Yeah. And a cheese judge. That's not fooling around. And I believe my son a few times in the olden days made the whole milk with the vinegar. Super simple thing before too. I don't recall ever frying it. But that's, that's interesting because it won't, like you said, it won't melt and I could see that. I could definitely see that. Well, good. I'm glad he had a far out food tip. Otherwise he was just telling us how groovy we are. And that's a pretty good thing about that VHT dealio. I never work on stuff like that. If it is hand wired, it does make it a lot easier for people who want to get in and mess with stuff because the printed circuit boards are just so fragile. It can be really disheartening for a beginner. So more and more I think there's amps that you can buy from monoprice from China for dirt cheap that are tubes and they're. And they're soldered together. You know, the simpler circuits, I guess it's still, they can still afford to actually have somebody do a few hookups instead of just putting a pre made printed circuit board thing in a box. But if it's hand wired, even if it's sort of a, you know, lesser priced thing, then it would be a good platform to learn on. Absolutely.
- [27:57]
A
All right, I'm going to have to lead with. Well, since I already led with the cheese, I guess it's ruined. But I'm going to actually lead with the cheese. I have an amp question for you. Sebastian asks why does Skip think Leo opted for RCA plugs for the speaker and foot switch jack? Just replaced one in my 73 silver panel vibro Champ and wondered if they were cheaper. Seems like a worse choice than a quarter inch jack, especially as the speaker jack.
- [28:24]
B
I don't know. They were. They are cheaper. They are more flimsy. The I've seen amps that were changed from RCA to quarter inch for the foot switch and the reverb cables. But then you got to have right angle quarter inch plugs to plug into all of those things. It worked out all right for Fender because they had very small, pretty sturdy wire that they used to hook up the tank with so those things didn't stick out the back too far. I always wish they had put The RCA jacks for the reverb on the same surface as the tubes. So they would just hang down instead of having to immediately make a right angle. But I don't know if you get. If you're going to mess with those, make sure you get the Fender ones that have a nut on the outside of the amp. Most little RCA jacks that look like that, the nuts on the inside, which is really, really hard to access. But the good ones, and you can still get them from our sponsor. Amplified parts are very sturdy and the nut is on the outside. It's the same size nut as a. As a jack would use like a quarter inch jack, so half inch. So you can snug them down real tight, which is important because that's the ground connection for them. There's only one wire that really goes to them and that's the hot. The ground connections made through the physical bolting of that part to the chassis. All I can think of is cost, but I just don't know for sure. You know, they're definitely more. They need more service than a quarter inch does. You always have. I've said it a million times. You got to squeeze the outside of an RCA plug so that when you stick it onto the jack, it grips real tight. And over time they sort of open up and spread. And it has to be cost because those are cheap. Those are cheap little parts, Right. They still are using those for speaker jacks on Silver Face Champs, which I often suggest people change to quarter inch so that they can use the Champ with other cabinets. Right?
- [30:31]
A
Yeah, of course. You had me do that myself on the fretboard Journal Silver Face Champ.
- [30:37]
B
Did that cover it?
- [30:38]
A
Yeah, that cover.
- [30:39]
B
Here's some more. Here's some more Jack talk, okay, that I had written down. We use the switchcraft quarter inch with the shorting leg in it. It's the input jack and speaker jack for most Fenders. And when they're wired up right, you can turn the volume up on the amp with nothing plugged into it. And it won't just break out into a huge amount of humor if you don't use one of those style jacks when you turn the volume up or if you happen to turn the amp on, there's no guitar plugged into it. It'll go like a guitar chord just laying out on the ground. So the tip, the trick is that just the other day I said, why isn't this working? And I've mentioned before, this jack, it's really easy for Solder to run down one of the solder lugs and just kind of disappear into these little stacks of insulating material. And unbeknownst to you, bridge two of the solder lugs that aren't supposed to be touching, right? So you plug the thing in and you're going, why am I getting any sound out of this? And then you gotta. It's pretty hard to see. You gotta put it on your glasses and get in there. Well, dang it down inside there between the insulators. I'd let too much solder run down in there. And it was bridging between basically two of the conductors because they're really close together, the way they're stacked on the. On the threaded part of the jack. So when you're soldering quarter inch packs that have the three lugs, pay very close attention that you don't let any solder drip down and do what I did or you'll feel stupid just like I did.
- [32:16]
A
This next voice memo is from listener John.
- [32:21]
D
Hey, Skip and Jason. This is John from Afterlife Studios up in Vancouver, Canada. Love the show. You guys have something great going on here. A couple things. One's a nitpick about your show and the other is a question for Skip. Let's start with the bad. I fell in love with the podcast. Started from episode one, worked my way up and somewhere, I can't remember, somewhere in the 70s, I think. It was sure so graciously gave Skip a fancy microphone. And I feel like the vibe was diminished, compressed and limited. Skip, still love the hi Fi Skip. But something about the asmrness of the old over the phone, I guess it was, had a little bit of magic to it. I'm getting used to it, but I'll still. Maybe you could do like a retro episode where Skip dials in again on his phone just for us folks that really liked it that way. Okay, question. I have a Magnetone 410 here. Not four 10 inch speakers, but that's the model number. 410. It's got the cool pitch vibrato on it. Some kind of sorcery. But it also has a sort of 120Hz. Not super low 60 cycle, but 120. And I swapped out the can cap, had the fine folks at Hayseed or whatever they're called, make me one with the right values. And it didn't change anything. I was hoping that would and I, you know, I've messed around with lead dress trying to hunt down the hum. I'm guessing it's just sort of being induced from the power transformer somehow. But is there any. What other sort of troubleshooting methods could you recommend to further isolate where I might be able to stop this hum. Thanks.
- [35:09]
B
I could. I could use some sort of voice filter like this. How about that? Can you hear that, Jason? Does it sound like I'm on the phone?
- [35:15]
A
It reminds me of the old days.
- [35:17]
B
Yeah, well, I was on top of a telephone pole. Like on Green Acres, right?
- [35:22]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:22]
B
Actually I was sitting on the couch and I had a big window and huge yard, like a field. And I would look out the window and think about the questions and stuff. Now I have to sit, you know, by the computer. But this is a why doesn't my old amp that I've never seen work? Question. And I will say, don't you hate it when you get the parts and it doesn't fix it? So once I had a. For a long time I had a 1976 Ford pickup truck and one day it wouldn't start. And I'm, you know, all smart and thinking I really know what I'm doing, blah, blah, blah. Getting out my ohm meter. Got my service manual. Okay. I needed a starter. You know, you go and you get the starter. Big heavy, greasy thing. Thank God it wasn't a Subaru, but, you know, old American truck. It didn't take too long. Turn the key, still doesn't work. Damn it. What was wrong with it? It wasn't in park, right? That's what was wrong with that. It wasn't in park. I reached up, took the automatic shift lever, put it in park. Boom. So don't feel bad when you replace something that was perfectly fine. And those twist lock cans, the old ones can last a really long time. And hum is one of the toughest things to figure out because there's a lot of sources of it. And as Kernard, Bill Kernard has pointed out to us a few times, because of the common connections in an amp, like through the power supply, which is connected to almost anything, almost everything. I mean, in the amp noise in one place of the amp, one part of the circuit can show up kind of anywhere in the circuit. I like to pull out preamp tubes and see if you can pull one out and it makes the noise go away. And that's the start. But that can be tricky. I suggest to magnetone410 guy that he email me or even call me with the amp in front of him and then I can try to give them a few suggestions. But it's pretty tough, you know, it's a Tough question, because we have no idea what sort of condition the amp is in. Right. Like, it might just have some little servicing issue. Maybe the input jacks aren't clean and tight on the chassis and that's why it hums. Or maybe it's just in part, it's not in park and that's why the truck won't start. Right.
- [37:53]
A
Sure.
- [37:54]
B
Oh, that was humbling. But I try to tell you guys often about things like that because a lot of people get interested in working on stuff. They. They think they have a problem that no one's ever had before, and it's just. That's the problem that everybody has, or they think it's going to be easier than it is. So don't be discouraged about not being able to figure something else out right away. And don't be that guy that changes every single part in the app because you're hoping that'll make the problem go away, because a lot of times it won't. So depressing.
- [38:33]
A
And bonus, if you call Skip, you get the old phone line so you'll get to hear.
- [38:37]
B
Yeah, that's true.
- [38:38]
A
Beautiful static in your ear.
- [38:40]
B
That's true. We're going to have to have, like, I don't know, some platinum membership where we do one on the job.
- [38:47]
A
Lower Phi camera radio call from Skip.
- [38:50]
B
Yeah. Or the two Dixie cups with the string, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I know it's a lot easier for you to do it this way because the whole. I was about to say editing. I know you don't have to do a ton of that, but, you know, just the production of it makes it.
- [39:07]
A
Easier if there are guests for. For to start.
- [39:10]
B
Right.
- [39:10]
A
And then secondly, we were. I was recording you with Skype on my end, and the recording technology was kind of lo fi even for despite what your phone sounded like. So, yeah, this is easier.
- [39:24]
B
Shout out to our friends at Shure Microphones who sent me this really cool microphone. You think I would have done it? No, I would just. I would. Had to buy another cheap cordless phone as far as I was going to go. Right.
- [39:37]
A
Yeah. All right, we got some more. You ready?
- [39:41]
B
Next. Next.
- [39:42]
A
Okay. Paul Armstrong. Greetings from Taverner, Florida. Sleepy little drinking village with a fishing problem and a place where things come to corrode.
- [39:52]
B
Oh, wait, hold on. A drinking place with a fishing problem?
- [39:57]
A
That's what he said. He's mixing up the bumper sticker where.
- [39:59]
B
Things go to corrode.
- [40:01]
A
Yes.
- [40:01]
B
Yeah.
- [40:02]
A
Having geeked out to all the episodes and getting most enthralled when Skip or Your guests really get in the weeds. I was thinking about some general stuff either missed or hasn't been discussed. Stuff like favorite soldering temp, favorite brand of solder, brand of solder wick that actually works. Brand of solder sucker that doesn't clog or fall apart so fast. We got the lowdown on glue. What about the world of solder according to Skip? And then there's a recipe. But why don't we just get you riffing on solder for a minute?
- [40:31]
B
I use Castor 44, which has been around since the dawn of time and they still sell it. I don't recommend lead free. It's hard to make it look right. And I know you go, what do you mean look right? Well, because if I'm doing a tweed deluxe or something, you know you want it to look right, not just look like, oh, somebody's done all these solder joints again. So I use Kester 44. I don't use wick. Any solder sucker will work, but they are sort of annoying and they, they require cleaning the solder out. The more expensive ones with the spring loaded thing, they probably work the best and I don't use them very often. I usually just rely on heat and gravity to get extra solder out from where I don't need it. Or tools like dental tools and stuff like that. But the good solder is helpful. Most Ace hardwares sell Alpha brand electronic equipment. Solder 6040. Right. That's the, the blend of the nickel and the something or other tin and lead. And that's fine too. So kester44 I think is still available in small tubes, but I go through a big old pound roll, you know, a couple, three in a year. So that's how I do it. Did that answer all the questions?
- [42:01]
A
That was great. Yeah. Paul adds. My most tolerant and loving spouse came up with a new twist on avocado toast that even my meathead son likes. Toast some pumpernickel and then spread vegan goat cheese on the toast. Where do you get vegan goat cheese? Top with avocado and a little salt and pepper. Drizzle with your best extra virgin olive oil, balsamic. The vegan goat cheese takes avocado toast to a new level. Simple, fast, nutritious, delicious. A thank you is insufficient to express the gratitude for the community you have created. So that is why any of us who listen and get so much from your efforts should be on Patreon. For everyone who listens. Just sends you guys a few bucks every month. The thing could keep going and skip, could kick back or not.
- [42:42]
B
That's a very. That's very thoughtful. Although vegan goat cheese is kind of not even.
- [42:48]
A
I've never seen that. I'm vegan. I don't even. That might be a Florida only thing.
- [42:55]
B
So it's not cheese because it didn't come from an animal, but it's made from plants. But it's made to taste like goat cheese, right?
- [43:05]
A
I guess so. Yeah. A lot of cheese on this episode.
- [43:08]
B
Yeah. I bet that first guy with the cheese judge would say, or some actual goat cheese would be fine. But I'm. I'm down with vegans and whatever. I can understand why some people would be grossed out by eating something that you squeezed out of some animal. Right?
- [43:24]
A
Yeah. Okay. This is a good segue, though. Sleeping little drinking village with a fishing problem. The movie recommendation that I was going to make to everybody, including you, is there's a movie on YouTube. It's about 30 minutes long. It just came out yesterday. It's through Yeti the cooler company. And it was directed by Scott Ballou, somebody I've had on the Fretboard Journal podcast. And it's called all that Is Sacred. And it is about the Key west scene in the mid-70s with Jimmy Buffett and the authors Tom McWane and Jim Harrison. And it's this beautiful movie. They found this old documentary that some French guy made on tarpon fishing down there from that era that features all these authors and musicians, and they kind of interspersed it with new footage. And they got Jimmy before he passed away. And it's just this like beautiful time capsule of this three or four year period when Key west was cool and before it got overdeveloped and when all these kind of renegade literary types were there. So check it out. All it is sacred.
- [44:28]
B
That is cool. It's really cool. Right. Fred Neal, legendary, wrote Everybody's Talking and he. He threw it all away when he could have been a star. Went down there and did like dolphin research or something like that. So that's. That's. That's pretty cool.
- [44:45]
A
It's cool and it's free and it's. I don't know where it is in relation to the avocado toast guy, but maybe, maybe he's near Key West. I don't know. Florida's big.
- [44:53]
B
Florida is big. Yes.
- [44:56]
A
Good. Okay. Subject line grounding. Thanks for all that you guys have done. I got an old Pepco Riviera 725 head 2 6V6 21287 GZ34 Pepco Riviera 725. It had a two prong cord, and someone had bypassed the fuse with a circuit breaker. I have wired in a three prong cord and replaced electrolytics that were bad. And the amp sounds great. With one small problem. Adding the three prong cord and ground has introduced a grounding issue. Any advice, tips, tricks to hunting down and fixing ground loops.
- [45:39]
B
So it makes more noise with a grounded cord than it did with a two prong cord?
- [45:43]
A
It sounds like.
- [45:44]
B
Yeah. I would suggest try reversing the two AC leads, the ones that aren't the ground. Right. Flipping them wherever the. Wherever one went, put the other one and vice versa. That'd be a start. And I just feel like I need to occasionally remind people that Fender used the ground switch and the death cap all the way up into the 80s. No one was dying. And even when those amps had a grounded cord, there are times when a capacitive line filter, which is what the death cap is, can be really handy. Right. And so don't necessarily think that the best way is to have a grounded cord and no death caps, because that's not always the situation. I mean, all the. All the big Fenders from the late 70s and up into the 80s still had it, even with the ground, even with the grounded cord. So also, I'd like to know if it gets louder when you turn the volume up or not, because that can help us figure out what part of the amp is really causing the problem. And you could. How about this? Disconnect the ground, plug it in both ways. Right. That's the problem with the grounded cord, is you can't flip it over and stick it in the other way. You'd have to physically reverse those two wires, but go back to the way it was. And then you should be able to connect an alligator clip with wires, like from somewhere on the chassis to a ground. And when you do that, it shouldn't introduce any more noise. Maybe the guy lives in an old house and he's plugged into a grounded outlet, but it's not really a grounded plug. Something like that. Pepco. It's pretty hard to put one over on me, man. And the 715, what is it? Pepco Riviera.
- [47:49]
A
Yeah, that's what he said.
- [47:51]
B
Wow. I've seen the 700, but never this. No, I never. I never even heard of that. I'd like to see a picture of that. All you Pepco owners out there, time.
- [48:00]
A
To send in your.
- [48:01]
B
Send your. In your photos. Yes. And that, that, that. That person's also welcome to call me sometime in the day and see if we can maybe fix something for them. Over the phone.
- [48:15]
A
Nathan in Brooklyn asks, does the phase inverter tube contribute significant gain?
- [48:24]
B
Some have some, some have none. If your phase inverter is a 12ax7 and you yank it out and put a 12au7 in the hole, the amp will be quieter. So in other words, you can reduce it and you can design a circuit to have the amount that you want. But it's not really a gain stage. The purpose of it is to feed two equal signals to the push pull output stage, which has two power tubes. That's what it's really for. So I don't know phase inverters. Like I said, if it's a high gain tube and you substitute a lower gain tube for it, it will reduce the volume. You can control the volume with that. But basically it's only designed to do phase inversion and not add a whole bunch of gain. If you look at a Sam's photo fact on a lot of old audio, it'll have a schematic there and above it in little brackets, it'll tell you the voltage gain of each stage. So that if you were on a scope you could say, okay, well the voltage is supposed to be up here at this stage and even higher at this stage and like that. And I think you'll find that most phase inverters don't add much. You know, maybe one or two times, not hundreds of times. Is that it?
- [49:44]
A
That was it. That's good. Jason and Skip, this is Tim Randall. We formerly spoke about my father, Don Randall. I heard the call about Ames Amplifiers and thought I would add my 2 cents. I love that the Ames Amplifiers is recurring theme all of a sudden. I don't know about the ultimate ownership of the company, but Chuck Widener, who worked for my dad at Fender, ran the company in Orange County. I had a job there testing tubes in the 70s. I don't know if they were actually manufactured there, but they had a warehouse and a test lab for the amps. I have fond memories of working there. One of the gentlemen I worked with, whose name I do not recall, was the bass player on the original recording of Back in the Saddle Again. I also worked for a guy who had a vintage Les Paul which she offered to sell to me for $600. That was like $6 million to me at the time. We got to go to the NAMM show in Chicago that summer and he brought the guitar with him. Les Paul Was a friend of my dad's and we got to meet him at the show. He had Les scratch his name into the finish of the guitar with a sharp instrument. On a different note, there's a gentleman you should reach out to for your podcast named Gary Sunda. He worked with my dad on the Randall amp. His family also had a speaker repair business for years. He's very knowledgeable and would be a wealth of building and repairs. Best to you all. That's from Tim Randall.
- [51:01]
B
Yeah.
- [51:01]
A
We got to get that guy.
- [51:03]
B
That's fantastic. Don Randall. Wow. His letters to Leo or to Leo's buddies way at the beginning, you know, when they brought out the broadcaster, 1950, are pretty. Are pretty wild. You have to get Leo to quit fooling around with this and that. We have to get this done. I have people standing here waiting, you know, for us. We're talking about how he had to have a truss rod put in it. Leo didn't want to have a truss rod. And Don Randall, early letters say, you know, I got necks that are bowing like crazy. You know, half the guitars I have, I gotta. I gotta send back. They were not friends really. You know, it was. They were acrimonious in a way, you know, And Don could never get Leo to do what he wanted. Leo just wanted to screw around in his laboratory making, like an electric violin or something, right? And Don Randall's going, hey, we got this product. We got to crank it out. And that's in Fender. That's in the one written by. That's Fender. The sound heard around the world, which, of course, a customer bought. Bought me. But it has a lot of that great information. I was also impressed with the report from the big commercial auditors that CBS hired to look at the Fender business and see what they thought before they bought it, right? And hearing the really dry New York counting house. Talk about the contributions of all these people and what their strengths are and not so good and really interesting. You know, they wanted Leo, but they knew they had to have Don because he was the guy that was really pushing the product. Leo is just the guy, you know, just constantly tweaking and messing on stuff and designing stuff and.
- [53:00]
A
Yeah.
- [53:01]
B
Not the guy going out there and figuring out how to, you know, make a big gigantic company. Supposedly, Leo wouldn't even go get the check. Don had to go get it in New York and bring it back for him.
- [53:13]
A
Well, you. You see that even today, like, you know, Collings Guitars had Bill Collings, who was sort of a wild man, creative. And then he had Steve McCreary, the suit. Who. Who didn't really wear a suit, but at least, like, was the bean counter. And I don't know, you see that. I think a lot of successful companies are like, Bob Taylor has Kurt Lustig. So, yeah, it's. It's interesting.
- [53:35]
B
Bill Kernard has Eli. Yeah, right.
- [53:39]
A
Yeah. Eli's coming to the fretboard summit.
- [53:41]
B
Yeah.
- [53:41]
A
Get to see him there.
- [53:42]
B
Well, we're not. We can't all be good at everything.
- [53:45]
A
No, no.
- [53:47]
B
Or we certainly aren't. We could do better. I could. I could be better at bookwork and taxes and things like that, but dang it, I got another amp I gotta fix, right? How about the. How about the church organ I had to fix?
- [54:04]
A
Oh, yeah, what's going on with that? I heard a rumor about this.
- [54:07]
B
Someone. I don't know how you found out, but one of my local customers belonged to a church that had a Hammond organ with a Leslie. And the same lady had been playing it for 43 years. And sometime a couple weeks ago, it dropped in volume. And he. He's pretty handy. And he called me up and I said, well, go down and, you know, clean the tube sockets. And there's a big cable that goes between the organ and the Leslie that's just like a tube socket thing. It has. It's, you know, has like six or seven pins on the plugs. I said, clean those up. Make sure those are all getting good contact, hopefully. I was thinking he'd just maybe clean. Clean a tube socket and boom. You know, the volume would be back up. And then he said that. He said he got it a little bit better. And that night I said to myself, self, no. I said to myself, you should go down there and try to fix it and do it for nothing. Just. Just seemed. It just seemed like a shit. Unfortunately, I don't know jack about those things. I fixed a lot of Leslie amps and a lot of preamps from Hammonds, but they were brought to me by a Hammond tech out of the. The box. You know, like, here's just the amp. And this organ was old. It was a model B2 and one of the very first ones where it had all octal preamp tubes. I'd never even seen one before, so it was a little nerve wracking. And, you know, I was a bit tense about it because it's kind of out of my wheelhouse. But I went down there and always take off a headlamp, you know, like a miner's lamp. Churches are dark, especially when you're looking around inside Wesley. But I finally, I got the Oregon amp out and thanks to my trusty ESR capacitance checker, which I had brought with me with my tools to bring down there, one of the filter caps, the very first one in the power supply was dead. And so I thought, well, all right, if a, if a filter capacitor is not even working, the voltages go way down and of course the volume is going to go way down. So I brought the amp home because I didn't have parts with me and I put new filter caps in it and I took it back down there, got it back in there, got to hear the ladies. She kicked off her shoes, she started going, you know, she's playing the bass pedals and. Beautiful, right? An empty church. And she was happy. And we've since. In true skip fashion, I should just end the story right there. But there, there's been. We may have another recurring problem because there's some other little noise or drop in volume that's happened since then. And I haven't had a chance to get back down there and see if there's anything I can do. But we have to actually get a real Hammond repairman, which there's very few of, to get up there and fix it. And you guys would dig that. You know, she was in her 70s and there was one, there was at least four other keyboards on the music stage at this church. And I said, what about this stuff? And she just goes, no, it's, no, it's not the Hammond. Right? And talk about somebody that had no idea of the technical side of it at all. You know, she wasn't a Hammond fan or anything like that. She just knew that the sound was what she wanted to hear and none of those keyboards were really going to get close enough to it for her. So I got to hear her play for a little while and it was pretty fun. And she brought me a card, like a thank you. I'm looking over in the corner of my eye and she's stuffing something in it. And I bring home, I get home, I pull it out. A hundred dollar bill.
- [57:55]
A
What?
- [57:56]
B
She's already. Well, I put a pair of 6550s in that amp that were probably worth like $200.
- [58:02]
A
Oh, okay.
- [58:04]
B
And she called me, oh, I should have paid you more, blah, blah, blah. I said, no. I said, I do it for nothing. And so shout out to The Marysville Bethel a.m.E. church in Marysville was founded in 1860 something. Remember, Marysville is the third largest city in California. During The Gold Rush, not just the little stinkhole it is now. So Zenobia was. Her name was Zenobia. And the guy that started the whole thing is a guy named Clay Thompson who lives around here. And he's. For years, he's put on a very small, cool little mountain blues festival called the Brownsville Blues Festival. And he's gotten, you know, people to come up and play, and it's just a very cool, you know, labor of love type little thing. And he belongs to this church. And that's how I. That's how I made the connection with it. So it was. It was fun. Yeah, it was. It was fun, but it was tense. And I had to drive to Marysville twice in one day. And it looks like I'm gonna have to drive down there again at some point to see if there's anything more I can do. And I had to talk to a customer that. Well, she's not really a customer, but you can imagine she just thinks the same thing happened again. And I have to say, no, the first filter cap is not dead now because I just put a bunch of brand new ones in there. Right. We've got some other problem and her not being technical at all and me not really knowing that much about Hammond organs, really. We got a little bit. We got a little bit more work to do on the subject.
- [59:40]
A
Tell her to listen to this podcast.
- [59:44]
B
I wouldn't try to tell her anything. She looks like. She looks like. She. Just say, no, thank you.
- [59:51]
A
Okay.
- [59:53]
B
She's been playing that organ for 43 years at two different churches.
- [59:58]
A
That's amazing.
- [59:59]
B
That's pretty amazing.
- [60:01]
A
Okay, we got a couple more.
- [60:03]
B
Okay.
- [60:03]
A
Greg in Leland, North Carolina. Hey, Jason. Hey, Skip. I have a bunch of old output and power transformers, from vintage radios and reels to reels that I have scrounged parts. Parts from that have the tube lineups that we all like. I have used the parts, but haven't tried the transformers in any of my builds yet. I was wondering if I could wax pot them. I used to work at Mojo Tone in the pickup department, and I have a vacuum wax pot in my shop at home. Have you ever heard of anyone potting vintage output or power transformers?
- [60:35]
B
No, but I say sure. And if I was going to get to pick how to do it, I would start with an output transformer. You know, power transformer is pretty tricky. You better. I hope you wrote down what all the tubes were and what type of rectifier it used, because, you know, power transformer specs are a lot more. We shouldn't say important, but an output transformer for a 1, 6v6amp or 1el84amp or 1:1 power tube amp of a lot of different kinds will work in a lot of different circuits. The power transformers, you better be more careful. I would start with an output transformer. I'd put it on something, see how it sounds, and then I'd pot it. The idea of that is to get in amongst all the fine wire and make it so that it can't move. Right. Pickups, old strap pickups can squeal because they weren't always potted like that. So if he has anything, if he comes up with any actual evidence of improvement of any kind, I'd be interested in hearing it and keep scrounging those parts. Yes. Here's something cool. My old band mate, Tim, he's the guy that's in a band that has a guy that can sing American Pie all the way through. And I mentioned on the podcast that they did it in the park and Winners one evening and now they do it all the time because it just brought the house down in the right type of setting. He found Fisher was an early hi Fi company that was very, very high end. Avery Fisher hall in New York City is named after Avery Fisher, who founded that company. And he thought that rich people should all have a good hi fi. And Tim found the most outrageous mid-50s mono fisher installation that was like in this big piece of furniture with a 15 inch speaker and a 4,6v6 mono receiver, which means it has a power amp with humongous transformers. And then it has AM&FM all on this one chassis. I did leave a message for he shall not be named Larry Chung. It definitely needs. It needs a. Yeah, somewhere there's somebody. It's the baddest thing I've ever seen. And it could be. It could be fixed to be. You wouldn't have to have it in a giant piece of furniture. You could just make a little wooden case for basically the receiver itself, which would just be, you know, the size of an amp head or something like that. And it's just so, so neat that I just can't bear the thought of parting it out. You know, someone like Bernard would love to have the output transformer from something like that because you can bet it's really, really fine, super quality. But that's something that somebody needs to, to step up on. And that reminds me, if you want a deal in vintage amps, you want a big amp, you know, I know, I know. You don't Want a big amp, but like you can't. There's unbelievable super reverb here. Fender electric. True pre CBS. Like a 64 or 65. I bet you can't get two, two grand for that thing. Even though if it was a Princeton reverb, it'd be twice that much. And I understand the reason why. Small amps are more expensive and more popular and nobody wants to pack the big stuff around. But oh man, if I had money, tell you what I'd do. I'd go out and buy a twin reverb or two. Super reverbs. Twin reverbs, because they're just super soft on the market and a lot of your favorite music was done on them. Just not as many people need that stuff anymore. But super reverbs Amp of the gods. That's. That's one of the classic, you know, Fender amps ever. But it kind of comes into its own with a little more volume than people usually want to play. Although if you hear little Charlie play one, you can hear how great they sound even at super low volume. But I'm always shocked at how expensive the small stuff is and how affordable the big stuff is. Next.
- [64:55]
A
Yeah. All right. This will be our last one. This is from Justin at San Diego's. I think I can say this correctly. Maybe I'm Motander Guitars. I should know how to say that because Justin is actually going to be at the fretboard summit. You'll hear about that. But the subject line is chicken wire. In my amplifier, I've got an Alamo 2566 Fury that has a bit of a rattle. Removing the chassis revealed that there are some oddly shaped hunks of plywood on each side of the chassis to which wire mesh has been stapled to form a Hillbilly Faraday cage. Do you think this was done after a two lone star lunch at the factory in San Antonio or added later by someone looking to improve shielding? Could the floppy mesh cage be contributing to the rattle? And then Justin adds, I'm hard at work finishing up the collection I'm bringing to the fretboard summit. I have a guitar with a computer controlled onboard analog modulation and another with a patent pending, all passive touch sensitive volume tone phase control. Looking forward to meeting some kegers in person. That's from Justin.
- [66:00]
B
Well, I saw the pictures and Alamo amps are kind of crappy made compared to a Fender. But the chicken wire was even crappier than that. Right. That someone just thought that might do something. Somebody said, oh, my amp still hums Maybe if I shield it with this chicken wire, it'll help. And of course, anything like that could cause a rattle because the cabinet's all vibrating and I'd get rid of that. If you're going to do some sort of shielding, go Fender style and go underneath the cabinet. Not on the. On the amp itself, but we're put it underneath the lid, basically. If you feel underneath the top panel of a Fender amp that the amp is out of, you'll usually feel a screen stapled up there. Some companies use the sheet of sheet metal, but it'd be stapled basically right on the other side of the handle, if you dig what I'm saying. And that's where you want to do it, if you decide to do it. But that was some super hillbilly chicken wire screen right there.
- [67:06]
A
It was sort of like that scene in the Blues Brothers or something to keep the beer bottles.
- [67:10]
B
And this guy, considering the guitars he's bringing and the fact that he still digs a funky Alamo Fury, shows he's got the wide ranging, you know, thing that we like. It's got the wide ranging thing. Why hasn't anybody reported back on the outside foil identification technique? I'm waiting for somebody to tell me that they're doing it and what sort of results they're. They're having. It's something I've been wanting to do, but it's just been so hot and I've been so busy. But we talked on an earlier episode about how to orient a coupling capacitor and determine the outside foil, since they don't show you on new capacitors anymore. And then we had a listener who suggested a super easy way to do it rather than the more signal generator oscilloscope kind of way to do it. And hopefully, people, somebody out there hopefully rigged up a test rig and has some actual results for us. Mainly I'd like to see if Bill Kernard is right, which of course he probably is. Hate him. That there's no orientation at all. I used to think that at least if the writing was the same, the way the lettering is printed on the capacitor, that they'd all be the same. But he alleges that, you know, no, they just get made and thrown into a gigantic jumble and then the printer thing prints on them and it doesn't. It makes. They make no attempt for any kind of directionality at all. So if somebody was to take 50 or even 10, you know, Mallory 150s, that's a common, affordable cap. That sounds good. I use a lot. Start marking the outside foils on those things with your Sharpie. And what are we coming up with? Are they just completely random, or are they all one thing or what? So get with it, people.
- [69:05]
A
Get with it. Send us your your results as well as your amp Questions to podcast fretboardjournal.com keep the questions coming. I hope to see a bunch of you in Chicago. We'll probably do an episode between now and then, but thanks as always, Skip.
- [69:20]
B
Thanks, everyone. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks for supporting the sponsors. Thanks for calling me up and nagging me about crazy stuff and being patient about getting things fixed, accepting your new pricing structure on a pa. You guys better get a PA head while they're still telling you that. I. It's. I've all. It's just, it was so affordable for so long and it's just not, you know, the goods, the good amps, even though they don't say Fender on them, people have wised up and the old stuff serviced and done upright is. Is one way to get the kind of sound and reliability that you'd have to pay a ton of money to get otherwise, you know, as far as it being an official marshal or box or Fender or whatever. So keep your eyes peeled and thanks, Jason. We'll do it again as soon as you're ready.
- [70:19]
A
All right, thanks, Skip.