Ep. 137: "Walk Around the Yard"

Summary

Episode 137: "Walk Around the Yard" – Exploring Vintage Amp Mastery with Steve Carr

Date Released: August 20, 2024
Host: Skip Simmons and Jason from The Fretboard Journal
Guest: Steve Carr of Car Amps Rambler

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Introduction and Welcome (00:11 – 02:08)

The episode kicks off with Skip and Jason engaging in light-hearted banter, setting a relaxed and friendly tone. Jason introduces the special guest, Steve Carr from Car Amps Rambler, highlighting his expertise in vintage tube amp repair, restoration, and boutique amp building. They briefly mention their collaborations, including recent video shoots featuring the Car Sportsman amp at the Fretboard Journal office.

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Steve Carr’s Journey and Business Evolution (02:08 – 14:35)

Steve Carr:
Steve delves into his impressive 26-year journey in the amp-building industry, starting with the release of his first model, the Slant 6V, in 1998. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining a consistent design philosophy, particularly his continued use of Solen polypropylene capacitors for power supplies and carbon composition resistors—despite their growing scarcity. Steve highlights his long-term partnership with a transformer supplier dating back to 1999, underscoring the reliability that comes from trusting established suppliers.

Quote:
"Using the Solen polypropylene capacitors for the power supply, that's still what we do. Carbon comp resistors, primarily what we do, though those are pretty much now obsolete and hard to get." (04:10)

Steve discusses how his approach has evolved while retaining core elements that define his amps' sound and reliability. He introduces newer collaborations, such as working with Chris at Jupiter Capacitors for signal and bypass capacitors over the past six to seven years.

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Design Consistency and Noise Reduction (14:35 – 28:24)

Steve Carr:
Steve explains his strategies for minimizing noise in amps, drawing from his experience with vintage models like the Fender Deluxe Reverb. He employs a grounding bus system where all grounds converge at a single point, reducing hum and noise. Additionally, Steve shares his troubleshooting techniques, such as using clip leads to test different ground points and identifying problematic areas in the circuit.

Quote:
"Having an amp that's very quiet is a fantastic thing... it's almost like a star ground, kind of like a little ground bus where everything joins and then it connects in one point." (07:52)

He recounts anecdotes about unexpected noise issues and the methods he uses to stabilize circuits, including isolating specific grounding points and ensuring robust solder joints.

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Teamwork and Manufacturing Excellence (28:24 – 39:19)

Skip Simmons:
Skip praises Steve for maintaining quality and value in his amps over decades, noting that only a select few modern companies achieve such longevity and esteem. He compliments Steve on his business acumen and team-building skills, recognizing that a dedicated crew is essential for sustaining a boutique amp business.

Steve Carr:
Steve elaborates on his team dynamics, highlighting how musicians on his team bring a unique perspective to amp building. He expresses gratitude for his dedicated staff, who not only build amps with precision but also contribute ideas for continuous improvement. Steve mentions the balance between hands-on craftsmanship and managing the business side, noting that while he enjoys prototyping and designing, the operational aspects are efficiently handled by his team.

Quote:
"The guys... have been able to buy houses and they get married. It's a real job and so that's a great pleasure to be able to provide that." (14:06)

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Speaker Selection and Cabinet Configuration (39:19 – 54:21)

Steve Carr:
Steve discusses the critical role of speaker selection in amp design. He explains his prototyping phase, where he typically uses a standard test speaker to evaluate new amp designs before experimenting with different speaker models. This approach ensures consistency during development. Steve also touches on the nuances of open vs. closed-back cabinets, explaining how each configuration affects the amp's sound and performance.

Quote:
"We tend to develop some go-to speakers because they're expensive, and we tend to buy speakers by the pallet full." (51:24)

Skip Simmons:
Skip adds his perspective on cabinet designs, emphasizing the significant differences between open and closed-back cabinets. He points out that while closed-back cabinets offer more bass and projection, open-back designs provide a more dimensional sound that many guitarists prefer.

Quote:
"The most, by far the most important thing is open back and close back and both have their purposes." (49:54)

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Prototyping Process and Innovation (54:21 – 73:34)

Steve Carr:
Steve outlines his meticulous prototyping process, which spans 9 to 12 months. He describes how he experiments with different circuit elements, integrating features from classic amp designs and adding unique functionalities. This iterative process involves building multiple prototypes, each incorporating lessons learned from previous versions until he achieves a refined and reliable design.

Quote:
"It's usually about 9 to 12 months. Process not continuous, because I'm doing all that clerical stuff and we're making our regular amps and buying parts and all that other stuff." (36:16)

Jason:
Jason probes into Steve’s inspiration sources, asking whether they stem from vintage amp designs, artist collaborations, or personal experimentation.

Steve Carr:
Steve responds by likening his design approach to that of a collage artist, drawing inspiration from various classic rigs and blending them with modern innovations. He emphasizes a balance between homage to vintage sounds and the incorporation of new features that meet contemporary needs.

Quote:
"It's a lot of times I think of myself as a collage artist, but then you have to have that background... to make sure it can all function together." (31:47)

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Listener Questions and Expert Solutions (73:34 – 98:56)

The latter half of the episode shifts focus to listener-submitted questions, with Steve and Skip providing detailed technical advice.

1. Warped Fender Eyelet Board (Frederick, Sweden):
   Steve suggests that warping typically doesn’t impair functionality and recommends either leaving it as-is or fabricating a new board if necessary.

2. Combo Amps vs. Head and Cab (Frederick):
   Steve and Skip discuss how cabinet design (open vs. closed back) affects amp sound, with Steve favoring combos for their simplicity and portability, and Skip highlighting the distinct tonal qualities each configuration offers.

   Quote:
   "Now, as far as the question of the vibration, hard to say." (50:46)

3. Flattening a Warped Fender Eyelet Board (Rob Montana):
   Both agree that physical warping doesn’t typically cause operational issues and suggest focusing on ensuring all electrical connections are secure.

4. Microphonic Amp Issues (Joe, Denver):
   Steve advises checking solder joints, grounds, and components like ceramic disc capacitors. He also mentions the importance of isolating specific problematic tubes.

   Quote:
   "These amps should work and play perfectly well. If you were had it on the back of a jeep driving up a dirt road, they just shaking it or physically smacking on it should not make any change in the sound or cause a noise." (63:04)

5. Combining Preamps with Existing Amp Preamps (Jeff, Pennsylvania):
   Steve clarifies that adding an external preamp can enhance distortion capabilities without harming the amp, provided speaker protection measures are in place.

6. Ballast Resistors and Tubes (Larry Chung):
   Discussed the role of ballast resistors in stabilizing power supply voltages and their potential to regulate B+ voltages. Steve expresses interest in further researching ballast tubes for accurate explanations.

   Quote:
   "So, yes, if you had a high B plus in your amp and you were willing to put a 50 watt, that 20k resistor from B plus to ground, it probably would lower the B plus, but that resistor would get super hot." (96:08)

7. Potentiometer Replacement and Control Range (Greg, Indianapolis):
   Steve explains that variances in pot resistance are common and encourages continued experimentation to achieve desired control sweeps.

   Quote:
   "It's nice to have a potentiometer that's doing anything. Have a real even sweep of whatever it does from 0 to 10." (93:10)

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Food Tips and Lighthearted Banter (Throughout Listener Q&A)

Interspersed with technical discussions, Skip and Steve share culinary tips, such as roasting Brussels sprouts with olive oil, garlic, Parmesan, and bacon. These segments add a personable and relatable touch to the episode.

Quote:
"I made some meatballs last night for the people here, my boys, my wife. Yeah, I did it much in the same way that amps. I found a recipe online and that had 30 ingredient ingredients. We had 10 of them here. So I just vamped on what we had and it came out. I mean, I thought it was good." (45:38)

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Closing Remarks and Upcoming Events (98:56 – End)

As the episode winds down, the hosts promote the upcoming Fretboard Summit in Chicago, encouraging listeners to attend and engage with the amp community. They express gratitude towards Steve for his insightful contributions and mention the continuous flow of listener questions fueling future discussions.

Final Quote:
"It's nothing like it. Nothing like it. It's a niche of its own. Thanks for being here, Jason. Without you, we wouldn't do it." (99:16)

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Notable Quotes Highlight

• Steve Carr on Component Choices:
  "We prize, we prize, of course, great sound and great feel maybe more than anything. But also repeatability and reliability are just essential." (04:10)

• Skip on Cabinet Designs:
  "The most, by far the most important thing is open back and close back and both have their purposes." (49:54)

• Steve on Prototyping:
  "It's usually about 9 to 12 months. Process not continuous, because I'm doing all that clerical stuff and we're making our regular amps and buying parts and all that other stuff." (36:16)

• Steve on Teamwork:
  "The guys... have been able to buy houses and they get married. It's a real job and so that's a great pleasure to be able to provide that." (14:06)

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Conclusion

Episode 137 of "The Truth About Vintage Amps" offers listeners an enriching exploration of vintage tube amp building and repair, guided by the seasoned expertise of Steve Carr. From intricate design philosophies and component selection to practical troubleshooting and community engagement, the episode serves as a comprehensive resource for amp enthusiasts. The blend of technical depth, personal anecdotes, and lighthearted exchanges makes it both informative and entertaining, embodying the essence of what makes "The Truth About Vintage Amps" a standout guitar podcast.

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For more insights, questions, and to support the podcast, visit podcastfretboardjournal.com. Don’t forget to join the Fretboard Summit in Chicago from August 23rd to 25th for an immersive experience with industry experts and fellow amp aficionados!

Transcript

[Skip]

Oh, did we do it?

[Jason]

We did it. How are you?

[Skip]

Beautiful.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

My wife was gone, so I always have a little technical, a little fear of, you know, technology.

[Jason]

Yeah. Skip. This is the 138th episode of the Truth About Vintage Amps. Maybe 137.

[Skip]

How did we do that? So many times. I know you felt that way with Fretboard Journal issue 50. I'm sure I feel that way with every issue.

[Jason]

Yes. And here we are brought to you by our friends at Grez Guitars Amplified Parts, Emerald City Guitars that that store currently has, I believe, three or four amps by today's guest, Steve Carr of Car Amps Rambler, A, a Rally, a Skylark, and maybe a super be if I'm remembering correctly. We are also brought to you by our Patreon patrons. Please support us and then I'll throw in a plug for any last minute people who want to come to our Fretboard Summit August 23rd to 25th in Chicago. FretboardSummit.org Come meet me. Meet Chris Benson from Benson AMS Eli from T Rock, the Emerald City guitarist crew. The B A Tava amp room. I I can officially say that stocked by Eric Colem Stack, a bunch of Tava listeners will be there as well. It's just a lot of fun. JHS just posted a video from the game show they threw last year at the summit where Robert Keeley and Heather Brown competed to build a fuzz pedal in an hour. It was sort of a fake Iron Chef thing, so everybody should go check that out too.

[Skip]

I didn't go, but I can tell you there's just nothing really like that. There's, you know, there's small guitar shows and there's the Nam show and stuff like that, but it's a pretty unique experience. And if you lived within a couple hours away, I don't know any. You just have to have a pretty good excuse not to be there.

[Jason]

Totally. So joining us today for a very special episode of the Truth About Vintage Amps podcast. We're still going to field all your questions, everybody, so please keep those coming to podcastretboardjournal.com but but for right now we've got Steve Carr of Car Amplifiers on the line. We, I just shot a couple videos with our, our Car Sportsman amp here at the Fretboard Journal. Turned out great. I think we've probably filmed more videos at our office with the car than any other I know we have with any other amplifier. It's what people turn to. How are things going, Steve?

[Steve Carr]

Good, good. You know, it's Friday. Exciting. I've never done this before, so it's fun for me.

[Jason]

Okay, I'm going to ask you the question I always ask Skip. What is currently. You're looking. It looks like you're in some sort of living room. But what is currently on your bench right now? Your personal bench.

[Steve Carr]

Do you mean at the shop? Amplifier? Yeah. Wow. You know, it's slightly top secret, I guess, but I'm working on doing a Mark 2 version of one of our existing amps. This is also something that'll be a new endeavor. So that's what's there. And I'm. Gosh, I've probably only got about two more hours before I throw the switch. Wow. See what I got.

[Jason]

Skip is going to have all the geeky questions for you. I'll ask all the dumb guy questions. This is sort of a yin yang thing.

[Steve Carr]

Stay in your lane. Yeah, that's good.

[Jason]

You've been at this a long time. You're one of the, the preeminent boutique amp builders. How much has changed from like the first sportsman that you made or any of your amps to the one that you might make today? Have all the parts been. Have you been able to source all the parts or do things sort of slowly evolve as you have these models that have been around for 10 plus years?

[Steve Carr]

Oh, it's a great question. And actually this year is our 26th year, believe it or not, with the first model, the slant 6V coming out in 1998.

[Jason]

So it's incredible.

[Steve Carr]

It's been a little while. Yeah, things have changed. I mean, there's a certain formula that I started with that largely has not changed. I mean, using the solen polypropylene capacitors for the power supply, that's still what we do. Carbon comp resistors, primarily what we do, though those are pretty much now obsolete and hard to get. But I've got a big kind of back stock of them, so we're good for a while. Gosh, the transformers that we've been using. I've been working with the same company since 1999. So that's, you know, I guess those are the kind of some of the really big elements that have been the same. One of the things that's newer for us is working with Chris at Jupiter Capacitors for the signal caps and some of the bypass caps that started, gosh, about six, six years ago. Six, seven years ago. I don't want to talk all day, so let me know when you have another, you know.

[Jason]

Well, we did have we did tell some of our Patreon patrons or all of them that you were going to be on the show. And. And one of the questions was about what? Something you just brought up. Marcus wanted to ask you about your unique choice in filter caps, the Solon brand. What, why, Etc. I think he uses some sort of polypropylene dielectric instead of the traditional electrolytes like F and T, et cetera. He'd also. Marcus also wants to hear your lessons learned on design layouts for noise reduction signal caps and resistors of choice and why.

[Skip]

Wow. Wow.

[Steve Carr]

I didn't know. You know, this is a tough show.

[Jason]

Zero to 60.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Steve Carr]

You know, it's interesting. When you start off doing stuff, you're influenced by other people naturally. And I don't mean Leo Fender and things like that.

[Skip]

That's.

[Steve Carr]

Those are the huge influences. But when I first started doing this back in the mid-90s, I mentioned this before in other interviews. There was a kind of a pulp catalog called the Angela Instrument Catalog.

[Jason]

He's been on our show. Steve Milkasethian.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah. So he, you know, he was one of the places you could get NOS tubes and transformers and this and that. And in one of the. It might have been in one of his last printed catalogs was a design for an amp. And he knew he was also selling the solen, those solen, sorry, capacitors, and said, oh, wouldn't it be amazing if somebody used this for the whole power supply? Sure. This was a sales pitch. But I thought, oh, yeah, well, I'll try that. You know, I was just starting out, I mean, very beginning. So I got those and I really liked the way they sounded and just kind of stayed with that. You know, it's. It's often important to. To try to do something a little different so you can say, hey, yeah, this, our amps have these and that. They sounded great. They're super reliable. To me. They have more weight and body, but also transparency and jump factor than electrolytics. This is all opinion, of course. And so I just stayed with it. And that's. That's, you know, when you find something that you like, why not, you know, and it sets you apart a little bit. Wow. And now what were the other parts of the question?

[Jason]

Oh, gosh. They were lessons learned on design layouts for noise reduction, signal caps and resistors of choice and why.

[Steve Carr]

Wow, that's really big. You know, having an amp that's very quiet is a fantastic thing. I've got an old deluxe reverb that I had Back then. And it's. It's just incredibly quiet. I don't even know how it's so quiet. I've been using sort of this. It's not a star ground, but it's almost like a star ground, kind of like a little ground bus where everything joins and then it connects in one point. That has served me well. And it seems to keep the noise low. Gosh, you know, occasionally I'm just trying to think. Occasionally you'll have gremlins. Like you get some home in an amp and you just got to kind of trace down. Why. Sometimes I'll take. I like to use clip leads a lot on a wire to try different components, but also occasionally a filter. Crap. Sorry, you got to edit that filter cap. Hey, those polypropylenes don't crap out. But you can take a clip lead and just try different ground points. Or if you have a problem area and a circuit where there might be some oscillation or weirdness. Let's say you take the cathodes of those preamp tubes and that ground point and use your clip lead to try different places. And sometimes you'll hit on something. Well, suddenly it's completely stable. This is not something that happens all the time. In general, the amps are, you know, I don't have too many problems, so maybe that my lead dress is decent to start. I do a lot of, you know, learning from my past where I'll just repeat certain things. In a way it's like a chef, you know, I know that works, so I'm going to stay with that. Maybe a more specific question would help me. As far as the noise issues or hum.

[Jason]

It's okay. You did a good job. Skip, do you have any questions?

[Skip]

Oh, hi, Steve. Hey, how are you? I say making your own amps became a hobby, you know, back in the 90s and there's no shortage of people who are building stuff. But the people who have, the companies that have stuck together and hung together and made an impact and whose gear doesn't lose half as soon as you buy it is a small group and you're one of them, right? I mean, somebody that's been doing it for a long time and is making a quality product that people like. I know that you don't give away a ton of stuff. If somebody's got your stuff, it's because it's good. And I say fantastic. I'm always telling people, don't buy an amp that loses half the value as soon as you put it in your car. And there's only a few modern companies that have really made an impact. So I say congratulations.

[Steve Carr]

Well, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. And we don't, you know, early on, occasionally with pros and stuff, when I was first kind of learning this business, we would approach somebody and try to entice them and maybe. And this didn't happen very often, but maybe give them something for free. And it very quickly you find out if you give somebody an amp or whatever, they don't. They don't really care that much about it. I guess it's just human nature. So since that time, we really don't give anything away. We might give pros a special deal, but, you know, they have to want. They want. Have to want to have it, you know, and that's important, but keeping the value up of the product. That's. Some of that may be luck for us. Some, I hope is the. The great sound and the great quality, but also the fact that, you know, we don't make a million of them. There's only a finite amount out there. So they do tend to. To retain their value.

[Skip]

Yeah, good one. Another thing you have obviously going for you is, I know I'm sure you made a bajillion of them all by yourself, but you can't make them all by yourself now. And you got to have people who can do that kind of work and people that'll stick with you. So I bet you got an almighty crew there too.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah. You know, after 26 years, we. I've been again, really lucky this spot. We live here in Pittsboro, North Carolina, but we're right by Chapel Hill unc. There's a really great original music scene, tons of musicians, but often these are people who, you know, maybe they're not looking for a regular job, you know. So I've had a great, great luck with. With guys who are players who become really interested in the gear and just want to be part of that side of it. So, yeah, I've had incredible guys. In fact, you know, I think they're better than me. They're much better than me as far as really, really staying on the precise builds. We all care, but they. They all care a whole lot about it and often are asking me, hey, what do you think about this? Maybe we should, you know, they have suggestions to make things better. There's all through the process. Even the guys who do packing are looking out for any, you know, oh, there's a scratch on this or. Yeah. So fantastic. I mean, the guys. I've got right around 10 guys typically, which is Sort of the sweet spot for hand build operation. You know, you have more than that and then you need management, which wouldn't be any fun. Sorry, managers and. Yeah, yeah, and you're exactly right. I like being part of a crew and I like. My favorite part, of course, is the prototyping and coming up with new things. Least favorite is probably all the clerical stuff, but I get a whole pile of that now. But the guys are fantastic and I couldn't. And I don't think at this point I would want to do it without them. I'm very happy with this arrangement.

[Skip]

We've evolved, gotta have it. Otherwise you're just the great guitar player who can't keep a band together.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, that's right. You need a team.

[Skip]

Yeah. If you can't do the book work or if you don't have the people to actually do the, the labor, it's just the, the genius designer guy by himself. You know, you could be someone a few amps a year, but being able to actually run a company like that, it's very impressive.

[Steve Carr]

Well, thanks, thanks. Yeah, we, you know, I, I'm. That's very nice of you. Yeah, we, I'm happy that we could do it. And you know, a lot of the guys who work at the shop, they've been able to buy houses and they get married. You know, it's, it's a real job and so that's a great pleasure to be able to provide that. And you know, at times, at times you stress, of course, you know, you want to kind of make sure everybody's okay.

[Skip]

But yeah, they're all going to want to listen to you. You're going to have the podcast cranking down at the shop for a couple days just so they can make fun of you.

[Steve Carr]

Oh, these guys get to hear long.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Steve Carr]

In fact, that's our setup. We, we've got kind of a neat place in the old chicken hatchery. We've got, you know, real estate here is a bit cheaper and we've got 4, 500 square feet. So we have a wood shop. But in the electronics build room where, where I generally am, there's three or four of us and it's all just one big room. I don't have some kind of separate office or anything. So it's, you know, there's a lot of good fun.

[Jason]

How is, how's business been, Steve? Like, is it, is it always just a little better than the year before or do you, do you notice trends at all in your kind of unique space in the tube amp? World.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, you know, we've had plenty of ups and downs. Just like any other business. There have been points that were, you know, frightening and other points where you're feeling very pleased with how it's going. So, yeah, certainly we experienced the full, full range of what any business, business probably does. You know, there are trends. There used to be kind of solid trends that disappeared. You know, 911 sort of actually changed things a lot. That those first formative years we really saw, it would slow down in the summer, you know, heading into Christmas time, it would really pick up. Or election years are always slow. We're experiencing that now. Some of those patterns seem to disappear after 9 11. And then of course, Covid changed all the patterns. We'll see what happens with that. But what's the question again?

[Jason]

Is there a like above and beyond, like one amp that outsells the others in the car lineup?

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, that's a great question. And I should ask you guys questions, you know, two.

[Jason]

It's only a skip. Not me. I don't know.

[Steve Carr]

I can't help but usually whatever is the newest amp is the one that sells the best. I mean, we've, we've had a lot of amps over the years. I'd have to count them. Probably 25, possibly amps. But I tend to discontinue things if they slow down too much in sales. Not because I don't believe in that particular model or love that model or, you know, everyone I've spent a huge amount of time on. It's just for our dealers. I want to make sure they, they've got all the hits, you know, they're never sitting on one and saying, I'm not going to order anything else to sell this. If that's one where I knew. Well, it's kind of a slow selling amp. But usually over the last 10 years, whatever is the newest amp is the hot amp. And for us right now it's the Bell Ray. But you know, before that it was a super B and then the Mercury V. And you know, that's. I guess that's, that's the. You're lucky if it's that way because, you know, whatever you just came up with is kind of, you know, hitting home and affecting people.

[Jason]

So totally.

[Skip]

I have a question. Doesn't one of your really well known amps run 6v6s?

[Steve Carr]

We have a handful of them that do. But the very first amp, the slant 6V was a 6V6.

[Skip]

And where do you get those 6V 6s? Is the question. I want to know or what. What current production 6v6 is. Has. Have you found to hold up in that circuit?

[Steve Carr]

Well, we're not, we're not killing the tubes with super high voltages or anything.

[Skip]

Smart, very smart.

[Steve Carr]

But I, you know, we'll tend to use. We. You still really use a lot of new sensor stuff, which is, you know, electro harmonics, the tongue, soul, both of those I like a lot the 6v6s. We use JJs sometimes. It depends. And you know, with the, with the Ukraine war, of course there was uncertainty with the tubes, but the, you know, the new sensor stuff still seems to be there.

[Skip]

What's the B plus in that amp?

[Steve Carr]

Well, that amp is actually a discontinued model, but we. Let's see what the current ones that use 6v6 is are the Mercury v Sportsman and the Skylark. I don't think I'm forgetting anything there. But let's see. The Merc v is moderate, like 380. You know, the sportsman I think is somewhere around that 380. The skylarks a bit lower, maybe 360. So that's pretty moderate. It's not like a deluxe or something at 425 or higher.

[Skip]

Welcome to my world. I'm always afraid of deluxe reverbs now because it's getting a pair of 6v6s in those things that can hang can be challenging. And we, I guess there's.

[Steve Carr]

There's a new JJ that came out this supposedly 6V6s or something. Supposed to be real high voltage one. I don't know.

[Skip]

When you, when you tell me they hold up, then I could say sure. But until then, on side note, we had. Come on, Jason, what's the guy that made the 6v6amps? The Kelly. Jim Kelly?

[Steve Carr]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Yeah, we had him on. I asked him the same question and he bought, he bought all the military stuff like from, you know, Angela days back in 1990, and still had just hundreds of the military 6V6s stacked up. And that's how he could run 500 volts on the plates of the 6V6s in his amp. So you.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess that's a choice somebody might make.

[Skip]

You did it the smart way. You did it the smart way.

[Steve Carr]

You know, we prize. We prize, of course, great sound and great feel maybe more than anything. But also repeatability and reliability are just essential. I mean, imagine if you're. We've done a good job of it, but you know, if you're a small company and you're starting to have a bunch of warranty issues. That's, you know, you might not survive that. So that it's very important to me is what I'm saying.

[Skip]

Beautiful as it should be.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, but I mean, you know, I've, I've got a deluxe. I think mine is not insane. It's probably around. It's probably 420. It's a great sound. You know, when you push those tubes, it's just, it wouldn't be a responsible way for, for me to send amps out. Just knowing that, you know, hey, I help the tubes last. Good luck.

[Skip]

That's, that's great to hear because so many people just have gigantic, like, gaps in their foundational knowledge. You know, people who should know better, people who give advice to people about tube amps. And if I could sneak this in really quick. I mentioned, I mentioned this guy a couple of podcasts ago, but I'm not going to say his name, but he's somebody who gives advice on the Internet and fixes amps and blah, blah, blah. He's talking about the California Voxes, the Cambridge reverbs that run 2Al84s, and someone brought me one of those to fix. And he brought me this printed sheet from the Internet about this guy's advice. So you'll get a kick out of this. Thomas, Oregon went very conservative on the voltages. To ensure longevity and tube life, the plates on the EL84s are running very cold at the factory setting of 270v, making it only about 1415 watts RMS. You can bring the Cambridge reverb up to the same output gain as an AC15 by simply changing the 120ohm cathode resistor to a 100ohm resistor. This easy mod will increase the voltage on the EL84s, which as you know, is exactly backwards. And this is somebody going, this is what you do, you know. The resistor upgrade will bring the EL84 plate voltage to be between 300 and 315 volts. I bet you don't believe that, right? You know that if you kick a hole in the dam, the water goes down, it doesn't go up, right?

[Steve Carr]

You would think that just run. It might sound better. Who knows? You'd be running more current through the tube, which will tend cool down the B.

[Skip]

But it sure. Yes. It doesn't raise the B. And, and this is somebody who's telling people what to do. And then the amp shows up here and the guy's got this piece of paper and I'm going, what? What now? If I do What? Because it's exactly wrong. And I see that so much in people that you'd think would. Would know better. People who write big articles about how tweet amps sound and the amps that they make don't sound anything like that. So I'm just glad to have a guy on who knew how to fix stuff before he started building his own amps, which I bet you did for a long time.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, I did repair, you know, probably like a lot of people, though I don't know if it's as true today. When I started, I built an amp from that Angela Instrument catalog. You know, he had a schematic figure that out. Didn't work. Learned a lot in the process of making it work, and then said, I can repair amps, which was really not true. But in Chapel Hill, there were so many musicians. Everybody was kind of broke, and I was one of them. So it was a great training ground for me, even though in a lot of ways I wasn't really qualified. But. But so much of the repair that you might do in a place with a lot of bands is pretty simple. It's not. Not deep, deep. You're not designing anything, you know, you're just kind of fixing what broke. That's what I do, which is a good education. I mean, really. But, yeah, the other part of it, I mean, I. I'm not an engineer. I had some engineering in college, but, you know, it's not. I would say the only thing that applies from all that was maybe being comfortable with math, but which I don't think is necessarily essential. Some math is good to have, but what am I getting at? Yeah, you need to have a basic understanding of what's going on. And then through experience, learn, if you change things, what happens, and then start to build up a vocabulary in a sense of, oh, I remember I ran more current through the tubes and this is what it sounds like. Did I like it or not? You know, and then, oh, I raised the B plus. This happened to the circuit. Did I like it? You know, and after years and years, you've got this big kind of a memory or the resource you can draw on personally to. Basically. A lot of times I know I'm kind of going all over here, but these days, a lot of times I. I almost freewheel. I'll just start building something. I might not even draw a schematic. I just remember a lot of this stuff and I'm just. Oh, yeah, you're kind of throwing thing at things as I go and knock on wood. You know, almost by and large, though, I turn it on, it works, it functions. Is it good? Maybe, maybe not. You know, if there's a kernel of goodness in there, I'll say, oh, what's that interesting thing? Then I'll try to, to pull more of that out. Yeah, sorry, I went all over with that. But, but I, I do feel like, yeah, it's incredibly important to have a basic electrical understanding of what's happening here. Current, voltage, power, so that you can make an amp that's going to be reliable and not burn up parts or trash the tubes when you don't have to. I don't know. Yeah. Well, what do you think?

[Skip]

I say you're perfect for the podcast because I rarely answer a question without having to ask Jason, did I answer all the question? Because I get, I do the same thing, you know, you, you get, you get going and then you say, wait a minute, what was that? Did that guy have a recipe I was supposed to mention as well?

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, well, especially those multi part questions. It's hard to keep the thread, but.

[Skip]

Yeah, well, you're doing great and you can't, you can't get into this without a little bit of fundamental knowledge. And if you don't have that, it's going to be tougher and you sure shouldn't be telling people what to do on the Internet when you don't know jack. So.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, and there's, there's, yeah, a lot of, some of the guys. Sorry to interrupt, but there are a couple of the guys at my shop build things on their own and, and we'll talk about it. And sometimes you forget that if you change something over here, not only will it have some effect of what you're trying to do, but it may have other effects like, oh, now you're pulling a lot more current through, you know, these dropping resistors or. I don't have a good example of that, but I feel like it came up recently where you have to, you have to have an understanding of the, the whole amp because little changes might have more repercussions than that tiny section that you mean to change.

[Skip]

Anyway, there's, there's the Bill. That's the Bill Kernard comment too. For the. He's, he's a friend of ours from two Rock and he's always saying, hey, you do something over here, it could absolutely change something over here. And it's all just one big unit. He was always hammering on me that the material that the chassis is made out of is the common ground. It's, it's a part of the circular circuit of, of, of all the electricity. And little things like that are super important.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah.

[Skip]

But I say great. I just get really upset about when I see things that are just so wrong. Just so wrong. I remember a big advice column in a magazine where the, the column has suggested that the solution to this guy's problem was to replace all the wire in his tweet in his tweed twin. Right. There's like a hundred of them. No.

[Steve Carr]

Wow.

[Skip]

And that's, that's prompted me to go over the edge and, and write a letter and I see stuff. There's a, there's a very famous company, the owner of which tube amps the tubes. Every book he put out, he, he, he extolled the virtues of his Gibson GA40, which of course, as you know, has 40 watts. And that's what makes it sound so good. This is cathode biased. 2.6V6S. 360v on the plates. And the guy that owns this giant company thinks it's putting out 40 watts. I mean, I'm not making this stuff up. Right. So. So I'm glad to have somebody that understands a little bit about the basics and not just talking some smack.

[Steve Carr]

Oh, well, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. And you know, even wattage sometimes these days, you know. Well, this is. I know there's a lot of 101amps, but I just, in my personal experience playing out, it's. It's hard to even turn up. 15 watt amp much.

[Skip]

That's right. So I'm trying to sell a beautiful blackface super reverb. Wish me luck. If it was a Princeton reverb, it would sell quickly for twice as much money. But the big pro amps are definitely soft. I recommend those for investors someday think, wow, I got a black face twin for 1200 bucks. I mean, that's true.

[Steve Carr]

Those supers, those 410. So that's pretty neat.

[Skip]

That's the classic. That's a classic amp. It's just that its purpose is not needed as much. Like a buggy whip or something, I guess you could say.

[Steve Carr]

That's true. That's true. Wow, Jason, you've been quiet. What's going on?

[Jason]

Well, no, I'm just soaking it all in. That's what I do when, when we have guests, whether it's you or Steve Melchisethian or anyone. I just kind of. I get to relax at this point, you know. 25 plus years making amps, couple dozen models. You said sometimes, you said There's a Mark 2 of something on the horizon. Like, where do you get your inspiration from? Is it still vintage tube amps? You're, you're like, wow, this thing sounds amazing. I got to replicate it. Is it the artists that you work with who are. Are saying like, can you do this but make it a little different? Or is it when you're freestyling like you were talking about just throwing against the wall, where do the new ideas come from?

[Steve Carr]

Wow. Yeah. Hopefully I have some more one day. But you never know. Lately, lately it's, it's more. Gosh, in some ways this might sound bad, you know, what haven't I done? You know what? Not that I've done everything. You know, we've got a lot of black panel, I guess you're saying these days, black panel, Fender influenced amps, done that a lot. That's a great sound. Sound I love. So it's. Sometimes it's like, well, what do we have in our lineup and what could we use? And you're right, I think I tend to think of classic great amps, you know, and, oh, I'll start studying schematics, you know, multiple years of different companies, you know, 60s, 50s, 60s, 70s. And then usually I try to collage some things together and also say, hey, what, what could I add? That's a, that adds usable features, you know, something people will like. So I'll come up with an idea of, oh, you know, let's. We'll just make something up, you know, some box of some type, maybe one that hasn't been done a million times, and, and start to look at that circuit and, and like I say, yeah, what can I, what can I change? Or how can I add a, a fun feature? And then I'll, I'll build a prototype and then usually that's kind of where it starts because it'll, like I mentioned before, either I'll, there'll be a. Something really neat about it or maybe, you know, I built, I built more things that, that worked but didn't sound amazing to me or even worth pursuing. So that happens and I'll move on. But let's say, oh yeah, that there's something in there I really like. And I'll start to try to pull that out and then see, oh, well, what can I add to that? Or what can I, can I get another sound in there that you could switch to? That's going to be really fun, you know, and this is part of that holistic thinking. Look at that big chunk of what you've got, that circuit and say, hey, that's kind of. That reminds me a little bit of this, you know, early mat amp. And maybe I can, you know, find a neat bit of that to throw in here. So it's a lot of. A lot of times I think of myself as a collage artist, but then you have to have that background, like you were saying, to make sure it can all function together, to make sure that it sounds great and. And sometimes there's some fiction there too, you know, hey, I did pull a little bit of this one classic amp, but, you know, it's just that little piece. But we'd like to talk about it because people love to think about these. These wonderful amps. So you. I do take a little bit of license in pointing out some of the heritage of these different sounds. But along with that, I, you know, many of these great amps, I almost feel like there are just small parts of them that are really the sonic signature, you know, hey, it's got this other thing that's weird compared to other amps, but that's actually not contributing to what we like about it. So we're not going to worry about that. Anyway, for me, it's building something, playing through it, clip leads, trying different values, going home, thinking about it, and then trying to figure out what else I can bring to it, building that. Does that work? Oh, wait, that's actually better than the first thing. Now I get rid of the first thing and take that and start going from there. So it's usually, for me, about 9 to 12 months. Process not continuous, because I'm doing all that clerical stuff and we're making our regular amps and buying parts and all that other stuff.

[Skip]

But.

[Steve Carr]

But it takes about that long. And I don't know that there's a way to shorten it because I. At least for me, because I need that time to come up with these other ideas to throw into it and just kind of let your mind, you know, lay fallow and come out with. With some bits.

[Jason]

So that's so cool. Like, do you. At some point in the prototyping process, you're clipping leads and everything. At some point, do you, you know, kind of make two identical amps and kind. Or do you just kind of trust your ears with one kind of platform and slowly evolve it over nine months or a year or whatever?

[Steve Carr]

Not. Sometimes it sort of happens that way because I'll. Usually. The first prototype, I'll cut so much out and build over it that it gets to be just crazy, as in wires everywhere. And, you know, that Nice. I usually start with a pretty nice layout, but then let's say I cut a bunch of things out and. And push a new circuit on top of that. It's. It's getting crazier and crazier. So once I'm pretty happy, then I'll build another prototype, taking everything I learned in that one. Now, the first one's still working, so sometimes then I'll have those two. And the second one, I'm like, oh, there's something going on with the first one that's. That's missing in the second. And so there is some a being there. And then there'll be a third. There's usually three or four before I'm really. Then I've got the complete schematic. And then I go and really try to create a very smooth flow with the layout with the lead dress. And also at that point, I'm thinking of keeping everything really clean and also easy to build because we build all on terminal strips. So if I move this resistor over here and take this thing there, is that easier to build and also more logical flow. Rarely at that point do I notice any kind of sonic changes. This is just this fine tuning of the layout because each amp is a little bit different the way we build them. They're the same, but they're a little bit snowflakes. Like snowflakes. And in a sense, so, yeah, I don't tend to a B. I will use them, you know, in my little local band things or practices. And. And that's really helpful to me. The test bench is one. One sound, you know, and you. You have to take it home also and play it at home, play it in, like I say, in a band setting. And, you know, sometimes things, you hear things, or it doesn't quite work the way you thought it was going to work on the bench. When you have it out and you. You deal with that. So, yeah, there's. There's the concept, there's this large refining of the whatever the amp wants to be. A lot of times I'll say, you know, the amp sort of taking me for a ride, and it arrives where it's going to go. And then there's this kind of. Oh, I don't know what you would call it, almost due diligence of trying it in different places to make sure what you're hearing on the bench is reflected in where it'll be used by the people.

[Jason]

So. Cool.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah.

[Jason]

How often are you playing?

[Steve Carr]

I'm curious. You guys have talked to a lot of other people I don't know how they prototype, what their method is.

[Jason]

Skip. Has anyone told us?

[Skip]

No. There was so much to unpack there in that last few minutes, I won't even remember all the stuff I was gonna say. It's like, you got to take notes as it's going.

[Steve Carr]

That's because he won't shut up. That guy keeps talking. That's me. But.

[Skip]

Yeah, but he, He. He says. Steve says in his own way, if you want to be able to really get into circuitry, you got to be able to read the schematic. That's why I tell people, start with the tweed champions. Figure that out. Yeah, because that's the only way you can compare stuff. And. And I'm so far that I don't even like to see it on a computer screen. I want to be sitting on the couch with, like, five books open and all sorts of different schematics where I can just look from one to another to another. Then it takes a lot of skill to come up with a good design and make it sound good, but making a bunch of them, you know, some of the big amp companies I know, they design something great, and then it's. The amp comes back from some faraway land where they make it, and it isn't anything like they thought it was. It just doesn't work. So you could see Jason, like so many of the. Of the people we support. It's such a long process. Not even I do that. First of all, I. I mostly repair stuff. I don't have to dream up some genius move, and then after I fix it, I give it to a great guitar player and let them take it out and see what they think. But, but car here, Mr. Carr, you know, playing it at the shop, playing it at the house, playing it at the hootenanny.

[Steve Carr]

That's right.

[Skip]

You know, and, and by the way, Steve, I saw one of your prototype amps once. I've only seen very few car amps, maybe four or five, because, of course, they don't break. And there's no.

[Steve Carr]

We try. That's our hope.

[Skip]

Yeah, but I. I saw a prototype one where I opened it up and I went, whoa, this is one where they experimented with a whole bunch of different stuff, and it sounded great. There was wires going all over the place, and of course, the only thing wrong, a rectifier or power tube or something like that. But that. That refining of it is. Is beautiful. And I love a Fender schematic because of that. It's almost like they drew the schematic and then they just made. Every wire is short or every draw. Every line is short and tight and consistent and obvious. If you've ever looked at. Well, I know you have, but look, talking to our listeners, try a, try an English schematic, you know, a High water. Oh, yeah, Sound City or a Vox. And, and that's not where you start if you want to understand, because those babies, you better have a magnifying glass and a highlighter pen to even figure out what's going on. But refining the original design is great. And I'm sure I was going to say something else, but that's enough. That, that's, that's, that's enough for now.

[Steve Carr]

No, I agree about the Fender schematics. You know, there's that website, Schematic Heaven. I know there's others, but that's a nice one where it's got a lot of stuff just piled up right there and, you know, I can't. I've looked at that a million times. You know, you just. I'll just go down the years of different Fender models and look at them and see, oh, how is this evolving? And they're very, very easy to, to read. But I started with that Angela instrument thing I first made was basically a tweed Champ.

[Skip]

Perfect. We love Steve from Angela. He's been on. He was a great influence on me because of all the technical stuff, all the books, all the tubes and also his little east coast attitude. Don't have any money, don't know what you want, don't call me. Right. Which is, you know, which is perfectly, which is perfectly true, you know, which at some point you've got to hand it to a guy. And, and of course, he was so ahead of the curve buying all the last of the American made tubes, you know, at the military sales, see, and ahead to the point, just a few years after, yeah, we could have supported one of those tube manufacturing plants that they shut down back then if they'd have just waited a little bit longer because as you know, vacuum tubes and audio are huge. We're supporting.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[Skip]

Two factories all over the world and we could have had one going on here. So anyway, Angela is fabulous.

[Steve Carr]

Imagine is good to hear.

[Skip]

So I, I think I had something else I was going to say. But like Steve, I already forgot.

[Steve Carr]

This is right beside me as a place. I have pretty nice stereo. I listen to it all the time. It's great joy to me. But here's, you know, for example, here's a notebook sitting right by the chair. It's just all schematics and different things. So I've got, I've got many of these books that I just fill up with ideas, you know.

[Skip]

Sure.

[Jason]

And.

[Skip]

Oh, and I was gonna say schematic heaven. We've, I've mentioned them before. I'd love to have that guy email these just so we could tell him what a great job. Labor of love, you know, that he did. Yeah.

[Steve Carr]

I don't know the history there because it disappeared for a while and then it. Somebody else put it, put it back up.

[Skip]

Well, there are. You can buy the schematics and layouts, all factory fender from mojotone.com and I'd just say that the tweed. The tweed book, not those brown and white ones. In some cases they're ultra complicated. But the tweed one where you can see the small amps and just see basically the foundation of pretty much everything. And that's a great place to start. And so I'm always recommending people learn that basic, basic schematic because even a tweed champ has the same junk in it as a 50 watt Marshall. It's just less of it. And I try to encourage people to start there rather than with something more complex. That can be so overwhelming. Did you bring a recipe, by the way? Speaking of simple, Steve.

[Jason]

I didn't tell Steve that a lot of people talk about food on this podcast in addition to amps.

[Steve Carr]

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

[Jason]

Are you a cook?

[Steve Carr]

I can cook. I know bachelor cooking. Still, I remember how to do it.

[Skip]

Well, next time you better. Next time you better be ready next time.

[Steve Carr]

I made some meatballs last night for the people here, my boys, my wife. Yeah, I did it much in the same way that amps. I found a recipe online and that had 30 ingredient ingredients. We had 10 of them here. So I just vamped on what we had and it came out. I mean, I thought it was good.

[Skip]

Perfect. I go with the Joy of Cooking recipe for meatballs. That's a classic cookbook that your parents had. You can find at thrift stores, you know, no problem. So. Well, good, Jason, we got a cooking tip out of them for sure.

[Jason]

We did.

[Skip]

30 ingredients down to 10.

[Jason]

Yeah. While you're talking, I've been skimming through my 100 page document of all the questions submitted from around the world. I'm just going to ask you one that I would have asked Skip otherwise. Okay. This is from Frederick in Sweden and he asks, what's your take on combo amps versus head and cab? If you have the same circuit and the Same speakers in the imaginary combo slash head plus cab. Could the proximity of the speakers to the chassis in the tubes make the amp more lively? Or does it only shorten the life of tubes and perhaps other components? Since you do both, we figured. I figured you'd be a good person to answer this question.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, I will try. Well, we should all answer it, but, gosh, I like simple things, but where am I gonna.

[Jason]

Does it make a difference?

[Steve Carr]

Everything has an effect in some way, you know, so if you've got a combo and the amp is vibrating, I'm sure there's some sympathetic things that are going on there. Maybe some of them not good. Some of them are good head. To compare the head and the extension cab. The extension cab almost seems like it's going to have different internal dimensions no matter what, you know, it's just going to be a different, different cabinet. I tend to. You know, my favorite amp kind of coming up was the Deluxe reverb. So that's a combo. And that was a really big influence on me. I had. I had a Marshall head that I liked a lot and a 412. I mean, it looks amazing. That's what a great look. That Deluxe ended up being something that. That I used all the time. It was easy to move, sounded great. It was so. It had an effect on me personally. So I tend to like combos just for that simplicity of grab and go. That coupled with what I said earlier, where I don't feel you need much power these days, and a combo amp, it just makes your life simple Ahead in the cab, though, is a great, great look. It's, you know, more massive, typically, especially if it's closed back, that's going to be a different sound. So this guy's trying to compare what he. Like an identical two. The vibration on the amp, it could have some effect. I bet it to me, I feel like it would be a pretty small effect on the sound. If that's the question, if there's some importance there. I don't skip. What do you think?

[Skip]

I think you said it, but at the very end, you got to me. What's the core of the matter is closed back or open back? That's just gigantically different. Drummer can't hear behind the closed back cabinet, but the closed back cabinet has a lot more bass, a lot more projection. A combo deluxe reverb. That's not a speaker cabinet. That's just Leo's genius way of sticking all that junk in there and having a place for the cord and your whiskey. Right. Really. But We've just gotten used to that open back box sound, which of course obviously pretty good. We've all been listening to it forever. And vibration on the circuit. Yeah. If you're playing really, really loud and the cabinet is just shaking the crap out of the amp like you said, there's going to be some potential effect there. But to me, the most, by far the most important thing is open back and close back and both have their purposes. But in today's low volume world, not too many people need a big, heavy closed back cabinet. Unless you're, you know, playing a big old stage or something like that.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah. And I guess there are some musics some of the younger guys at the shop listen to. It's more modern metal kind of thing. I can see where the closed back cab would really be important for that sound.

[Skip]

Sure. Base, of course.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. Bass and. But you're right, I mean the deluxe reverb is not necessarily some kind of designed box, but that open, that shallow, open back cabinet has a certain sound, a very dimensional sound that to me, closed back cabs don't really do. Yeah, but it's all personal preference. I mean, also being louder seems to help. Close back cab seem to sound better to me. Louder. Yeah. Anyway, that's, that's a personal preference thing. But as far as the question of the vibration, hard to say.

[Jason]

All right, now I have a follow up because we're talking about speakers and I know for a fact you use a wide variety, a wide variety of speakers, different brands in your amps and everything when you're in this prototyping phase. And at the end, or maybe it's at the beginning, I don't know. When you're like, I got to figure out what speaker works best for this circuit I just designed, like how many. Do you just have a library of speakers? Do you just have this encyclopedic knowledge? Because from what I think I'm seeing, like you're using like a dozen plus speakers on your different models over the, over the years.

[Steve Carr]

Over the years. Yeah, you know, we've got, it's a tough one. There's the fun part, which is if you're just an end user, you can have lots of cabinets and speakers. As a manufacturer, you know, you tend to develop some go to speakers because they're expensive, you know, and, and we tend to buy speakers by the pallet full. So I can't have 100 pallet fulls. But there are go tos and we've used many, many over the years. Just have kind of weaned that down to some that I know are going to sound great and have. And work just really well in broad terms. But to tell you about the prototyping usually, and that test bench I mentioned, there's a speaker cabinet there that's the same one that's been there for over 20 years with one of the old kingpin speakers we used to get from Eminence, which can't be made anymore. The basket maker. It was kind of an unusual basket that was a little deeper than what you can get now at a certain sound. I'm just really used to that speaker, so that's what I use in prototyping. Once I have the amp pretty much done, that's when I'll start checking out other speakers. And we do have a lot of. Lot of different speakers from manufacturers that we're not using by the pallet that I can try in the shop. But I think what I found is that we've made good choices in the ones that we do have the pallets of and that those tend to work kind of great in a general way, though, at the same time, the most recent amp, the Belray, wanted something different for that. It's fun to mix things up every few years, say, hey, let's really try something different. And that's when I tried those Fain speakers. And we're using this fain F25 in that amp. And that company has been a joy to work with along with the other companies we work with. They're great, too. But that's a really fun speaker that's new to us that I think people are really enjoying and that, you know, I went through a process of list. I listened to what we've used in other amps and ended up just liking that speaker the best for that kind of by far. So, you know, if I took that speaker and put it in the Mercury V, which uses a different speaker, I think I would like what we're using in the Merc V better than the Fane. But, yeah, so we do a bit of that. A ton of speakers to try, heavily weighted by what we know has worked really well for us in the past. And then if we've got something we really want to branch out on, then as a manufacturer, again with money and blah, blah, blah, then we make that decision. Oh, yes, we're gonna commit to a pallet or two pellets. You know, just a bunch of speakers and a big outlay.

[Jason]

Yeah, I love it.

[Steve Carr]

Okay.

[Skip]

All right. There was. There was one thing in there I gotta comment on.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Steve glossed over it. He has. He has a test speaker just like me. You know, in my repair world, I tell people all the time, get. Get the same guitar, one pickup, preferably the same speaker cabinet, because I get chassis and amps from all over. And when I get done service in an amp, the very first thing I do is what Steve just said. Play it through that speaker that you've played thousands of amps through. It doesn't have to be the greatest. In fact, mine's an eminence as well. It's an old, like, PV112 cabinet with a carbon British sound eminence, you know, from the 80s or something. And you gotta have a standard or else you don't know where you're going. And you snuck that in there real quick. But I noticed it right away because I. I can't do anything without a Variac. My test guitar, my test cabinet, you know, you give me that and I can tell you what your deluxe sounds like compared to hundreds of others or whatever. And I. I heard that, Jason, this guy's the greatest.

[Jason]

Yes, you have. You have an open invite to come back whenever you want, Steve.

[Steve Carr]

All right, that's nice. That's nice. Yeah, but you're exactly right. I. I guess I hadn't really thought about it. That clearly I might be lost without that speaker.

[Skip]

Gets you in the ballpark. It doesn't have to be the best, it just has to be the same.

[Steve Carr]

That's true. And also, guitar wise, like you said, I've got sort of two, but it's really whittled down to this Veneto telly that I've had for years and years and years. It's kind of a black guard telly, you know, Copy. That's a great one, A really great one. And use that. I've used that same guitar probably for the last, I don't know, 18 years.

[Skip]

There you go.

[Steve Carr]

After that, I'll try others, but, you know, that's the one that gets you there, you know, 99 there. And then you try the other guitars and see if you need to tweak for humbuckers or whatever.

[Skip]

All right. Well, Jason, have we done it?

[Jason]

Yeah. We don't want to take up your whole Friday here, Steve, but, you know, you're welcome to sit in on some questions from all sorts of random amp lovers around the world.

[Steve Carr]

How. How long you gonna go?

[Jason]

We usually go a little longer. Some of these questions get pretty geeky. You don't need to stick around.

[Steve Carr]

I'm gonna Stay around for one or two questions, but my answers will be brief and they won't be current specific if I have an answer.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

He hasn't been exposed to the full.

[Steve Carr]

Okay, I don't know.

[Skip]

Yeah, so. So. So, for instance, friends of Brett, board journal all over the world, I have a really good friend whose son is serious and wants a real Hurdy Gertie.

[Jason]

Okay, so there's truth about full Tava experience.

[Skip]

If you don't have anything to say about Hurdy Gerties, then, you know, it's ironic. Do you. Do you know a Hurdy Gertie Builder? And if so, have them reach out to me.

[Steve Carr]

So I don't, but I kind of. I was on Craigslist looking for maybe a different band, not to quit my little band, but do something else. And I met a guy and I looked him up online and he plays Hurdy Gertie. And apparently there's a society of Hurdy Gertie people. And he told me he gets hired for jobs because he's the only one in this area. And so if you're looking for a Hurdy Gurdy player, apparently there's website and you go there and you might get him if you're in North Carolina, so.

[Skip]

Well, there, see, that's what we're talking about. I know there's someone in England or I think they're big there. England, Great Britain, you know, and so maybe we'll get some interest there. And I'll just add that we're not looking at something that's cheap. In fact, this guy already built a kit version of one, but he wants to buy one from an actual Hurdy Gurdy Builder. Who knows what the heck they're doing.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So let's see what else.

[Steve Carr]

I could try to find that link again and email it to Jason.

[Skip]

We're just spreading the word out there into the. Into the ether. Right, That's. That's the thing. And Jason, how come I never took, you know, the El Pato hot tomato sauce as thing around here and. Yeah, get some good corn chips. Put that stuff in the fridge. Why didn't I ever squeeze some lemon or lime juice on it? It kind of kicks it into a whole nother little level, really. It made me think of some sort of like Bloody Mary that maybe could be made with something like that. So for open invitation to anybody that can come up with a tomatoey spicy cocktail using a lot of lime juice and a splash of El Plato and it could be a mocktail, but if it had a little vodka in it. You know, it wouldn't turn up our nose, right?

[Jason]

No, no, not at all.

[Skip]

All right, now give them a really obscure question.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, this will be my last. This will be my last question.

[Skip]

All right.

[Jason]

Oh, boy. Pressure's on. Okay, well, this one has a simple and then food tip. Robin Montana asks, is there a way to flatten a warped fender eyelet board? I have a dog house board out of a 1977 deluxe reverb that is severely warped at the corners and buckled in the middle. I know this is a common problem that doesn't necessarily cause issues, but I'd like to fix it while I have the board out. And then Rob says, here's a food tip. Howard Sweet pepper relish, a New England condiment that is great on sandwiches, even though they market it for hamburgers and hot dogs. I bought some back. I brought some back from my recent visit and forgot how good this stuff is. That's Rob Montana Howard Sweet pepper relish. Yes.

[Skip]

Okay, I'll be. Bobby. I'll be ordering some of that.

[Jason]

But flattening a.

[Skip]

We'll let.

[Jason]

Since we got Steve for this one. How would Steve. How would you flatten it?

[Steve Carr]

Oh, you know, I'm. I've told you, I'm a simple guy. I would probably just make sure that it couldn't touch anything it wasn't supposed to and leave it.

[Skip]

You don't even need me, Jason. I've never tried to flatten a board, and I'm a simple guy. And I'd probably just figure out how to screw it in there and leave it.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, but I don't know. What do you squeeze it, put in the oven? I don't know.

[Skip]

Yeah, it's some sort of weird material. Heat and bending it. I don't know. How about just making another one from a flat? Since you've already torn the whole thing apart, you could just make another one if it bothered you. I've seen those boards really, really warped before.

[Steve Carr]

Oh, really?

[Skip]

In general, it doesn't really make them not work, you know, or have any real problems. We have talked about how sometimes those boards can start being able to measure, start being somewhat conductive, which I didn't believe for a lot of years, but I know now that it can happen. But in general, just lifting a board up and giving it a little more room underneath is going to eliminate any problems. And I've never tried to straighten a board, so that's what I would think. You know, Hallmark is when we go, I don't know. I don't know. Try it and try some stuff and report back and let us know.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, I was trying to prepare ways to say I don't know, but all right, I'll save that for next time if you did.

[Skip]

Great. Yeah, there's a spray. There's a spray. You get. That's boards board straightener spray. Just put it on there and it just lays out flat. No, I don't know.

[Jason]

You first you buy a 150 year old book binding press.

[Skip]

There you go.

[Jason]

You get. Yeah.

[Skip]

All right. Give him another question before he leaves.

[Jason]

All right. Sure. Here we go. Joe in Denver subject line, Letting an amp bake. This is less of a how I fix it and more of a will it stay fixed Question. I recently acquired a 1965 Fender black panel Deluxe non reverb that is all original except for the three prong cord. It had an intermittent snap, crackle pop from the speakers and the amp would emit a loud pop almost any time it was disturbed, even when simply tapping the chassis with a chopstick. I performed some simple servicing with no resolution, cleaned the tube sockets, checked grounds and a few of the other greatest hits. Finally, I decided to try one of Skip's common pieces of advice. Just leave it on for a few hours. Which I did after letting it bake for four to five hours. The pop is gone even when I give the cabinet a solid whack. But my question is this skip. In your experience, do issues tend to return over time if they were originally fixed by just letting the amp bake for a few hours? Are there usually root problems that need to be tracked down and remedied that might pop up again, say when I move the amp or the humidity spikes? That's from Joe in Denver.

[Skip]

Okay. Leaving an amp on for a long time. An old fender can make them quieter because carbon resistors and probably other things like that part board can absorb moisture over time. And I've fixed a few basement heads by just coming back three or four hours later when it was on the Variac for 100 volts and now it's nice and quiet. But if you smack an amp on the side or if you move any tubes or if you bump anything and it makes a noise, well, you got a mechanical connection there. That's not good. These amps should work and play perfectly well. If you were had it on the back of a jeep driving up a dirt road, they just shaking it or physically smacking on it should not make any change in the sound or cause a noise. And if, and if you've got that, then You've got a bad solder joint, a bad ground connection, you know, a bad tube connection. 72, 9 times 6, 54. Preamp tube, little pins. All have to be clean and tight and electronically clean. So leaving it on for a long time can lower the noise for sure in certain old amps, especially 60s, late 60s fenders. But no physical banging on it should cause any kind of noise. And if. If it does, figure out what it is and fix it. Steve, your thoughts?

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, I'm much better with her. Gertie's, actually.

[Skip]

Oh, you could have answered that.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, no, that. No, that sounds good. You know, I did repair for a while and, you know, there was a guy used to work with us who was a master of repairing things. Probably 40 years of it. And those are great bits of advice. I'm so much more used to this new things, but, yeah, crackling carbon comp resistors, that could be it. I was certainly thinking solder joints. I don't know if you ever advise people to just kind of reflow everything.

[Skip]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. And touch everything. You know, you've got to have Sharpie or a toothbrush, and you should be able to whack every solder joint in an old fender amp. And if you. If you touch a part and it goes, well, you've got some sort of issue you gotta. Gotta get into, face it.

[Steve Carr]

And I was wondering if, you know, the old amps, if you leave it on, maybe some of the caps can reform a little bit. I'm not sure.

[Skip]

Sure you're sure? That's why you use those killer solutions. They're not electrolytics, but electrolytics, absolutely. Put them on 10 or 15, 20 volts of DC for a while and old ones can be reformed. And I do that a lot now because people have finally realized that certain amps need to be kept as reliable, need to be kept as original as possible, yet still be usable. And I do tweet amps, even all the time that have original filter caps that a lot of people would say, well, these just have to go. And I'm not saying they're working as good as they did when the amp was new. They're probably not. But in certain situations, if it sounds great and the owner is somebody who just is going to keep it at home and play it for their own enjoyment, then, hey, leave those. Leave that thing alone. So reforming is definitely another sort of bake that can be. That can be effective at times. One more. Give me another one, Jason. Wow. Really?

[Steve Carr]

It's exciting when I'LL see a used tweet amp like that. That's all original. Every piece is original. That's really, it's a wonderful thing to see.

[Skip]

I try if, I hate to change a part. If you have. If a part's bad, it's bad. But if we can kind of ease that thing back into service, you know, it's like an old, old, like I'm 65, I couldn't run a marathon, but I can walk around the yard, you know, so some, each old amp is a little bit different. The customer's a little bit different, and somebody else, I might replace the filter caps because they're going to jump in a van with a bunch of guys and drive all over the place playing it or whatever. Right, but that's, that's, that's absolutely true. I see a lot of amps that come to me where the person they talked to before. This is a great one. Just a couple weeks ago, first thing on their little estimate was a re tube set for like a Brown super. And it was like 300 worth of, you know, new offshore tubes. Well, the guy brought me the amp, it had all the absolute finest American made tubes. Philips Sylvania Tall 6L6s. It had a Mueller GZ34 in it. And yet the guy he talked to before said, oh no, all that stuff's got to go. We gotta buy some JJs or whatever new stuff for it. And it's just. Come on now.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah, that's, that's another good point is just to do the minimum on those classic amps. Well, you know, you don't have to replace everything.

[Skip]

And I usually will do what someone wants, as long as it's not something stupid. Because I've seen, I remember a Brown concert that was meant every single resistor and capacitor in it had been changed to, you know, just Radio Shack stuff and orange drops. Every single one, even like on the input jacks, you know, resistors that would never ever go bad because there's a still sort of a feeling amongst certain technotypes that, well, if I just replace everything, then everything will be great. But they're not thinking about it. There's just way too many really original old amps out there that do sound great that the owners use all the time. And so check yourself. Right. Give me another one, Jason. All right.

[Jason]

And then I'm gonna let you go. Steve, I'm sorry, this is, I didn't.

[Steve Carr]

Want to over impose here with my.

[Jason]

You know, most of the time I'm not reading these questions People are sending us voice memos that they record on their smartphone, and that's what happened here with listener Bob. Anyone out there who wants to be a part of the show, with or without Steve Carr can send us a voicemail or a question to podcastrepboardjournal.com here is whatever Bob sent us.

[Bob]

Hey Skip and Jason, it's Bob in Boulder County, Colorado. I have a philosophical comment and then a somewhat detailed question about tone controls. First, the philosophical comment. Some guy gets on the Internet and says, what's the best speaker for my deluxe reverb? My first response to him is do you want to sound like Slash or Chet Atkins? There's such a wide range of musical tastes out there. And then somebody says, what's the best thing? It makes absolutely no sense to me. However, I may be the only guy in the universe now that wants to sound like Chet Atkins. Anyways, here's my tone control question. I plug in to the vibrato channel of my black panel twin reverb and I turn all the tone controls to zero. I get no sound. When I plug into the vibrato channel of my black panel Pro reverb and turn the phone controls all the way off, I do get sound. What's the fundamental difference in these two tone control circuits?

[Skip]

Steve?

[Steve Carr]

Yes, Skip probably knows I'd have to look those up. But if the the Pro only has a treble and a bass, then you know there's a fixed mid range resistor in there taking the place of a pot.

[Skip]

This guy's on fire. Jason. So yeah, those tone controls are just subtractive. And if you have bass, middle treble on a twin reverb and they're all on zero, then everything is subtracted. You'll see. If you have them all on zero and turn the base one up, all you get is bass. If you turn the middle up, all you get is mids and treble, all you get is treble. And the reason why the one without the mid control, just like Steve just said, is it there's going to always be some mid range information. You can't turn it off to zero.

[Jason]

Right?

[Skip]

And the philosophical question is just B.B. king would say, what are you talking about? You got a Gibson guitar, you got a Fender amp, you just take these tools and you do what, what you can with them. And people who want to know which speaker is going to be best for an amp, I wanted to just count it off.

[Steve Carr]

Add that. That's a. With some amps, it's kind of a fun thing. You can do. And it gives you a different sonic flavor. For example, if you had a Fender style tone session with bass, middle, treble controls, turn those all the way to zero, and then you can turn your volume control all the way up and get it out of the circuit, the bright cap out of the circuit and then just very slowly bring up the mid and that. It gives you a different sound. You're using the tone section as a master volume. And. Yeah, one of our amps, the tone session is a few stages down, but it is set up like a Fender, so you can. Even though we have an attenuator and this distortion really comes from power tubes, you can use the tone section as sort of a faux master volume in the middle the circuit. So it's kind of a fun thing to do if you have bass, you know, made and treble on your amp to try that. Different. Different flavor.

[Skip]

Perfect.

[Jason]

Love it.

[Skip]

Yeah. Did we, we. We let him experience a little bit of the Tava thing, huh?

[Jason]

Yeah, he gets the idea.

[Skip]

Yeah. You'll be exhausted and. Yeah. I've never listened to a single one myself, just so you know. Really? You just, you just. We just do it. We. Jason and I don't chit chat. I write down things in a little book. He collects emails and voicemails. And then we just. Then we just see how we just let it roll and it was great. It was great having you.

[Steve Carr]

Well, thanks. It was a good time. And I like, you know, just the relax batting it around five. That's fun.

[Jason]

Well, thank you. Go enjoy your weekend. You're three hours ahead of us. And keep the great amps coming.

[Steve Carr]

All right. All right. And, you know, I'm working on things. Maybe when, when I have something to show, I'll pop back in and we can. We can kick around the circuit ideas and that.

[Jason]

Oh, I'd love that. Send us a picture of your messiest prototype that. From whenever our listeners would love to see it, I'm sure.

[Skip]

Yeah. The rats.

[Steve Carr]

Okay.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Steve Carr]

All right, I'll do that.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Steve Carr]

Okay.

[Jason]

Bye, Steve.

[Steve Carr]

See you later, guys.

[Jason]

Well, Skip got a legend on this on the show.

[Skip]

Fabulous. He was, he was, you know, he was concerned. He was, you know, he was excited to be on and he, you know, usually I listen to somebody for not very long before I go, hold on. But, nah, not a guy like that. You know, he's got a. He's got a good grip on it.

[Jason]

I. I just let him know that Bill Frizzell came by the office a month or two ago and we filmed him Performing Stardust. And it was on the Car Sportsman that we have, and I just let him know. And then we were touching base and gossiping and I'm like, come on the show. So that's how it all came to be.

[Skip]

Well, next time we'll cut them with. We'll get them with even more crazy stuff like Shout out to Paradise Jim, who, as so often happens, somebody tells me that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, and they are absolutely right. He found this cabinet called a Big M. A Big M, of course, was a little Marshall side company that they resold Marshalls so that they could sell them in an area that was only supposed to sell Marshalls because it said Big M. And he goes, well, this thing was made in the United States. And I say, no, hell no. Absolutely not. But in the Doyle book, which I've had for 30 years, but I never read this paragraph. For one year, a company in New Jersey made Marshall Big M cabinets in America and loaded them with eminent speakers and he found one.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

And who knew?

[Jason]

That's pretty cool.

[Skip]

That's as weird as a hurdy, Gertie. Yeah, I would have said, no. No Marshall cabinets were ever made in America. But they did some limited thing with these Big M things that only lasted a year. So you could have a factory Marshall cabinet, if you will, made in America and with Factory Eminence speakers in it. I think it was 1973 or four or somewhere in there. It's in the Doyle book. But I'm looking forward to seeing the cabinet because I know a couple people, in fact, one in particular, Danger uxb, who's always looking for something cool and Marshally, and they don't go for a lot. You know, if it was a Marshall labeled cabinet from England with the Celestians, it would be really expensive, but they only go for like 4 or 500 bucks. And it's just some cool thing that I didn't know existed until one of my customers said, no, you're an idiot. Here it is. And I said, oh, whoops. Guess you're right. So Paradise Gym. Gotta get in a music tip.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

There's an obscure but influential jazz guy named Red Norvo. Red Norvo. And he played Vibes and he has a version of a song I brought up before because it's written by Bix Beiderbeck called In a Mist. And even if you don't like Bix Beiderbeck sort of trumpet, early jazz type of stuff, In a Mist he wrote and played on the piano, and it was very, very innovative and modern at the time. And Red Norvo does a version of In a Mist with like, baritone saxophone and vibes and stuff. That's just unbelievable.

[Jason]

So were you gonna read something last week?

[Skip]

Did I read what last week?

[Jason]

Were you gonna read something last week?

[Skip]

I read, I read it. I read it to Steve. It was that thing about how if you change the cathode resistor to a lower value, it raises the B plus, which is exactly the opposite of what really happens. Of course he knew right off the bat.

[Steve Carr]

Yeah.

[Skip]

But the fact that people are saying stuff like that, it's just totally. And that's just not some guy in his mom's basement. You know, that's a guy who's like, works. Who, you know, stores amps and is, you know, an authority, going, okay, all right. This is the kind of thing I got to deal with. And it is partly, I think, a. A small part of the reason why there's so many of these podcasts is because, man, you're not going to hear something like that. I'd say, I don't know, a thousand times before I'd say something like really, really wrong. Right. So unfortunately, it's something that we got to deal with. All right, More questions?

[Jason]

Yeah, we've got a whole bunch of questions. This one is subject line microphonic amp. Hope you're both doing well. I have a question or really a scenario that I encountered recently when looking at an amp with a friend on his workbench. We are looking at an AB763 brown face vibro verb clone that inexplicably displayed tube microphonic issues in a very big way. All the tubes got a signature microphonic bell like sound when tapped. V2 being slightly louder and more pronounced announced. But all the tubes reacted to tapping input and output. A microphonic noise was also heard when tapping the chassis and input jacks. Here's what he tried first to rectify the problem. Cleaning and checking all ground points, using shielded cable for signal inputs. Swapping out to a completely different set of tubes using various rubber washers and rings around the tubes themselves, taking the chassis out of the cabinet. None of these procedures fixed the problem. Finally, my friend decided to mount the V1 and V2 tube sockets themselves on thin rubber rubber pad like mounts like a tiny gasket. This reduced the microphonic issue the amp was experiencing to near zero, and it had a usable condition. Once more was wondering if Skip or any listeners had ever come across a problem like this before. And what are your thoughts or experience in using a rubber mount for tube sockets. And then he's got a Brussels sprout recipe.

[Skip]

You better have some good sauce if you're going to put it. You're going to have to eat Brussels sprouts. That's like, that might be worse than kale. Okay, so preamp tubes have been mounted on rubber, you know, mounting since the dawn of time to eliminate hopefully, you know, physical banging of the unit translating into noise. This particular thing sounds to me like I'm glad that helped. But, you know, other parts can get microphonic. And, and if every tube in the amp is microphonic, that doesn't mean that every tube is microphonic. It means something is. And no matter where in the amp you're poking around, it's microphonic. Ceramic disc capacitors are something that you can find one that if you just touch it, it's like a microphone. It's like when your skin rubs across, across it. So I'd suggest maybe something like that. And rubber shock mounted tube sockets is something that have been in apps from the beginning. So I'd say it's a combination of things. I'd suggest there might still be a microphonic component, not necessarily a tube. Of course. I would also start taking out tubes and at some point there's no more microphonics. Right. Start putting two preamp tubes back in, seeing if you can figure out. Well, as soon as I put this tube in, all this microphonic stuff happens. But I can have all these tubes out of the amp completely. And it still does it say for instance. So you can, you might be able to cheat a little bit by taking preamp tubes out to help you home. Home in on the, on the specific area. But I'd also suggest checking out any small disc or mica capacitors in case they're microphonic. Now, what kind of delicious stuff can you put on? Brussels sprouts.

[Jason]

Yeah, you're not going to like, you're not going to like this.

[Skip]

Based off of your slice, olive oil, a little salt, bake them in the oven, that sort of thing.

[Jason]

This is exactly what Chris said. He said, have one pound of sprouts combined with olive oil, crushed garlic, Parmesan, salt and pepper, bacon and oven medium, 20 to 30 minutes till roasted and brown. That was Chris in Avoca Beach, Sydney, Australia. I think it's Avoca. Yeah. I don't know.

[Skip]

That's groovy. I'm down with that. That's maybe a little, maybe a little bacon. Not for you, Jason.

[Jason]

Well, anything would Help.

[Skip]

Yeah. Well, and they're good for you, too. So you have to have, you know, you have to be thinking that you're doing something good for yourself. Right on the bench. Epiphone Electar Zephyr. Wow. One of those ones that looks like a bandstand with the E cut out. And like the bird's eye maple belongs to local legend Roy Rogers, who's a slide player. Not the cowboy guy. Yeah, but Roy Rogers. And I've had it for a really long time because it is going to be hard. If any of our homies out there know of a schematic for an Electar Zephyr, I'd certainly be interested. It's not the AC DC one that uses really bizarre tubes. It uses five U4.6 L6s and four or five fairly common preamp tubes. Octals. Right. And the whole amp is in the bottom, but the controls are up at the top. And it has tremolo. And I'm sure it's a Nat Daniel design, but there's been a few parts replaced and it is just a mess to work on anyway. So if somebody knew, somebody could hit me to a schematic for that. I haven't really poked around much, but with our Tava crowd, you just ask people if they know someone who can make a hurdy Gertie or has an old Epiphone schematic. Next.

[Jason]

Yeah, that seems like a Larry Jean thing. Yeah. Maybe this next voice memo comes from frequent contributor Jeff. Here we go, Skip.

[Jeff]

Jason. Jeff Schick here. Kenneth Square, Pennsylvania. Thanks again for the episode. Always entertaining. Hope everything's okay out there, Skip. It's not too hot. And Jason, Fretboard summit, man. Wish I could make it. Can't do it. Would love to have brought a bunch of obscure cool amps for the amp room. But any event, I have a few questions here. First, one, skip preamps in combination with regular amps that have preamps in them already and their ability to make them sound so much better in some cases. For example, I have a preamp, a little tube in it, and even power transformer. You may know something about it, but either way, I had that thing in front of my Sonny Jr. 4 8, which is two 6L 6s. And it's kind of, I'm sure you know the amp 48 in it, about 20 watts. But either way, it sounded great at.

[Skip]

A lower volume even.

[Jason]

Right.

[Jeff]

And then I could kind of pot it up with the preamp. So I was just wondering, is there any harm to that?

[Skip]

Should I have.

[Jeff]

Should I be careful, right? And some amps, no problem. I guess the want speakers without the preamp. Okay. Solid state. Okay. But hey, what could I do to some of these. Some of these nice amps that I have. Don't want to hurt them. Number two saw this cool thing. One of the keggers posted it about the amps that they used live in Pompeii and this guy recreated it. It was really cool. I was just wondering wem, have you ever messed around with those amps? What's your take on that type of thing? And then the next has to do with a couple of PA heads that I just bought. The first one I sent you some information on it. The Filco. Is that really you think that is honestly a job? You know like an outsourced job from Newcome to Filco since they were really a radio house. Be interesting. But you know, like you said, the schematic and things look eerily similar in terms of its how it's written. The other is the bogan he 10 cool little 6v6amp. I think you said to me in an email not your favorite.

[Skip]

Why is that?

[Jeff]

Why are some better, right? Is it that tone circuit? Because it kind of changes the sound cool from mud to like Holy shit. Bright brightness. Okay. Any event. Hey, one last thing related to food. How about an update on that pizza stone? Have you seasoned it up? What kind of creations? Have you made anything come out good? Oh well, until next time guys. Keep up the good work.

[Skip]

Thank you guy. That guy, he's something else. It's been so hot. I've only made three pizzas with my new pizza stone that he got me and sent me. And it is really cool. There's just no comparison. The crust, you know, you got that thing going, you're supposed to put it in the oven 500 degrees for an hour and then put the pizza in there, right? And it. It's definitely. If pizza is something making pizzas at home or something that you like, I could definitely say that was a kick up in the. In the quality department at my house. Thanks Shick. Now let's see Preamp in front of an amp. I know what he's talking about. I built him a little too preamp and the whole point of him in the beginning was to make a crappy amp or no amp like the paper usable, you know, for guitar harmonica. But putting one in front of an already good sounding amp, it's just. It's going to enable you to get a lot more distortion because you could use the volume on the amp kind of as a master volume and the volume on the preamp as a, as a volume control, basically. It's not going to hurt anything. The only thing, only way a preamp could hurt an amp is if you're just playing it so gnarly and loud that you blow up the speakers or something like that. But putting a lot of signal into an amp isn't going to hurt anything. All right, that was one. I already forgot what was two.

[Jason]

Wem.

[Skip]

Crazy English stuff. Like we had a. We have a. We might get to this question, like the. What's that other. You sent me a picture.

[Steve Carr]

Really?

[Skip]

Yes, the Selmer Thunderbird. And it's somebody that had a bunch of questions about why the Tremolo sucks the volume and why you can't get the reverb curved work. English amps like that are really, really challenging and they're not, they're not made as nicely inside as they look on the outside. In a lot of cases there's high watts and Marshalls and they're, they're beautifully made. But the Whams, the Selmers, some of that stuff is just kind of crazy. That doesn't mean it can't sound good. But I've had so little of that stuff that I have that I really, you know, couldn't really say anything about it. That show he's talking about there at Pompeii, that was an early use of really high powered amps. I think that guy, the WEM guy, who's a famous designer, came up with some hundred, 200 watt, you know, big old bruisers back in them days. So I steer. I, I like to know that when I'm fixing something it's going to come out great and I can do a good job on it. But I don't, I don't really have that confidence with a ton of crazy Selmer Zodiacs and whims and stuff like that. I just don't really have the background. It's really rare to see that stuff in the United States. Not unknown, but, but pretty darn rare. So I answered that question about the Selmer and I answered the question about the Wem at once. On the Selmer. I know it said you tried some different tanks.

[Jason]

Oh wait, that's a whole different question. Nobody's heard that.

[Skip]

Well, somebody up with a Selmer wants to know it doesn't work, you know, or it doesn't get strong. I would say after all the stuff that they tried that they might try some actual different spec tanks because nobody really Knows if it's a Fender style tank or an Ampeg style tank or whatever. And also none of those Euro amps have reverb anything like a Fender. And if you think you're ever going to get it to do that. No. It might also be that the reverb and the tremolo in that Selmer are just never going to sound as strong as you'd hoped. But I think improvement could be made in both cases. Try some different actual value tanks like a Fender Fender type tank in that thing. And on the Tremolo you probably going to have to replace the Optocoupler, the little light that flashes on a light dependent resistor. Because that light dependent resistor over time they lose their resistance. And that's like a volume control in that channel of the amp. So when you turn the trim up, the volume goes way down. So you might try another Optocoupler. Of course, we could pick up the phone, amplify parts and get one for a Fender. But I don't know where you find one for a Selmer Thunderbird. You might have to make one yourself. Right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So now we're back to shick number three.

[Jason]

Yeah. Well, you're amazing. I was gonna tell you. I was gonna remind you the third.

[Skip]

I'm just on fire today.

[Jason]

You are.

[Skip]

What was shick number three?

[Jason]

Chick number three was, could this Filco possibly be made by Bogan? Maybe.

[Skip]

So this guy's gone berserk trying to snag up any kind of old tube amp that isn't expensive because a lot of times this. This pa. St. This thing is over. There's 3, 4, 5, 6, $700. You know, everybody's figured out that they're. They're old audio amps and can sound really great for music or guitar or whatever. So he found this thing called a Filco and he sent me a schematic. If you read schematics for very long, you'll notice some companies have ultra distinctive ways of doing their schematics completely in house. And the schematic he showed me, even though it said Filco at the top, was obviously a nucum schematic from Southern California, from Hollywood. So apparently Newcomb made some amps for Filco labeled Filco. Okay, there. Did that cover the shit?

[Jason]

Yeah, I think we covered him. Let's do one or two more.

[Skip]

Okay.

[Jason]

Greg in Indianapolis asks, I've built a few amps both from kits and even a Vibro King I built from scratch. Everything works. So relax. This is not a question about a problem on Every amp I've built, there will be at least one potentiometer that I find to be out of range. For example, on my Fender Deluxe Kit amp, I think the original volume pot was a 1 meg Ohm. It worked fine, but did nothing after about half of a turn. At half of a turn, the amp was essentially at full volume. I replaced the pot with a 500k ohm pot and now it requires full rotation to get full volume. I've detected no adverse effects from this change. I've made the same change to other pots as needed on my vibroking. The fender schematic rev. Oh revision F, if anyone cares, calls for a 5M ohm pot for the tram intensity. The entire span of intensity ran from about 0 to 20% rotation. I swapped this for a 1M pot and voila. I now go from 0 to full access or full across nearly 100% pot rotation. Is there anything I'm missing here? As I've said, I've seen this several times now and wonder why this isn't obvious to the designer. Or am I the only one that likes to be able to have the full span control on a pot? Thanks, guys. You're fun and an inspiration to listen to. That's from Greg.

[Skip]

It's nice to have a potentiometer that's doing anything. Have a real even sweep of whatever it does from 0 to 10. But people who've been poking around with amps for a while know that not that many of them really do that. A lot of early Fenders, you know, the volume is all over by three or four. The rest of it is just kind of like morphe.

[Steve Carr]

More.

[Skip]

More distortion in a way. Right. And if we can mention Bill Kernard again only twice, I think this time, yeah. Pots are all over the place. You know, they've got to buy a lot and measure them. You know, the. The taper can vary. You could buy a pot that says 1 meg and it reads like 800k or 1.2 meg, you know, a significant difference. So you're not the only person. And I say, great on the experimenting department, but don't feel bad that all the pots. I can't believe somebody made a Vibro verb reissue from scratch. That's a really complicated amp. Don't be surprised if a pod in a particular thing you make doesn't do what you want. And feel free to experiment with it a little bit. They. They vary an awful lot. Most of the ones I put in have to put in Fender amps where it's the wrong one or it's completely broken. They have a much more gradual taper from 0 up to 4 or 5, whereas a lot of the original ones just come on wham. Like little Charlie's amp between 2 and 3 is basically all you got. So don't feel bad, continue to experiment and report back if you find a brand or a style that does something that you like in a circuit we can relate to.

[Jason]

Now the advanced corner. If you've made it this far, a reminder to send US questions podcast fretboardjournal.com a reminder to come to the Fretboard summit and we'll end with our pal Larry Chung oh no. Could Skip speak a little or a lot about ballast resistors and ballast tubes? Many old field coil equipped tube amps have a large 20k ohms 20 watt resistor to ground from early in the power supply following the field coil. My limited understanding is that this increases the load on the power supply so that enough current gets drawn through the field coil to sufficiently power the speaker magnet to properly energize it. Often referred to as a ballast resistor, or so I've read. I've also seen that many old radios had a ballast tube which was used to regulate both voltage and current draw, mostly due to unreliable and wildly variable wall voltage. Not unlike today. Question Has Skip ever worked on any tube amps employing such a ballast tube? And could a tube amp with an overly high B plus be adjusted or regulated in such a fashion? Down the rabbit hole I go. Hope all is well and you're both having a great summer that is Larry Chung oh wow. Ballast.

[Skip]

I'm gonna have to do a little bit more research on this, but there's a couple things cooking here. Okay, a lot of 40s amps, you'll see a big old resistor from the filter capacitors to ground, which you don't always see. And it could be a big huge something that could dissipate a lot of heat. 1020 watts. In fact they tend to get hot. So I think the main thing that does is it it acts as a hillbilly poor boy regulation in the power supply. When you hit a big old power cord that B plus goes down for a second, right? It and those big resistors were designed to like stabilize that voltage right there. By the way, all big fenders have two resistors in series across the first filter cap, two 220ks so they actually show 440k to ground from the B from the high voltage. Another thing those things do is if you turn the amp off. As long as you don't put the standby switch on knuckleheads, then all the voltage from the caps drains through that resistance. Ballast tubes, I think, are a more sophisticated way of regulating voltage, but I'm going to have to do a little bit of research on that before I say something that's not exactly true. So, yes, if you had a high B plus in your amp and you were willing to put a 50 watt, that 20k resistor from B plus to ground, it probably would lower the B plus, but that resistor would get super hot. And I'd suggest there might be other ways of doing the same thing that were less invasive. If I see a resistor like that in a circuit, I always leave it because I figured the designers of the thing in the first place knew what they were doing. I. I don't take it out, but it's a little more common than you might think. And basically the idea is to stabilize that voltage in the B. And Larry, I will learn more about the ballast tubes and report back in person.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip]

Yeah, I'm exhausted.

[Jason]

Me, too. Keep the questions coming, everybody. Thanks to our sponsors. There are links in the show, notes to all of them. And as always, Skip, thanks to you. I think it's probably the last one we'll do before the Chicago Fretboard Summit, so the next time we talk, I'll have lots of stories.

[Skip]

I hope if you're alive, so you'll be. You'll be marinated in. In the. In the summit. I'm sure it's going to be a ton of work, and I'll just reiterate there's nothing like it. And hopefully enough people will tell you how much they enjoyed it and enough people will pay that you'll be thinking about next year.

[Jason]

That's the hope.

[Skip]

Just. Just like we'll be thinking about the next podcast. Oh, my God.

[Jason]

Yeah. If anybody out there has questions about the summit, needs advice on anything, drop me a line. Podcastretboardjournal.com A few people have wondered what the heck they're getting into, and I'm happy to walk them through it. So beautiful.

[Skip]

There's nothing like it. Nothing like it. It's a niche of its own. Thanks for being here, Jason. Without you, we wouldn't do it.

[Jason]

Thanks, Skip. Thanks, Steve Carr. That was fun.

[Skip]

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, everyone. Bye now.