Ep. 138: "Check for Ticks"

Summary

The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons – Episode 138: "Check for Ticks"

Release Date: September 24, 2024

In Episode 138 of The Truth About Vintage Amps, hosts Skip Simmons and Jason delve deep into a blend of heartfelt tributes, event recaps, and insightful technical discussions. Balancing the somber with the celebratory, this episode offers a comprehensive look into the vintage amp community, honoring those who've passed while addressing listener queries with expertise and personality.

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1. Tributes and Sad News

The episode opens with Skip and Jason paying homage to several influential figures within the vintage amp and broader music community.

• Nick Gravanites: Skip reflects on Nick's legacy, sharing personal anecdotes about performing with him. At [01:52], Skip reminisces, “He was a groundbreaking guy. Great singer. Played with Bloom Peel, Electric Flag, all that.” The hosts remember Nick’s vibrant presence during performances and highlight his humorous advice, “If you don’t know how to party, don’t come to my party.”

• Steve Melkian: A significant portion of the episode honors Steve Melkian, a beloved member of their community. Skip reads a poignant tribute [10:37], sharing excerpts from Steve’s catalogs that showcase his wit and expertise. The tribute underscores Steve’s impact, stating, “He was always ahead of the curve” and “His personality and his style and his knowledge...came through.”

• Stephen Fitzsimmons: Jason acknowledges the passing of Stephen Fitzsimmons from their Facebook group, noting his contributions through both questions and community engagement [18:57].

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2. Event Recap: Chicago Fretboard Summit

Skip and Jason provide an enthusiastic overview of the recent Chicago Fretboard Summit, highlighting its success and the positive feedback received.

At [05:36], Jason shares, “It was the best one. A lot of fun. The group of people was amazing.” The Summit featured a diverse crowd, including the younger pedal crowd that brought a vibrant energy to the event. Notable attendees included:

• Maynard Madsen and Madsen Amplifications
• Voltic Pedals
• Chris Benson, a former podcast guest who provided unique backline coverings.

The hosts emphasize the community spirit, mentioning collaborations like the screening of Jason’s movie with Ben Harper and the engaging presence of Harper himself [08:31].

Skip praises the organization’s financial success, noting that unlike many events, the Summit was profitable without requiring them to “mortgage your property to pay for it” [07:47].

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3. Listener Q&A

The heart of the episode centers around addressing listener-submitted questions and voice memos related to vintage tube amp repair, restoration, and collecting.

a. Resistors Installation ([24:55])

Listener Question: Bob from Bismarck inquires about using higher wattage resistors in places where lower wattage is specified.

Skip’s Response: Resistors are rated by their resistance and power handling. Skip advises, “[...], you could use a 5 watt 100-ohm resistor and the circuit would work basically the same” but cautions against using excessively high wattage resistors in delicate applications.

b. Rusty Transformers ([27:56])

Listener Question: Dave from San Mateo asks about removing surface rust from transformers.

Skip’s Response: Skip recommends practical cleaning methods over chemical treatments. He suggests using solvents like WD-40 to mechanically remove rust, emphasizing patience and minimal interference with the amp’s function. "Find an inconspicuous spot and start experimenting with it a little bit" [28:11].

c. Pop Sound in Vintage Amp ([30:43])

Listener Scenario: A listener experiences a persistent ticking sound from a 1964 Reverb Rocket amp when turning it off.

Skip’s Insight: After discussing potential causes, Skip deduces that the issue stemmed from an electric fence interference, humorously echoing the episode's title with “check for ticks” [35:18].

d. Flattening Warped Fender Grill Frame ([40:26])

Listener Question: Rob seeks advice on flattening a warped 1970s Fender grill cloth frame made of particle board.

Skip’s Solution: Skip explains the challenges with particle board and suggests alternatives like applying thin epoxy hardeners or replacing the frame with plywood. He advises against using brute force methods, stating, “You’re never going to get that straightened out” [42:24].

e. Norwegian Wingtour Practice Amp ([45:02])

Listener: Eric from Bergen, Norway, discusses cosmetic issues with his 1965 Wingtour Practice amp, particularly missing knobs.

Skip’s Recommendation: Replace the missing knobs using available parts or get creative with materials. For the amp’s unique RCA inputs, Skip suggests experimenting with adapters to ensure compatibility [46:02].

f. Isle of Wight 1963 Fender Vibro Verb ([48:19])

Listener: Stu from the Isle of Wight inquires about the authenticity and factory fittings of his rare 1963 Fender Vibro Verb amp.

Skip’s Expertise: Recognizing the amp’s rarity, Skip speculates it might be an export model with special transformers. He highlights the scarcity of such amps and encourages sending detailed photos for further evaluation [50:56].

g. Output Transformer Selection ([55:48])

Listener Question: Mike from Lansing, Michigan, seeks advice on selecting a replacement output transformer without specific specifications.

Skip’s Guidance: Skip provides a thorough analysis, explaining the importance of matching transformer characteristics to the amp’s requirements. He recommends sourcing transformers from old organ amps or similar equipment and emphasizes testing with known good transformers before settling on a replacement [55:50].

h. Dan Electro Amp Tube Issues ([60:55])

Listener Scenario: A listener encounters ticking sounds in a Dan Electro amp due to incorrect tube labeling.

Skip’s Diagnosis: Identifies the issue as a mislabeling error where the amp requires a 12AU6 instead of a 12AV6 tube. He underscores the prevalence of such factory mistakes and advises checking schematic references to avoid similar issues [63:43].

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4. Personal Anecdotes and Recommendations

a. Music Influences ([19:18] – [22:04])

Skip shares his musical journey, detailing the albums that shaped his early years. Starting with classics like Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane and progressing through artists like Neil Diamond and Paul Butterfield, Skip emphasizes the eclectic mix that fueled his passion for music and amp craftsmanship.

b. Movie and Book Recommendations

• "As It Is in Heaven": A Swedish film recommended by a listener, focusing on a church choir and the transformative power of music [45:06].

• "The Feather Thief": Skip enthusiastically endorses this new book about a young thief stealing rare bird feathers for fly fishing art, highlighting its gripping narrative and conservation themes [68:03].

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5. Community and Sponsor Acknowledgements

While Skip and Jason primarily focus on content-rich discussions, they occasionally acknowledge their sponsors and community members:

• Amplified Parts: Provides essential components for amp repairs. Skip shares his recent purchases, such as potentiometers and solder supplies, emphasizing their reliability [03:18].

• Grez Guitars and Emerald City Guitars: Celebrated for their craftsmanship and contributions to the Summit [05:32].

• Listener Contributions: From wine donations to graphic art support, the community’s diverse contributions are warmly received and appreciated by the hosts [73:20].

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6. Closing Remarks

As the episode wraps up, Skip and Jason encourage listeners to continue submitting their questions and engaging with the community through various platforms. They express anticipation for future events and the ongoing support from sponsors and listeners alike.

Skip concludes with practical advice on amp maintenance and restoration, reinforcing the episode’s blend of technical expertise and community camaraderie. The hosts leave listeners with a sense of connection and appreciation for the vintage amp landscape.

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Notable Quotes:

• Skip Simmons [01:52]: “He was a groundbreaking guy. Great singer. Played with Bloom Peel, Electric Flag, all that.”

• Skip Simmons [35:18]: “Don't come to my party” – Nick Gravanites' humorous advice.

• Jason [45:02]: “The Feather Thief is all about.”

• Skip Simmons [55:50]: “There's a lot to unpack there.”

This episode of The Truth About Vintage Amps masterfully intertwines personal stories, technical advice, and community engagement, making it an invaluable resource for vintage amp enthusiasts and newcomers alike.

Transcript

[Skip Simmons]

You get it?

[Jason]

It's been a while.

[Skip Simmons]

You. You, me. I'm doing a remote today from the garage.

[Jason]

Oh. How's that work?

[Skip Simmons]

So that's working. The only thing is I had to unplug the freezer because it's all the junk sitting on top of this little chest freezer. And it was going. The brains of the operation has a zoom meeting at 10. And I know how you. I thought about saying it has to be over at 10, but she's. She set me up an alternative locale. So it'd be fine if it's over at 10, but if we run late, she's. We're situated.

[Jason]

Yeah. We have a lot to cover.

[Skip Simmons]

Try not to have it be too modeling.

[Jason]

I know there is some somber news.

[Skip Simmons]

And how about Nick Gravanites? He passed away, too. And what we'll try to do today, a little mix of the. The fun and the not so fun. You know, he was a groundbreaking guy. Great singer. Played with Bloom Peel, Electric Flag, all that. Our band, the band I was in, got to be his band at a fundraiser. And, you know, this is when I was 30, so a long, long time ago. Right. But we set up in Sacramento and we. We played. And we're playing in this big room and the guy just walks right in from the end of the hall and just walks right up with the. With the boogie and the little Les Paul Jr. We don't even stop, you know, he just walks right up during the middle of the song and plugs in and starts wailing and. And I have it on a cassette. And it's. It's pretty fun because it sounds like a bar band.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

You know, like. Okay. And then all of a sudden, now what? You know, like a whole nother level of. Yeah, exactly. And I also have your co host, me, being reprimanded to play the drums by Nick Gravinites because I was talking to Jill years before we were married. All right? Had my priorities straight even then. So I go, hey, man, he's playing. Hey, man. Hey, man, play the drums. Go. Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. And we're going to read some Steve Melissa today.

[Jason]

Yes.

[Skip Simmons]

And I will also give you a Nick Gravanite from that night, which is, if you don't know how to party, don't come to my party. Don't bring your basement jive. And it was like this E minor, one chord thing that we did for like 10 minutes that he just went crazy on. It's pretty far out.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip Simmons]

I'm sure we were amateurish. But we were inspired and he had obviously had fun, so it was a pretty fun thing. And rest in peace, Nick Gravenides. Don't come to my party.

[Jason]

All right. That'll be the first of a few passings we'll be honoring over the course of this episode. I want to thank a. Of course, our sponsor, amplified parts. Amplifiedparts.com skip question for you. What did you last order from Amplified Parts?

[Skip Simmons]

Potentiometers. My Regular order of F&T22@500AXIAL lead filter caps, which I've found to be the most consistent and affordable optocouplers. Those little light bulbs that flash on. I mean, if you don't have one, you can't fix the Fender. And I fixed a lot of Fenders, so you got to have a few of those on hand.

[Jason]

Love it.

[Skip Simmons]

And they, they sell the Kester 44 solder and it's expensive, but because you got to buy a lot of it. But I use a lot of it. And so, yeah, there's. That's, that's. That was a good question. And that was that. I'm sure there's some other stuff too. That's. But the things I use a lot of that are current production items. I get from there.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip Simmons]

I do. And, and that's, that's one reason why nobody had to twist my arm to have them be a sponsor.

[Jason]

Yes. Thanks. Amplified parts. Go to amplifiedparts.com anything you need pretty much for your guitar or amp, they probably have you covered on a. In terms of new parts. And tell them Tava sent you. GRE Guitar is sponsoring the show again. I saw Barry at the Fretboard Summit. His guitars were literally everywhere at our little event in Chicago. He has a new model, the GRES Grand Tour, which has like f holes. It's like a hollow body sunburst. Absolutely beautiful. I know he picked up a dealer while he was over there. Black Bobbin now carries Grez guitars over in Chicago. Follow Barry, see what he's up to. And then last but definitely not least, our friends at Emerald City Guitars. I hope you're following them on Instagram because their gear comes and goes so fast. If you don't see what Trevor and company have right away, it probably doesn't even hit the website. They just had a dumble that they sold. They got a 1961 Fender Reverb unit. Right now they've got a bunch of cars made by Steve Carr, our last guest on the podcast, and so much more. Follow them. They did a recap video of the Fretboard Summit, which was incredible. They did it, like, two days after the event ended. And, of course, Trevor and company knew everybody there, so go follow them on YouTube as well.

[Skip Simmons]

Wow. We haven't talked since the summit.

[Jason]

I know.

[Skip Simmons]

You survived, apparently. Unless you're. This is all artificial intelligence.

[Jason]

This is not artificial intelligence. It was, I think, the best one that we've ever done of the five. It was a lot of fun. The group of people was amazing.

[Skip Simmons]

Best one. You mean, like, fewest disasters, or do.

[Jason]

You mean fewest disasters? I stress the least, but there you go.

[Skip Simmons]

That makes it good.

[Jason]

People were happy. I got to meet a bunch of people from the Truth About Vintage Amps community, including Maynard Madsen and Madsen Amplifications, and Voltic was there. Voltic sold a bunch of his pedals, and it was just. I don't know, it was just a lot of fun. I will say this. The electric and pedal people that are now coming to the Fretboard Summit, I think most people think of the Fretboard Journal as being kind of an acoustic leaning magazine, which sometimes we are.

[Skip Simmons]

Plaid shirts.

[Jason]

Yeah, the. The electric and pedal crowd, it. It brings a younger. At least the pedal crowd that was at our event.

[Skip Simmons]

It.

[Jason]

It brought a younger, more youthful energy to the whole thing. And the. The.

[Skip Simmons]

Are you sure it wasn't an annoying energy?

[Jason]

No, it wasn't annoying.

[Skip Simmons]

It was pedals.

[Jason]

No, we had a. We had a good time. Jess was there and Chase Bliss and Voltic and Madsen and Chris Benson, former podcast guest, was there. He made two or. No, he made. He made our backline with, like, a unique covering instead of tweed or what he usually does, and we sold those. So you got to buy the amp that Blake Mills and Adam Levy and all these great players played through at the end of the Summit, which was fun.

[Skip Simmons]

What kind of feedback did you get from the paid people? You know, not just the people who paid people. The people that you had to basically wrangle to get to be there. Were they. Were they okay? Was the buffet fine?

[Jason]

Everybody had a great time. I've gotten. I've gotten love letters about it, and people are excited for next year, and everybody had a great time. I think maybe by saying that I'll get a bunch of hate mail, but I think everybody had a great time.

[Skip Simmons]

And you crunched the numbers. It didn't. It didn't. You didn't have to mortgage your property to pay for it.

[Jason]

Most events barely, if at all, break even. And this event did fine and made the venue and us think, like, well, we should just do this every year. It was like a big party.

[Skip Simmons]

Cool.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

Someday. Someday.

[Jason]

Eli from two Rock was there. We had a whole. We had a whole panel on tube amps, and that was fun. And we talked about, you know, the state of tube amps in 2024. And then we showed this movie that I made with Ben Harper about one of his dumbles. And so we had, like, the world premiere screening. It was great. And Ben Harper showed up.

[Skip Simmons]

Oh, perfect.

[Jason]

Yeah. Former podcast guest.

[Skip Simmons]

And so clicky and groovy. Right.

[Jason]

The cool thing about it is, and I don't know, maybe I'm biased, but I think all these people are pretty approachable. Ben Harper just stood in sort of the lobby of the theater after the movie was over, and for, like, six hours, people were just going up to him and saying, like, oh, thank you for your music. Did you know this was played at my wedding? And I kept going up to him going, like, hey, Ben, do you want to, like, sneak out of here? Do you want to go, like, can I hide you? Do you want me to call you an Uber? He just held court. It was great.

[Skip Simmons]

Fantastic. Well, we bonded in, like, 30 seconds when he was on.

[Jason]

I. I love the Pirates of the Caribbean story. That was the best.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, he started with fire control, as, you know, wildland preservation, as you, so. But that's groovy. I didn't mean clicky in a bad way. I just meant, oh, my God. That's when I realized Aretha Franklin was singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Harvard graduation. It's kind of like that. What? But having all those people, and obviously most people wanted to be there. There's a lot to be said.

[Jason]

I think everybody who found the Fretboard Summit truly wanted to be there. It's. It's not like, you know, we don't clobber you over the head about it, but, yeah, it was. It was a great group. I. I look forward to next year and maybe one year. I know it's always in August, which is bad for you, but maybe one year, we'll drag you out there.

[Skip Simmons]

Like I said, I gotta drive. I want to drive. Or take the train. I'd like to take the train there.

[Jason]

Take the train. That's a great idea.

[Skip Simmons]

That'd be fun.

[Jason]

All right, so the way this show works is you all send us questions to podcastritboardjournal.com. you can record a voice memo on your smartphone, mail it to that email, or you can just type out a question. Could be about tube amps, relationship Advice, food, whatever you want. We'll talk, we'll. We'll probably discuss it. And do we want to start with the sad news of the passing of the late great Steve Melkian?

[Skip Simmons]

Might as well. And the reason? Well, thanks to. Well, thanks to me. How often do I ever say that? Not often. But I'm the guy that said when we. I think maybe the very first podcast, for some reason I said, how did you know? Who did I listen to? What did I. How did I what my influences. And they were jacked. Rich, who was already dead. Earl Yarrow, rest in peace a few years ago. And Steve and I had also like to say that it shows the power of writing because I never met him. When we talked on the podcast, that was the first time I'd ever. I think I called him once and asked for something and he said, no, I don't have that. And I said, okay, bye. But through the catalogs that he did, his, his personality and his style and his knowledge and a lot of things came through. So I don't know if I really articulated that. But one other amazing thing he did, besides knowing what was cool way back when and having a great sense of humor, was he could put it down on a piece of paper because that's how I got to know him. And I think that's pretty cool. And I have a. I have something I can read from him for you. It's like at the funeral, right? Where somebody reads. I think this must be in the early 90s. The NAMM show in Anaheim this past January was for the most part not very inspiring for fans of American guitar craftsmanship. Most manufacturers display the same style. Jackson ripoff cookie cutter clone metal kitty market guitar slapped together from mostly imported parts. Some new innovations I'm not sure you'll want to lay out your hard earned bucks for. Included built in handles and bizarro finishes. Inspired by a celebrity modern player who reportedly received $250,000 for his one year endorsement by a big Japanese guitar company. We know who that is. Yeah. The traditional models still offered by most of the large U.S. companies, including quote, vintage models, are found to be sadly lacking in vintage quality by most of those familiar with the good old models. Innovation. Wait, no, no. Innovation. A trend that's continued for a number of years now. Think I'm full of it. Anybody want to buy a Gibson Corvus? How about a nice Strat Elite, you polyester finish fans out there? No, take my RD artist, please. Nobody else will. Now, Barry of Grez. What you make a guitar out of has a lot to do with how it sounds. In the 50s, even a cheap guitar like the Les Paul Jr. Was made with first rate mahogany with a one piece neck and body. What lurks beneath the plastic shiny finish on many of these new guitars? Why do they sound so bad when played acoustically? I'm always harping on that. Read through all the slick catalogs and you'll find that many of these manufacturers use only the finest select hardwoods. Look in any botany book and see if you can find any species of tree that is described by this term. I couldn't. I think it's totally legit to cut corners when making stuff for the student grade market. In fact, lowbudget models are a better value for the money than they've ever been. True. But when you've been playing a while and you want something better. I was skeptical when my friends told me to check out the Rickenbacker booth. And the rest of the little thing is a little discussion about how Rickenbacker was making some really nice stuff and he bought 24 of them and they're for sale in the same catalog. So there's a little Steve for you, little sense of humor. Obviously plugged in. Not afraid to say what he thinks, obviously and don't know what you want, don't have any money, don't call me. Which is. Was encouraging to me as I learned how to deal with people, you know, over the years. So there Steve. Love that guy and he'll always be an inspiration and I'll keep those catalogs forever and reread them like not just for the crazy low prices, but just for his nutty, you know, sense of humor. Pickups for, you know, an 80s fender something or other. He goes, go ahead and buy these for $5 each, but it won't make your guitar sound any better. You know, he's just not afraid of, of saying this is junk and this is great. Anyway, so there. That, that's my, that's my thing. I thought about it for a while when I saw this, this little thing about the NAMM show and materials. Barry. Playing, playing electric guitars acoustically and how important that is. I just thought, yeah, that's Steve V. Right. 250,000 for the guitar with the handle in it.

[Jason]

It's got the handle, yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

All right, I'm, I'll take a break and let you.

[Jason]

Well, I, I just want to say Steve was on the podcast three times and I remember, I think the first episode was 38. So we're, we're talking like Middle of lockdown Covid. And I remember reaching out to him because you talked about him so much. And when he agreed to be on the show, I felt the sense of glee that maybe some journalists feel if they get like an Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page interview. I was like, wow, we got him. I can't believe it. We got him. And then he was just an absolute joy. I know we talked about doing the super single ended amp project, group build. And he was, at least the last time we spoke to him, was trying to figure out a Hammond Transformer or something that he wanted to have made. But maybe we can still revisit that and, and honor him by doing some group build or something. I don't know, just throwing it out there.

[Skip Simmons]

And, and that's another Steve thing is he wasn't happy with just what he could get. He always had to strive to get something even cooler. Right. You can build that amp from parts that are available all over the place, including our sponsor, so you don't have to have something ultra special from him, but if somebody builds one, it'll be a little, one more little tribute to him. And he's somebody that just was behind the scenes. Earl was like that too. Not that everybody knew who he was or it wasn't like he was famous, but that next tier of people, like every guitar repair man, knew who Angelo was. And everybody who suddenly decided, you know, vintage Tube hi Fi is cool. We didn't even touch on that much. But I learned a lot about vintage 2pi5 stuff just from reading those catalogs. And he was one of those guys that was ahead of the curve on the Heath Kit, Iko, Fisher, Scott. And now, of course, all that stuff's harder to find and a lot more expensive. And people realize that it is really cool and just so ahead of the curve. That dude.

[Jason]

Yeah. And he also had a big role in the DC punk scene and keeping Fugazi's gear going. And he was politically active and an avid gardener as he talked about.

[Skip Simmons]

Oh yeah, tomatoes.

[Jason]

Yeah, he loved his tomatoes.

[Skip Simmons]

So, yeah, I've had two requests for people to tell to mention records that, you know, music influences as a kid. And I, it wasn't hard. I, I, I wrote them all down. There's not that many. It won't take too long, but if you want to answer an amp question or, or if you want to hear Skip's music references from the fourth grade, I got it all for you.

[Jason]

Okay. I love it. We'll get to that. I posted a quick little tribute to Steve because I didn't find an obit anywhere else. I wanted to let all the people who knew about him know. And then I also just want to acknowledge we lost a member of the kegger community. Our Facebook group, Stephen Fitzsimmons, passed away, so rest in peace, Stephen. I know he submitted some questions both on Facebook as well as to the show over the years. So. Hard year?

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, definitely. And I'm not looking forward to looking through my address book again, which I have, you know, with stuff written in it, you know, not on the computer, and you gotta put a line through somebody's name. But we're here.

[Jason]

We are. Well, since you brought it up, what. What were you listening to back in the day?

[Skip Simmons]

Skip fourth grade.

[Jason]

Fourth Grade.

[Skip Simmons]

Surrealistic Pillow. Jefferson Airplane, Great album. And. And Monkeys, right. Last Train to Clarksville and Beatles, you know, the record that would have been out then, you know, which would have had, like, Hard Dick, not before Hard days, Night, one of those early ones, you know, that's what. That's what you had even in fourth grade, right? Then by the time you got up to, like, fifth grade, all right now by Free and the early Led Zeppelin, right? And the Woodstock record was really popular, right? That had Crosby, Stills and Nash and stuff like that, right?

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip Simmons]

And the. And on the poppy side, Neil diamond, he had all these big upbeat, you know, poppy songs that were really big. And then I changed houses and I moved in with my dad. Sixth grade. Paul Butterfield, Blues Band, Love and Spoonful. Fred. Neil. You know who that is, I bet. John Hartford, his very first record, before anybody knew who he was. Mo Allison, Revolver. Right? And also the folky stuff like the Weavers and Kingston Trio and everybody listened to musicals then, you know, like Paint your Wagon and stuff, you know, right? And Simon and Garfunkel. And so all those records were just sitting there by the record player. And I could put on Born in Chicago by Paul Butterfield, right? Or Mose Allison, you know, just super cool jazz piano. Or Revolver, which is all druggie and trippy. And this is, you know, fifth, sixth grade. And so that was it. Then came the band, the band's first record, right? And Neil Young, Blind Faith. And that was getting into, like, junior high school and stuff like that, right? So by high school, things got crappier, you know, Kansas and Boston and, you know, stuff like that. But not too much longer after that. We. I started playing with friends in bands, and so we got back into blues and rhythm and blues and stuff like that. So. But those are all. Those are all good records. To have sitting around. If you have little kids, I love it.

[Jason]

If anyone out there's dressing up as fourth grade Skip Simmons for Halloween, they know what six.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. Surrealistic pillow under the arm would be, you know. But you know something like that's just a wide range, you know. Mose Allison is jazz. And I put it on and I went wow, that's, that's cool. And so just start them early, you know, with. With trippy stuff like that, you know.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip Simmons]

Oh, gotta say this. There's a big music store in Sacramento. Private. You know us Skips music. Not me but you know. Affiliation and he's been there. They were. They'd been there for a long time. There was maybe two or three branches at one time. And there's a guy named Skip who passed away our memorial, you know, podcast not too long ago. But there's a guitar magazine specializes in. It's like a vintage guitar magazine, I guess you'd say. Sure. Supposedly. And. But there's a big full page ad Heritage Auctions. The 150 guitar collection of this dude.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

And I'm almost certain he has a Bigsby from Tiny More. He does.

[Jason]

It's. It's on their site.

[Skip Simmons]

You've already. And maybe a Jimmy Rivers guitar who was really well known. Sacramento Monster. He might have some stuff on there that hasn't ever been seen in a long time. And it could be mind blowing for people, especially in this area to check it out. Now I know that if somebody took him a guitar and they needed $250, he'd say sure. Even though it was a Candy Apple Red 62 Stratocaster that the guy's granddad given him or something. Right. So there's that. But. But it'd be. Even if you don't want to buy anything or get into the whole, that whole deal, I, I think it especially people from my area might burn through it just to see there might just be something really interesting and like a Bigsby. That stuff doesn't show up too often. Might be some pretty interesting things for people to check out. Yeah, I was surprised to see that. Yeah.

[Jason]

Yeah. The, the Bigsby. The Tiny More Bigsby.

[Skip Simmons]

It's a man. Is it. It's a mandolin, right?

[Jason]

Yeah, it's a five string mandolin.

[Skip Simmons]

Oh, he's probably playing that on that Billy Jack Wills record which is so good. Called Crazy Man Crazy plays Stardust on that thing and just goes out there. That's a great recording. All right, well bring us in here.

[Jason]

Okay, well like I said A few minutes ago. You send us questions, folks, to podcastritboardjournal.com they can be voice memos, they can be emails. In the case of this week, we have more emails to read than voice memos. But here is one voice memo. Let me pull it up here from listener Bob. Hey Skip. Hey Jason, it's Bob and Bismarck. Say, I just picked up a big lot of old new stock carbon comp resistors and they're various sizes, so I.

[C]

Know that some of them are half watts, some of them are 1 watt.

[Jason]

5 watt, but is there any issue with installing a 5 watt where a half watt should be according to a schematic? Thanks, love the podcast. Appreciate all you guys do.

[Skip Simmons]

Resistors are rated in their value, like how much resistance they have, but they're also rated by how much juice can flow through them without them bursting into flame, which is why some of them are a lot bigger and some of them are a lot smaller. Officially, if it's 100ohm resistor and it only needs to be a half watt, you could use a 5 watt 100 ohm resistor and the circuit would work basically the same. However, when you get into something that much bigger, you could run into some problems. I think the real question is this guy scored a bunch of cool old parts and he wants to know if he can use these resistors to build stuff. And I say, heck yeah. 1 watt resistors, beautiful old Altec and really expensive gear like that used almost exclusively 1 watt resistors. Even though half watt would work just because they were Altec and they wanted to be extra head roomy. Right. So a five watt for a half watt, I'd rather not see that. But one watt for half watt, Absolutely. And clean the leads really good. Get them shiny because they're funky because they've been sitting around in Bismarck forever before you use them.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

And measure them because sometimes they're not what they say. So always test a resistor with an ohmmeter before you put it in your amp just to make sure you're not reading the colors wrong.

[Jason]

It's great. Don in Indiana enjoyed episode 137 with the Steve Carr of Car Amplifiers interview. And he wanted everyone to know that the 2003 interview in vacuum Tube Valley with Steve Carr is available and free on the web. So he said it's.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, that's right. That was a long time ago. He probably, if he was on with us right now, he'd say, oh, it's just a baby there. In fact, the picture of him, he's looks. He. He looks very young, but that just shows you he started doing stuff way back. And that little Vacuum Tube Valley article is interesting. If you have a car amp, you definitely want to read that is history of the company a little bit, right? And Vacuum Tube Valley is something I recommend once or once a week, once a month. Because it's a. It's a trove of information. Some jive, but mostly not. That's really deep and it's free and it's out there. And some smart guys writing about tubes love it.

[Jason]

Subject line, Rusty Transformer. Also a good porn name. I have a question about transformers with surface rust. What is the best way to remove it? That's Dave from San Mateo.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, you're talking physically like with a wire brush or. Or steel wool or you're talking a chemical, you know, like what's that stuff called? Rust rescue. Metal rescue.

[Jason]

Metal rescue you've talked about.

[Skip Simmons]

Metal rescue is pretty. It's pretty darn. Pretty darn impressive. The problem with chemicals to take off rust is sometimes you come back and it took off the rust and the next thing, which you know, the paint or whatever might be on the. The piece of metal. So my real answer is who cares? Just clean it off. I would, I normally would just use a little solvent, maybe even a little wd and I would just clean the, you know, the rust off of it. Usually it's only on the laminations. I wouldn't bother with trying to get rust off the bells or the, you know, the covers of the transformer unless it's something that you can see, you know, like a hi fi amp where all that stuff's visible. So just like cleaning anything else, go really slow and try little places until you can find the right goo. Got this fancy English toaster that Earl gave us years ago and it had grime on it, you know, like a steering wheel of a car, right? Just like a human funk for being never been cleaned right. And I tried and tried and tried to find something that would cut it and I finally did. And when you got the right solvent, the right cleaner rust or dirt or whatever is going to come right off. So you just have to be patient in trying to find the right thing and don't be super anal about getting every little speck of rust off of a transformer. There was a. Also dead, a person who used to write a lot about. About amps and he had an article once where he talked about rust on transformers and Eddy currents. Another good name for Eddie. Eddy currents and how rust on a Transformer would cause us. But you know, the practical minded person looks back and goes, dude, man, there's a lot of rusty transformers out there working okay. You know, and have been for a long time. So I mean, I've done some fenders that were by the beach and they all work, you know, so don't be too worked up about rust. And as with anything, find an inconspicuous spot and start experimenting with it a little bit.

[Jason]

This next one I'm gonna see. I'm wondering if you could answer this based off just the subject line, sparing me the four paragraphs of reading. Question about a pop when turning off 1964 reverber rocket. Do you want me to keep reading?

[Skip Simmons]

I can no standby switch on that thing. So basically I would suggest unplug the amp and get some cleaner with some lubricant WD40 inside the switch and work the switch back and forth, back and forth. It may be just that the switch is dirty and that's what's causing the pop when you turn it off.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

If that doesn't do it, you could replace the switch, but I don't know, could just unplug it from the wall or. That brings up another thing. All you all need a variac. I'm sorry, you just do. And they're dirt cheap again because it's become a popular thing. Go on Amazon. For 40 to $75 you can get a groovy little variac. And all the things that it'll do for you and you and even you have been discussed many times here. But A, all this old stuff was made for 110. Nobody has that. But for $50 you can turn your Variac to 110. Right? And B, anytime you turn something on, you can be the nicest, grooviest, slow warm up thing that you'd ever hope for. You take 10 seconds to turn an amp up by turning it on with a variac. And you've eliminated all these problems of voltage spikes and trouble with the tubes warming up or filter caps blowing. And it's. You don't have to have an expensive killer one like I use. They just make inexpensive ones. And that little clip on gizmo that we discussed where it'll read the amperage tell you if your amp is drawn too much current. These are things that anybody but a total tool dork is going to be able to find not only use for, but it'll be a comfort. You know, you'll go, I haven't turned this amp on in A year because I got too many amps. We could discuss that later, but should I take it to Skips and have him turn it on? No. Hell no. You know, clean the tube sockets and fire that thing up on a variac. Give it 10 or 15 minutes to warm up and you're. And you're gold. All right. How long has it been since I've said next?

[Jason]

It's been a while.

[Skip Simmons]

Next.

[Jason]

Okay, this is from Bob Knetzger up here in Washington state. Here's the mini baffler torn from the pages of a recent real life experience. I'm sure Skip will know the answer instantly and I'll make this an easy one. I was playing a fun outside event, a party at a pig farm. I was a little worried about the smell at first, being so close to the pig barn as I set up my amp and pedal steel. But it turned out the pigs didn't mind at all. That's good, Bob.

[Skip Simmons]

Okay. That didn't stop the show, but it slowed it down quite a little bit.

[Jason]

I did notice a different problem. A very pronounced and persistent tick, tick, ticking sound from my amp. The amp didn't have any tremolo and I checked my effects pedals. Nope, not that. I switched between my humbucker and single coil pickups, remembering where I was. I had an aha moment. A quick word with our farmer host and he instantly eliminated the ticking. What did he do?

[Skip Simmons]

That could be a good baffler. Maybe we ought to let that sit and have people write in or call in and ask what they think could have tick, tick, tick tremolo on Offender amp. But he said there's no tremolo on the amp. If I was troubleshooting that, the first thing I do is unplug the guitar. Did the. Did the tick, tick, tick go away or not? He doesn't give us that. I can go either way. You can tell us the groovy answer or we can have it be our own Baffler. Double Baffler.

[Jason]

I'll tell you the answer.

[Skip Simmons]

Okay. He unplugged something electrical that was plugged in out by the band. Like the something to do with pigs, probably.

[Jason]

Oh, you're so close. You're so close. When I noticed only my single coil pickup made the ticking sound, I asked the farmer if he had an electric fence. Yes, he did. And when he turned it off for the duration of the gig, the sound went away. The electric fences circuitry created a 1 per second high voltage discharge to energize the fence that would shock any pig or person who touches it. The wires of the electric fence acted like a giant broadcasting antenna and my single coil winding perfectly picked up the RF event. So if you ever play a gig at a farm, be sure to check for ticks. And then he says check for ticks.

[Skip Simmons]

That's a double meaning there.

[Jason]

I know. And here's a.

[Skip Simmons]

That's beautiful.

[Jason]

Here's his tava food content. Our gracious host treated the band to his farm. Fresh smoked pulled pork tacos with green tomatillo sauce. Wow. Our vegetarian pals feasted on two day proofed wood fired pizza with squash chopping. Best gig food ever. Keep the tavas coming. That's Bob in Kirkland, Washington.

[Skip Simmons]

Well a. That's why we have to keep doing it because how else are we going to get farm gig tips, right? Not even Jack Dar says gotta watch out for those electric fences. Right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. That's beautiful.

[Jason]

Hopefully they didn't lose too many animals while Bob was playing with. With the fence off. But yeah, they're.

[Skip Simmons]

Nah, it was fine. They'll be fine. And tasty tacos. Well, okay. For you, some sort of fancy wood fire would. One time I made. Is it Papa Murphy's that sells the pizzas that aren't cooked? Yeah, one time I made one of those in the Weber.

[Jason]

Oh.

[Skip Simmons]

And it. And it was. But I. But several other times I blew it. You have to get it really, really hot. Right. I wonder if you could put the stone I got from Jeff Schick in the Web in the Weber and have just a blazing hot fire in there. I'm sure you could, but it would be one time I did it perfect. And boy, was it ever good. Better than it was in the oven. All right, no more food talk.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, maybe a little more later.

[Jason]

This is from listener Kevin Subject line lowering B plus with solid state rectifier. I apologize if this has been covered before, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on dropping the B plus on a circuit that uses a solid state rectifier. I'm building an amp from scratch and I'd like the B Plus to be around 80 volts lower. I've read about folks using Mosfets, Zeners, or even a choke input filter. I know the easy answer is just to find a more appropriate power transformer. And I may end up doing that, but it's more fun to try to figure out how to make this one work. Thanks for reading.

[Skip Simmons]

So we're talking about taking. We're talking about deriving the high voltage. The high voltage DC In a tube amp, it's. It's done with a tube rectifier or with solid state rectifiers. You know, Marshalls and big old amps like that, they don't use tubes. They use diodes. So his real problem is he wants to use a power transformer that has a higher B plus than what he wants in the amp. And yes, the groovy thing would be to get the right power transformer. But there are ways to design the power supply that naturally bring that voltage down. Generally through the use of big. Well, not always big. More transformers called a choke and a choke input filter. All you guys are falling asleep. Will lower the voltage compared to not having the choke there. And that's some basic electro junk that you can pick up in jackdaw and places like that. So I just suggest that if you're going to do a choke, make sure it can handle a lot of current. I use the Hammond choke. That's probably 125 milliamps. Because if you have that upstream of the amp, all the energy that's being consumed by the amp has to go through the choke. So the choke has to be able to handle a lot more current. In a Fender. The choke is small because it's not filtering all the voltage. The power tubes. The main plate voltage doesn't go through it. It's only after that. So it can be smaller. Isn't too weedy there?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

So yes, yes, you can modify a power supply to get that voltage down. Are also our Variac commercial. You could see how that thing runs on 110 with your 55 Variac. Right. That's another cheesy way of getting the B Plus down. You could go to our sponsor and get that cool little champ Princeton power Transformer that Hammond makes that has two sets of high voltage windings. One will get you like 400 volts and the other will get you like 350. And that's a cool part too.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip Simmons]

Next.

[Jason]

All right, next question is from Rob. As a follow up to my question about flattening a Fender eyelet board, I tried heating it up really hot with a heat gun, then put two bricks on top of it overnight. It was much more flat the next day, but then did curl back some. I let it sit a few more days so it wouldn't break any solder joints. By the curling, I wouldn't say that this really worked. My next question is, how do you flatten a warped 70s fender grill cloth frame? The Velcro kind. It's made out of that awful chipboard. I put that one under six cinder blocks for a week and it did nothing.

[Skip Simmons]

Towards the end of the silver face era, Fender, old Fender amps. The baffle, which is the board the speaker mounts on, is screwed to the cabinet to the four walls of the cabinet. Later they took that baffle and they basically glued it into the cabinet so that you can't take it out. And those kind have grill cloth that instead of being stapled to the baffle is like a separate frame that's velcroed onto the front of this mess. Fender went to particle board a long time ago because on a baffle if you have any kind of void, it'll make a weird noise. A buzz can be really noticeable. So they went to particle board and in an attempt to make that thing always real neutral. But the quality of the particle board starts getting pretty funky. And if those things get wet, then the particle board just crumbles real, real easy and just falls apart. There is thin liquid epoxy 2 part wood heart hardener that you can put on that crumbly particle board to make it hard again. I think he's talking about the particle board grill that just is velcroed on is what's warped. And does that make sense? Does it seem like that? So that doesn't really have much material. It's almost all grill cloth. And the little strips around the outside edge are pretty small. And they're particle boards. You're never going to get that straightened out. I don't think maybe an ultra thin veneer of something really rigid or carefully taken out the 10 trillion staples and putting the grill cloth on another frame made out of plywood instead of that shitty stuff. Yeah, that be your. That'd be your thing. Or put some screws in from the front that just screw the grille piece right to the baffle. I've seen that before too. It's a little hillbilly, but it would work.

[Jason]

Yeah, yeah. Wonder where Rob found this amp that's got so many warp issues. I don't know.

[Skip Simmons]

That particle board by the mid to late 70s starts getting pretty squirrely. You know, they were. It just big chunks, you know, not, not mdf, you know, but just funky particle board stuff comes apart.

[Jason]

Okay, this next voice memo comes to us from Eric.

[Skip Simmons]

No.

[D]

Hi guys, this is Eric from Bergen in Norway. I've been calling in a couple of times with questions about my old Norwegian wingtour Practice amp from 65. Now there is some kind of cosmetic issue. It's not really Bothering me. But I would want to hear what Skip thinks about this. The knobs are all gone. But it's. The plastic is all gone. The fuels or the center metal things are there with the screws and it works turning on and off it also not very disturbing because the knobs are on the back. So what is your thoughts on. Should I replace this with some. I guess knobs are not difficult to find. Also the ampats aux input or input for a phonograph on a gram phone. Some RCA inputs. I didn't know that that was anything. Or it's. I haven't seen it on any other old tube amps but I've not seen that many. Were there some things that were used on small practice apps also in the 60s and at last a film I saw Scandinavian. A Swedish film called Soso mi Himelen I think it's as It Is in Heaven on English. And that thing hit me because it was. It's about a church choir and a famous director coming there and teaching them and sort of what happens when people make music together and how you really make open your heart through music. Worth watching if you like Scandinavian sort of film about life and death and music. So thanks for the great work and keep on doing it. Bye bye.

[Skip Simmons]

Wow. We do have to keep doing it.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

Scandinavian art movie recommendations.

[Jason]

As It Is in Heaven is the name of the movie. It's from 2004.

[Skip Simmons]

Wow. Wow. I might have to give that a spin. As It Is in Heaven knobs. So the plastics rotted away but the metal inserts are there so you can still use it. Tava would say run it and leave it or you know, mold your own plastic around it. Right. Mike Baranek would take the inserts and like make his own liquid plastic and make new knobs around it or something like that. Right. Wouldn't he?

[Jason]

Anyway.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. Hell yeah. So those two things would be fine. Just some new knob. Even from our sponsor. Say for instance. Come on, just leave the metal things there or get creative and do something really far out. You know, turn some. Turn them on some native wood or carve something out of stone or something. Right. Then phonograph inputs on guitar amps. Rare but not. Not unheard of. The key thing to try it out would be what's the gain level? Most. Most of the time those things are really line level inputs. Even though they say phonograph, which you'd think would be super hot. So get a convert, get an adapter and plug something into that thing and turn it up and see what Happens there was a Radio Shack guitar amp that had a record player in the back. You could pull down a little 45 so you could jam along with the monkeys. Right. Yeah, I'm sure. So and then. And then movie recommendation. Thanks very much, Appreciate that.

[Jason]

Well, let's keep it global. This is from the Isle of Wight in the uk.

[Skip Simmons]

I knew that.

[Jason]

Yeah. How many aisles there's Isle of Man where the motorcycle race is. How many aisles of are there? I don't know. It doesn't matter.

[Skip Simmons]

But that's one of the big ones.

[Jason]

I am a tech living here in Vent Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, southernmost tip of the island. Back in the day I was buying amps from a classified and High Wycombe. I bought this amp approximately 40 years ago, maybe longer. Used it for years in a pub rock blues band. Along with a 63 Super 210 on top of each other. It's an original 1963 vibro verb. Two 10 inch speakers, brown face. I know these are rare in the usa. I guess even rarer here. This was one of a few brown face Fender amps I've seen with the red switchable voltage panel on the rear left of the chassis. He included a photo. I'll share it to our Instagram. Eventually this I guess would mean a multi voltage power transformer. Question one, does Skip know if this would have been fitted at the factory or retrofitted by Fender UK here in England? I cannot find anything online. Also another photo of the Transformers. Not sure which are original. And then he included a photo from his upstairs window where the yearly round the island yacht race is taking place. And yeah, included some other doubts from Stu.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, I am 64 and in the Beatles song when I'm 64 he says we could. We could take a vacation on the Isle of Wight if it's not too dear. Right. If it's not too expensive. Famous vacation spot. Well, that's pretty amazing. And let me just tell our listeners who aren't interested in crap like this. There's a Vibra verb that's pretty common that Stevie Ray Vaughan used. It's just basically a blackface Pro reverb with a 15 in it instead of two 12s. But there's a earlier vibra verb and famous for being the first amp that Fender made with reverb. And I have to consult my printed authorities, but I think there was maybe 500 of those things. Maybe 200. Maybe the serial number lists are. Are accurate on that. I. I'd have to do some research on it. But they are rare. I've seen one. I don't think I've honestly ever worked on one. So what this is is an export model. I'd be curious to ask if maybe the tube chart inside there says for export only, because I have seen fenders with a red lever switch way over by the power cord that turn for different voltages. Right. Factory. So that would mean a special power transformer that has extra windings so it could run on 220 and whatever. Right?

[Jason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

But that would be one of the scarcest amps Fender amps that there is. I mean, there can't be more than a handful of export mibro verbs. So if he calls in a month and says he was at the dump and he found another one, we can expect the apocalypse at any moment after that, because that's just so rare. And Fender. Ask anybody. Fenders in England always been expensive, always hard to get. You know, ask Jim Marshall. And for there to be that rare of a one there, just gotta wonder. Military maybe? I don't know. I don't know. Roy Orbison brought it to the Isle of Wight for I don't know. But that's really far out. And that amp needs to be babied. And if somebody would forward me the pictures I did show, clearly the transformers, I should be able to look it up and see if they are the original transformers or not.

[Jason]

I did forward you the pictures.

[Skip Simmons]

Good. That's a great one. That's just so rare.

[Jason]

And the font on the. The little voltage selector doesn't look like a Fender font. So maybe it was done after the fact. Who knows?

[Skip Simmons]

Maybe send me some pics, I'll have an opinion on that.

[Jason]

He also included pictures of the 50 watt Kelly amp that he just bought built by John Kelly after he left Selmer in the late 60s, early 70s. Sounds great. Through the Selmer cab that he also included a photo of. It has. Yeah. And then he says, music tip. A blues guy from Tucson who died in 1997 album Worried Spirits. That would be Rainier Patasic.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, I've heard of him.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

I don't think I've heard the record, but I remember hearing the name. He likes that one.

[Jason]

Yeah. Student likes that one.

[Skip Simmons]

Kelly. Not Jim Kelly. Not Jim Kelly. But Kelly from England was sort of a slightly budget Marshally thing. Like Rooster is another one. And in our tribute tava to Steve, Mel. And of course, way back in 1990, he had Kelly's. He said, hey, these. These are cool. Not Jim Kelly he even knew back then, right? Of course, but these are English and they rock and they're, they have, I think they had Partridge transformers and they're printed circuit boards. But they were cool and, you know, they were. Back then they were $350 or something like that, you know, so Kelly amps from England, if you happen to run into one, those are cool. I've seen a couple myself. Great.

[Jason]

We have one more voice memo, I believe. Let's play that.

[C]

Hey, Skip and Jason, it's Mike in Lansing, Michigan. Enjoying the podcast, as always. Thank you. As always. I had sent in a voice memo long time ago regarding a Precision Electronics PE25 at Grom's or Grom's PE25 and that had been kind of butchered up and couldn't find a schematic for it. I don't know if you remember this one, but the, the power section had been pretty mucked up. And after, after your response, I kind of just spent a lot of time looking at it and I, and I realized, you know, I drew some stuff out and I realized that mostly what they had done is just bypassed the majority of the cat can and flew in some electrolytics in place of the cap can. And, but they had used some weird values. Like the last voltage node had like a 40U on it, which, which was one of the things that was kind of confusing me. And so I, I just went ahead and, and kind of replaced it, the values with more traditional values similar to what I saw in the PE35 schematic. A real, you know, 40, 20, 2010 kind of a thing. And replace the leaky coupling caps and actually everything seems to be working really well. The B plus on the amp is like 370. That's great. The output from the preamp section is great. It sounds really good. The output from the output section sounds really terrible. So I did some digging there and I don't know what the specs are supposed to be on this output transformer. It doesn't even have the original output transformer has like a hi fi transformer in it. And I don't know what the specs are supposed to be, but I do know that the resistance on one side of the primaries is about 10 times as much as the resistance on another side of the primaries. So I'm thinking this output transformer is pretty toast. And I could tell, you know, the output's good up until the, up until there. So my question today is, you know, how do I go about selecting a replacement output transformer? I know you would just go out to the barn and find something similar from a period. Correct. But I don't have a barn full of, full of old stuff. So I could use a lesson. I think a lot of people could lesson use a lesson in how you go about selecting a transformer, specifically in this case an output transformer for an amplifier when you don't have a direct spec. You know, I can't just look up and give me, oh yeah, give me a 125, a 7A or whatever.

[Jason]

You.

[C]

Know, is it, is it mostly about just. Just what the water do. I just need to make sure I don't go underneath the wattage. I mean it's a PE25. I'm guessing that they're saying it's only going to pull about 25 watts. So I think a typical 4. I'm thinking like a typical 40 watt. It's got 2.6L6 is a typical 40 watt tweed output transformer would probably. But am I thinking about it wrong? Is there something better? How do I know? Thanks guys.

[Skip Simmons]

There's a lot to unpack there.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

For one thing, I noticed that he was able to to somehow say that the preamp of this amp sounds great, but the power amp doesn't. That means somehow he was smart enough to disconnect like the preamp and get it that signal into another amp that works, which I'm not exactly sure how he did. Pretty impressive. I mean I normally would. Wouldn't do that. But in troubleshooting he just, he somehow figured out that the problem was in the output stage. Then his own reading of the output transformer tells it all. The primary side of an output transformer that goes to the power tubes or tube. We're talking about a push pull amp here. So there's three wires, there's a center tap and the beginning and end of that same coil. So it's a coil, a wire with a center tap. If you measure from the center to one side and the center to the other side should be about the same, not 10 times different. That proves right there that that transformer is bad. Then pick in another output transformer. Yes, he is dead on. Correctamundo. That I get to go and go, this, this one might be good, but you know, a good piece of test equipment that I used to have at the drawbridge was an output transformer that would work with almost anything that had alligator clips on it. So the first thing this dude needs to do is to unsolder the primaries of that output transformer. We'll get it out of there. It's done and just get another one. Any kind it could. 25 watts. You don't need a 40 watt fender. A deluxe reverb output transformer or something like that would work fine. Just to make sure that you're right and it's not subtle. On a bad output transformer, you alligator clip in just any working push pull output transformer and all of a sudden the amp is just killing. Well, the old output transformer was bad. Now if you're building something from scratch and you're going to buy a brand new part and you want to know what to get, there's rules, but they're often broken. You know you can. I have a, I have a page from a stand core transfer transformer catalog where it's just endless lists of power tubes run in different ways. So take 6v6, 1 6v6, single ended 2 push pull 6v6s and then it would give you a spec for output transformer of that combination of tubes. And that usually works pretty good. Except if you study schematics long enough, you're going to find something that they threw that out the window and that you're going to say wait a minute, 2k instead of 10k that you'd normally expect to see on a transformer like this. And you don't want to assume that the smart engineers at Stromberg Carlson or wherever didn't know what they were doing. So there's exceptions. But almost all two power tube amps are going to work fine with somewhere in the vicinity of 5k to 10k. So look for something used. You know this. What this guy ought to do is go look, buy a piece of junk like an old organ amp for a hundred bucks that has a great output transformer on it and you get a bunch of other cool parts too. That's probably where I'd get a transformer like that. That so it's not troubleshooting. You could have a test output transformer that would tell you if the bet if your if your output transformer was bad, real easy. But as far as ideal one for a certain amp, get that thing fixed and sounding good and then then you could just explore some potential affordable options. Right. Usually you can't tell if an output transformer is bad. By the by an ohm reading. He's lucky. Most of the time they ohm out okay, but they sound terrible. And the only way you can really troubleshoot it is to have another output transformer that you can real quick stick in there. And so that's how you Troubleshoot it, and then after that, you can pick something. And I encourage people to keep their eyes peeled for old consoles and organ junk like that because it's still good source parts.

[Jason]

I love that your advice is for him to eventually build out a barn full of parts.

[Skip Simmons]

Did I say that?

[Jason]

You told them to get an organ.

[Skip Simmons]

Not an old, not a whole organ. Just look, on ebay, there's people selling big chunks of stuff, you know, that you can see. Oh, it has two six, all sixes on it. It's about that big. Something like that would be just fine, right? It's a lot of flexibility in tube stuff. That solid state stuff doesn't always have. You know, you can change parts quite a bit in the tube circuit and it'll still work. You know, it won't just automatically stop working. And in this case, you know, it's two questions. First, we got to troubleshoot the amp. Then we can address what the ultimate output transformer would be. Okay, here's one.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

Dan Electro alert. They made amps for lots of companies that say Silvertone Airline. And they made a lot of the little cheapy ones, like the ones that go in the actual guitar case, like a Dan Electro like Lindley would use with the little tiny amp built into the guitar case. So there's a whole bunch of really cool little brown Dan Electro amps out there. They use the budget circuit with the 35W4. You guys know what I'm talking about. Not a 6V6, but the little peanut tubes. And there's. I bet you there's a few thousand of them that have this problem. The. The tube designation is printed very clearly on the amp. So you could tell your mom to go down to the Rexall pharmacy and get you, you know, a 35W4. It's printed right, right where the tube goes into the amp. However, a bunch of these have the wrong tube. And it took me a while for my brain to remember it, but somebody brought me a Dan electrode just a couple weeks ago. And I'm embarrassed to say how long I around with that thing, trying to get it to work because it wouldn't play. You know, I couldn't figure out what's wrong with it. And I finally start really looking hard at the wiring of the preamp. And I realize that the tube designation that's printed on the amp, which was 12A V6, 12A Victor 6, was wrong. It's supposed to be a 12A U6, and they're completely not compatible. And if anybody with one of these Dan Electro or Silver Tone amps, who said decided to get new tubes would have bought the wrong one. You know, the ink comes off the actual tube real easy. Sometimes it's hard to read it. So you're going to read on the amp. Oh, mom, get me a 12 AV6. Well, that amp's never going to work again, ever. The one I just fixed had been sitting for 35 years because somebody bought new tubes for it. And Dan Electro put the wrong name on the tank thing. So those little amps use a 12 a U6, not a 12, a V6, even though it says it on there. And once I put a 12 AU6 in it, it worked fine. But that's the kind of thing that you don't expect to come up against. But in my world, because I do so much stuff, I see factory mistakes like that. And I just wonder how many of those amps got thrown away because nobody could ever get them to work again. Unless you knew enough about tube stuff to get in there and actually pin out that tube. Oh, and I looked at a lot of other Dan Electro schematics and none of them used a 12A V6. They all used a 12A U6. And once I realized that, I saw that. Oh, that's why the samples work. Now that's some good knowledge right there.

[Jason]

That's great.

[Skip Simmons]

My. In. In my weird little world, because they made. I mean, they were the. They probably made more amps than Fender. There's probably a jillion of those things out there. And they sound okay when they're fixed up. But make sure you got a 12 AU6 for your V1 or you're gonna have no sound.

[Jason]

Love it.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, there's a little detour for you.

[Jason]

What. What else is on your bench?

[Skip Simmons]

An Alamo from Texas. As in, remember the Alamo? And it's cool. Has the original old speakers, but they're super bassy. And it has the output transformer mounted on the speaker. So after consulting with the dude, the owner, we're gonna mount the output transformer on the chassis, put a speaker jack in it like the Fender. And now he can go and buy some more 10 inch speakers and that'll sound good. His dad's amp. Oh, and he got the. I haven't seen it. 61 or 2 epiphone casino that came with this. So you better know how much that thing costs. Right? Those are like five, six grand or something like that, right? Book. Try not to make this take too long. No, that was. That was Larry Chung. Larry Chung came and he delivered this huge, massive pile of little plastic drawers and boxes to Yan, who makes those cool petals for us, you know, and so all these parts had been saving for him forever. He doesn't, Dan doesn't drive. And there was no ship in them. There were little tiny open topped plastic drawers with like 50,000, you know, parts all identified, you know, millions of capacitors and resistors. In other words, quite a setup for a dude who used parts like that. And Larry came and we took them, wrapped them all up in Saran Wrap and he took them and delivered it to him. And Yan sent me a really expensive bottle of wine way over my. My station that I'll be looking forward to drinking at some point. And Larry brought our literary choice for today, the feather thief. Like someone who steals feathers. Why? Because in the Victorian age, it became the rage worldwide for women's hats to have feathers in them. And during that time, all women wore hats, just like guys, you know, you didn't go outside without a hat. And feathers became the rage for women's hats. And it became such a rage that it basically made a bunch of birds practically extinct. Especially ones from way out in the middle of the ocean somewhere, you know, where they had the birds of paradise, you know, that looked just incredibly colorful and just insane. People who live where I live will note the snowy egret, the white, pure white little wading bird with the really long legs and the really long needly nose like a heron. A pure white. They were almost extinct in the United States because of the millinery trade, because they have these long plumes on egrets. So they just get guys with 10 gauge shotguns to go down there and just blast away, you know, like they did with the buffalo. Right.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip Simmons]

So by the early 1900s, there were laws passed against the importation of feathers from other countries. Because even then, conservationists were going, hey man, there's only like five of these. You got to go to some island out in the middle of the ocean to even, you know, we're talking like Darwin stuff, right? That became popular to you shortly thereafter. Ready for this? Atlantic salmon fishing in England especially, Sport of Kings. You know, like, only the rich people had Atlantic salmon on their streams. And they were really hardcore fly fishermen. Very tweety, you know, Right. And very serious. And a guy wrote a book that became a classic and it printed the recipe for all these famous Atlantic salmon flies that he had developed to use to catch Atlantic salmon. And each one of them used jillions of kinds of ultra rare feathers from ultra rare birds. And right away it created this black market in that because these fly fishermen wanted to make these flies. Fast forward. There's a whole bunch of people today who make those flies from that book and they don't even fish with them. It's an art thing.

[Jason]

Okay, okay.

[Skip Simmons]

Then about a 22 year old kid who's a genius at flying ties, breaks into a natural history museum and steals a whole bunch of actual bird skins to make these flies so he can have them. And that's what the Feather Thief is all about. And it is just a. It's just, it's far out and it's definitely worth a read.

[Jason]

This is a new book?

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, brand new. Yeah. Just recently, not that long ago, someone broke into one of those old natural history museums in England that's been there since the 1700s in the middle of the night and stole all these skins from these birds that were collected by naturalists in the Victorian era, like by Darwin, you know, and just so he could be the guy that has the materials. And there's a current right now, still insider little black market of people who are willing to pay, you know, a thousand dollars for two little feathers from some bird that's been extinct for 100 years so they could tie this fly that they're not even going to fish with. You thought I was weird, huh? But man. Anyway, the Feather Thief, if you're looking for something on the weekend, sounds like.

[Jason]

It should be a movie.

[Skip Simmons]

It's pretty far out. Yeah, it's. It's pretty great. And definitely some, you know, people in their brains are just. People can think of some weird. People are strange when you're a stranger, said Jim Morrison. Anyway. All right, bring her back in. Reel it, reel it back in.

[Jason]

Yeah. And yawn. Is BS Body and Soul Instruments. BS Instruments on Instagram.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, he makes some. He makes some beautiful stuff.

[Jason]

Yeah. And he sent you a bottle of wine. You know who was at the Fretboard summit? Tava listener from Australia, William Bill Downey, who's like a famous Pinot Noir winemaker down there.

[Skip Simmons]

You will drink wine, I hope.

[Jason]

I do drink wine. Yeah, no, I. I got some of Bill's wine. Yeah, it. Great guy. Hung out with him. It was a lot of fun.

[Skip Simmons]

Another listener named William called me and told me that he got Meguiar's convertible top cleaner. Meguiar's is a company. Yeah, for cars. Maguire's is a company that makes all sorts of really high quality polishes that the guitar industry has known about forever. And they apparently make a convertible top cleaner and he sent me some before and after pictures of a premier which has a real thin shitty covering on it that's almost like just very thin sort of plasticky fabric and it was pretty impressive and it does figure. Convertible top cleaners made for something that's flexible. So all you cleaner freaks, all you good goof and addicts out there, if you see some Meguiar's convertible top cleaner, you might give it a try on something that's fabric like a guitar case. Another listener named Will, but not that Will.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip Simmons]

Okay, too much to deal with today.

[Jason]

We'll do one or two more. This one is from Chris. Thanks again for another great episode of Tava. This is Chris from Vancouver, Canada. I was the first syrupy slow voice message and pacesetter on the All Canadian Content episode a while back for which I got Skip roasted. Besides giving a few shout outs to Canadian amp guys and amplifier brands as well as a musical recommendation, I actually posed a question regarding my Canadian made Pepco Riviera 725. So there has been a previous mention made of it that Skip may have forgotten about when the latest guy wrote in about a grounding issue on his 725. Anyways, Pepco and Pine branded amps were out of Quebec in the 60s and 70s and the 725 is a point to point Princeton reverb type amp but without the reverb and tremolo maybe too boomy for some until you lower a couple cap values to bridle it. That's what was recommended and that's what I did at least. Thank you. As per Skip's request I'll include a few pics as well as mentioning the pine made Cobra Mark 2. It's a very similar looking head and circuit that I had converted to the 6G2 Brown Princeton circuit with a Supro style second channel and it's become one. It's become one of my favorites. Also I was happy to hear that John from Vancouver called in on the last episode with some lo fi Skip love and a question about his MagnetOne 410. John is a great producer in our town who happened to produce and play on the album recommendation I had made Frazie Ford's you Can Be the Sun so he says. Then he ends with maybe a Tava kegger meetup in Vancouver is needed. That is.

[Skip Simmons]

Oh yeah, oh yeah, Absolutely.

[Jason]

I love Vancouver, you know.

[Skip Simmons]

Absolutely. Spruce Spruce Tree Musics Carolina he I fixed something for him and they sent a beautiful shirt, right? George sent me a beautiful Danger UXB Sent me a beautiful shirt from the oldest dance hall in Texas when he was there. But side downside of being a family man, both of those cool shirts got, like, instantly abdicated by other members of the family. I never even got to wear them because I thought, this is cool. I'm gonna wear this, right? Dang it. But thanks. But thanks to Spruce Tree, that guy found an old Masco which are getting really rare and hard to find. And a guy named Darren, graphic artist Serif. Like San Serif. S E R I Serif. Yeah, Serifs says thank you. Serifs and whiskey. And he sent a bunch of these just really crazy, really graphic posters that are amp and tube related. And I'm gonna have them out in the shop and in the barn and be giving them away to people to hang up. They're very, you know, very bold and very cool. Like full color, like tubes all lit up and just really, you know, boss looking. And it was just. I don't think I fixed anything for him. I think he just sent it as a freebie. But I'm going to be distributing those. Yes.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip Simmons]

Thank you, people.

[Jason]

Keep the amp questions and voice memos. Coming to podcastritboardjournal.com we have a Patreon if you want the front of the line. I want to thank our sponsors one more time. Grez Guitars, amplified parts, amplified parts.com and Emerald City Guitars. Thanks, Skip. I think we did it.

[Skip Simmons]

Did good. I'm going to hit you with two more.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

You want to go to Blossom Valley Foods.com Blossom Valley Foods.com and you want to get a couple bottles of the pepper plant sauce. It's. I've recommended it before on the podcast years ago. It's. It's. It's. It's just indescribably rich and savory and spicy without being super hot. And it is a little pricey, but it is good. And on the opposite side. I'd never done it in all these years, but I've always been thinking about it. And I finally did. I fixed an old reverb tank by changing one of the transducers inside the tank that was open. It's like a little pickup coil and the coil goes bad and the reverb tank won't work. So I throw it in the barn. So now I got like 50 tanks in there that all have one side or the other broken. And when this beautiful little super reverb came in one day, I said, I'm doing it. And I actually swapped the little transducer so all you people looking for a side gig could start rebuilding vintage reverb tanks. It's hard. The. The springs have a tiny little hook that goes into a tiny little hole that's like the size of a tiny little needle. You got to have some serious magnification going on. But it is possible. And I knew it was because I'd seen a little fender tech sheet from way back in the 60s where they said if the tank goes bad, just replace it. You know, the coils are A$25, and you can just do it in minutes. No, you can't do it in minutes, but it can be done. So all y'all, with a few broken tanks out there, you just get on down, drill that rivet out and replace. Swap around those transducers. You can use a sheet metal screw to put the new one in, and you can resurrect those old tanks. There you go.

[Jason]

Is this transducer something that could be bought by at maybe amplified parts?

[Skip Simmons]

I don't think they sell the transducers for reverb tanks anymore. I have.

[Jason]

Where would you buy that?

[Skip Simmons]

Well, you'd have all other old tanks. Like, you got five broken reverb tanks. You could probably put. Put two of them together and make one that works. I stripped it off of a. Of another tank. Right. Because there's two. One on each end. This one's bad, the other one's still good. And if you can find the right one, you can take it out and put it in. You know, dig me. Like, you can make a working one from a few different broken ones. And a lot of people won't throw out reverb tanks. I didn't for a long time. And now we've got an excuse that somebody wants to come over here and pick up 20 reverb tanks and do some swapping around. And old tanks sound really good. There's no getting around it. They do have a cool tone to them. It's just something fun that you thought. I would have. Thought I would have done it by now, but it just looked too hard. And I finally decided I should do it. And I did. And the next one would be. Will be easier. And I would do it for an amp that was absolutely untouched, like, hyper clean, but had a bad tank. That was the original tank. That would be a place where you'd get in there and just fix it. Oh, by the way, that I had a super reverb that had the original tubes from 1966. It was so clean that it never even had a tube put in it. And yes, Fender used Telefunken 12 at 7s. It had a telefunken rectifier tube in it. And Fender, for the tremolo, always used European tubes, either Amperex or 12ax or Bugle or telefunkens for the vibrato. I don't know why the other 12 AX7s were all RCAs, but if they were that amp, I was probably the first person to ever even look at it. It's pretty amazing to see.

[Jason]

I love that.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, but no one wants a super reverb. Can't. It's probably worth three grand, but I had to sell it for two grand because nobody wants a super reverb. If it had been a Princeton reverb, we would have people lining up. Right? So. But anyway, we did it. We'll try not to make it a month. Yeah, but if it is a month, so be it. And to our sponsors, I say, even if it takes us longer, we'll get you all the. The yakin that you paid for. We'll.

[Jason]

We'll get into our listeners. And thanks again to everybody who. Who came to the Chicago Fretboard Summit. It was amazing. And, yeah, we'll be back on track now.

[Skip Simmons]

And T shirts.

[Jason]

And we'll get T shirts, too.

[Skip Simmons]

I'm gonna put that bug in here because I've had a few. I've had a few people say, what about the chairs? What about the shirts? So we'll have to do that, too. Thanks for everything, Jason, and thanks, Skip. Thanks for everyone who calls and writes and say this. Says they listen to the podcast. And we're all. I'm always surprised at how many people you know are willing to reach out and say hi, and I'm appreciative of.

[Jason]

It from around the world. It's amazing.

[Skip Simmons]

Crazy, man.