Ep. 148: "Lining Up"

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ep. 148 "Lining Up" – The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons

Release Date: June 1, 2025

In Episode 148 of The Truth About Vintage Amps podcast, hosts Skip Simmons and Jason delve into a blend of personal anecdotes, vintage amp restoration tales, and insightful listener questions. This episode, titled "Lining Up," offers a rich exploration of vintage tube amp culture, intertwined with lighthearted conversations and practical advice for enthusiasts and collectors alike.

---

1. Peru Trip Anecdotes

The episode kicks off with Skip and Jason reminiscing about Jason’s recent trip to Peru, where he participated in a chaperoned group excursion involving 14-year-old students.

• Challenges Faced: The journey was fraught with typical travel woes, including altitude sickness and food poisoning among the participants. Jason shares, “Every single day, a new batch of kids got sick” ([02:19]).

• Cultural Observations: Jason describes the vibrant scenes in Peru, from bustling city life to serene rural villages. He mentions encountering flutes for sale and a luthier in Cusco crafting classical guitars, though language barriers limited his interactions.

• Meeting a Listener Abroad: A serendipitous encounter with listener Chris at the airport highlights the tight-knit community surrounding the podcast. Jason reflects, “The group of weirdos that you've put together over the last... has been amazing” ([05:03]).

---

2. Vintage Amp Restoration Stories

Skip shares a compelling story about restoring a vintage Tweed Harvard amp that had survived a fire in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

• Amp's Resilience: Despite significant damage to the cabinet, the chassis remained intact. Skip remarks, “It shows you what a handmade, solid, serviceable thing can survive and still work” ([12:16]).

• Surprising Longevity of Tubes: Even after the amp was engulfed in flames, the tubes continued to function, underscoring the durability of vintage equipment.

• Connection with Jack White’s Team: The discussion transitions to the restoration efforts by Jack White’s team, who refurbished a massive console from the Roxy Theater. Skip appreciates the journey of these instruments, stating, “it's not just sitting somewhere... it's making some sounds. Fantastic” ([22:49]).

---

3. Listener Questions and Insights

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to addressing listener-submitted questions, offering Skip’s expert advice on various technical aspects of amp maintenance and usage.

a. Using a Vintage Hi-Fi Amp (Daniel Tashian) [32:04]

• Question: Daniel seeks guidance on repurposing his father-in-law’s Bell 2122C integrated mono tube amp for guitar use, turntables, or tuners.

• Skip’s Advice:

  • Versatile Applications: Skip suggests using the amp with a good FM station or streaming services for background music, emphasizing practicality over conversion to a guitar amp.
  • Speaker Recommendations: He advises experimenting with different small speakers to complement the mono setup, recommending models like the Radio Shack Minimus 7 for their balanced sound.

  “If you have a good FM station nearby, I'm a big fan of tuners and radio because no matter how many records you have, it's always fun to let someone else pick...” ([33:18])

b. Selecting the Right Speaker (Victor) [50:59]

• Question: Victor, a DIY hobbyist, inquires about criteria for pairing speakers with amps, focusing on specifications like dB sensitivity and resonance frequency.

• Skip’s Advice:

  • Practical Testing Over Specs: Skip emphasizes hands-on testing over relying solely on spec sheets, advising listeners to “hook it up to my speaker, the one I've had forever, that I've played countless amps through, and I go, that sounds about right” ([62:08]).
  • Sound Over Numbers: He highlights that sound quality often trumps technical specifications, encouraging experimentation to find the best match.

  “There is no one thing. The way you change the sound of your amp is by how you hit the strings, not by putting a different speaker in there...” ([62:09])

c. Modding a Harmony Model 420 Amp (Jamie) [63:02]

• Question: Jamie shares his successful modification of a Harmony 420 amp, blending it with a Fender AB763 Deluxe Reverb schematic to enhance its performance.

• Skip’s Insights:

  • Enhancing Gain Stages: He discusses the addition of a gain stage and the removal of global negative inverse feedback, noting the balance between increased gain and potential distortions.
  • Customization Benefits: Skip applauds Jamie’s technical skills and the improved tonal qualities achieved through thoughtful modifications.

  “He got in and he built an additional gain stage in the amp because only half the 12 AX7 is being used and the other half is sitting there with nothing connected to it.” ([67:00])

d. Adding Cooling Fans to Amps (Greg) [69:23]

• Question: Greg seeks advice on installing cooling fans in vintage amps to prevent overheating without introducing electrical noise.

• Skip’s Guidance:

  • Installation Tips: He recommends placing small, inexpensive 12 VDC fans on the incoming AC line before the power transformer to minimize noise.
  • Practical Solutions: Skip suggests using fan clips from stores like Walmart for easy installation, ensuring that the airflow targets critical components without compromising the amp’s integrity.

  “Fans can be a good idea... but if you look around thrift stores, you know, Walmart types of places, pretty sure you're going to find a little handy dandy clip on fan that just plugs right into the wall.” ([71:12])

e. Using Guitar Amps for Bass (Bart) [74:12]

• Question: Bart asks whether a Fender Bass 6 should be used with a guitar amp or a bass amp and if high volumes could damage guitar speakers.

• Skip’s Response:

  • Suitability: He explains that while bass can be played through guitar amps safely at low volumes, cranking up the volume may strain the speakers due to the thicker strings and lower frequencies.
  • Preventative Measures: Skip advises monitoring volume levels to prevent speaker damage, emphasizing that high-quality bass amps are better suited for handling low-end frequencies.

  “If you're distorting and cracking that speaker up, then you might blow it up someday. But oh well, right, yeah.” ([71:23])

f. Breaking in New Speakers (Bob) [82:01]

• Question: Bob describes his experience with reconed JBL D130F speakers and seeks advice on further breaking them in for optimal performance.

• Skip’s Tips:

  • Controlled Usage: He recommends gradually increasing the cone movement through regular listening sessions, likening it to restringing a guitar for better sound.
  • Sound Quality: Skip explains that breaking in helps the speaker's suspension become more flexible, enhancing bass response and overall sound quality.

  “Anything you can do to make that part of it a little bit more flexible will make the speaker sound more full and less tight...” ([83:45])

g. Repairing Tremolo in Standell Solid State Amp (Nate) [87:07]

• Question: Nate seeks assistance in fixing the tremolo function of his 1969 Standell solid-state amp.

• Skip’s Advice:

  • Technical Expertise: Skip offers to connect Nate with a specialist in Nashville capable of creating new modules for vintage amps, highlighting the challenges of working with solid-state components.
  • Maintenance Caution: He warns against tampering with complex modules, advocating for professional repairs to preserve the amp’s integrity.

  “There are some people that are so into Standell that they figured out some ways around that...” ([90:21])

---

4. Cooking Tips from Listeners

Throughout the episode, Skip and Jason incorporate listener-shared recipes, blending culinary tips with their technical discussions.

• Daniel Tashian’s Salsa Chicken Recipe [32:04]: A detailed guide on slow-cooking chicken breasts with salsa, ideal for easy and delicious meals.

  “Take a jar or can or two of whatever your favorite salsa is. Put three chicken breasts in the slow cooker and pour the salsa over it...” ([33:04])

• Victor’s Spanish Rice Enhancement [58:01]: An intricate recipe for a flavorful rice dish, showcasing creativity in the kitchen.

  “Get a pot of rice going in the rice water. You want to add in a half teaspoon of turmeric and a half teaspoon of adobo...” ([58:01])

---

5. Book and Movie Recommendations

• Books: Skip recommends Patrick O'Brian's The Wine-Dark Sea and Jerry Portnoy’s Dancing With Muddy, highlighting their relevance to vintage and musical enthusiasts.

• Movies: The classic film Duel by Steven Spielberg is suggested as a must-watch, particularly for its portrayal of vintage car mechanics and suspense.

  “...a guy named Jerry Portnoy, who is a white guy who played harp in Muddy Waters Band... it's called Dancing With Muddy.” ([91:36])

---

6. Upcoming Episodes and Guests

• Next Guest: The duo teases the upcoming episode featuring Jim Campalongo, promising insightful discussions on his unique approach to guitar playing.

  “And we are recording another episode one week from today with the one and only Jim Campalongo.” ([29:05])

---

7. Conclusion and Health Updates

As the episode wraps up, Skip mentions recovering from a cold and the importance of health in managing demanding projects.

“Thanks to you all. Thank you, Skip. Thank you, bud. We'll talk soon.” ([95:16])

---

Notable Quotes:

• Skip on Vintage Amp Resilience:
  “It shows you what a handmade, solid, serviceable thing can survive and still work.” ([12:16])

• Skip on Speaker Selection:
  “There is no one thing. The way you change the sound of your amp is by how you hit the strings, not by putting a different speaker in there.” ([62:09])

• Skip on Breaking in Speakers:
  “Anything you can do to make that part of it a little bit more flexible will make the speaker sound more full and less tight...” ([83:45])

• Skip on Master Volume Circuits:
  “If you floor the volume and just barely crack up the master, it doesn't sound all that distorted.” ([75:28])

---

Key Takeaways:

• Community and Connectivity: The episode underscores the strong community around vintage amps, illustrated by unexpected meetups and listener interactions.

• Technical Expertise: Skip’s vast knowledge shines through as he addresses complex technical questions, offering practical solutions and encouraging hands-on experimentation.

• Passion for Preservation: Stories of restoring vintage equipment highlight the dedication to preserving and maintaining the legacy of classic amps.

• Engagement with Listeners: The interactive format, featuring detailed listener questions and personalized responses, fosters a sense of inclusion and shared enthusiasm.

---

For more insights and detailed discussions on vintage amp repair, restoration, and collecting, tune into Episode 148 of The Truth About Vintage Amps podcast with Skip Simmons and Jason.

Transcript

[Skip]

Okay.

[Jason]

Hey, how are you?

[Skip]

I'm great. I'm talking to a different guy. This podcast.

[Jason]

I know.

[Skip]

Your life has been changed forever. It has memories. I can't even imagine a lot of people. I said, I know a guy who's got a bunch chaperoned a bunch of eighth graders. And, you know, Magic Mountain would be enough, right? Or say, I did a thing like that with a big national FFA convention in Louisville, Kentucky. But that's a lot closer than Peru.

[Jason]

I know.

[Skip]

Not to mention the 14,000ft and the bland food.

[Jason]

I know. I'm back.

[Skip]

Well, I don't know how you found time to do this so soon. I think I'd need a week off.

[Jason]

It's been almost a week off. I got back last Saturday and. And I'm raring to go. And we have a ton of questions.

[Skip]

We have. We. I got a new fj.

[Jason]

Okay, good.

[Skip]

That's groovy. The tank top issue. We could. We can issue.

[Jason]

Was there a tank top?

[Skip]

You were in Peru.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So we'll talk about that privately sometime.

[Jason]

Oh, okay.

[Skip]

River horse. Randy. Nine cheeseburgers. Randy. Randy. We talked about this. River horse. Anyway, I'm glad you survived it, and everyone's glad you're back because we got to keep the FJ thing going. And I had a cold. First one I've had in 15 years. If I sound a little funny, it's because I'm still just kind of getting over it.

[Jason]

I'm getting over my cold.

[Skip]

Kicked my butt. I thought it was just allergies, you know? And then on day three, oh, I had to stay in bed all day. And everything hurts for longer when you're older. Yeah.

[Jason]

Here you.

[Skip]

I imagine so. I imagine people getting that many kids and adults that long, you must have had some people who got sick every day.

[Jason]

Every single day.

[Skip]

Right. Somebody was barfing or something, right?

[Jason]

Yep. Because the kids were encouraged to be frugal and eat street food. So there was the food poisoning element. Then you had a bunch of sea level kids going to 14,000ft for the first time. Then you had the hikes, and then you had, like, hostels where, you know, there's probably just germs everywhere anyways, so. Yeah, every. Every day a new batch of kids got sick.

[Skip]

Well, another side of it that I've experienced is the adults. How many adults were there? 10? 12.

[Jason]

Yeah. Like 12. Yeah.

[Skip]

Yeah. I'm sure that there was some drama. Drama amongst adults. Yeah.

[Jason]

It's like a reality show.

[Skip]

Yeah. Some people are there to support the program, you know, Like, I've been involved in 4H and FFA for a long time. Kids showing animals and stuff like that. But at some point, sometimes you get some adults that are there for the, you know, they. They basically put their own personal thing, agenda ahead of the group and that can be tough. Did any adults get really sick? Yes.

[Jason]

Oh, yeah. The adults got sick. Yeah.

[Skip]

Any adults whose initials are J and V get really sick?

[Jason]

No. Your. Your co host was one of the healthier members of the group. I'm. I, I didn't get sick till the flight back home.

[Skip]

All that healthy living. Wow.

[Jason]

Did some jogs.

[Skip]

So you got sick on the flight back home?

[Jason]

Yeah, but I kept it together till then, which was all that mattered.

[Skip]

Oh, the Greyhound bus. Like, you know, Midnight Cowboy. Just like. And, and thankfully your cohorts, your teammates, your better half were there at the airport going, just get in the car and we'll get you home.

[Jason]

Yeah, exactly.

[Skip]

Wow.

[Jason]

So if anyone out there has any interest in going to Peru, I know a great guide I can recommend to any of you out there. And I also. This is the craziest. I think I told you this already. This is wild. So the last episode of the Truth About Vintage Amps podcast came out on April 26. We recorded it a few days prior to. I posted it that morning. And that was the day I flew to Peru. I met lax. Seattle to LAX was the first flight. And then there was another one to Lima. Run into Truth About Vintage Amps listener Chris at the airport on my same flight. He finds me watching over all these kids and says like, hey, Jason, I just heard you were going to Peru on the podcast. What are the odds of that?

[Skip]

Well, I say it again, that the group of weirdos that you've put together over the last. How many years, as of 12 years of fretboard journal.

[Jason]

15, 20, 20. Yeah.

[Skip]

That is pretty amazing.

[Jason]

Yeah. I didn't get to hang out with him because he was going to Lima. He's got family in LA and Lima. And, and he. But he recommended a few guitar people, people I should go visit. Of course I couldn't because I was watching all these 14 year olds, but it was amazing.

[Skip]

You couldn't do anything you wanted because you had a full time job. I could, I could imagine that. No, that, that's. That's pretty far out. I suppose the last plane was some kind of open cockpit biplane with a guy smoking a cigar.

[Jason]

Llama. Llama. Co pilot. Yeah.

[Skip]

Did you see any of that? Like people traveling via public transportation with lots of stuff you Know, in other.

[Jason]

Words, the old babies on handle motorcycle handlebars.

[Skip]

Babies riding on the handlebars.

[Jason]

There were lots of motorcycles, lots of alpacas and some llama carrying stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was. I mean, we were only in a big city like half the time. The other half the time we were in these rural villages and so I saw it all.

[Skip]

How about when you stepped out onto the tarmac? Was it just instantly different? Was like the climate, the whole feel of the air and everything. Like, whoa, where am I now? Because that was 10, 10 or 12,000ft right where you, where you got off the plane.

[Jason]

Well, when we first got off the plane, it was in the Amazon, so that was different. Oh, the air was thick and humid and hot and then. Yeah, it, it definitely, you know what the equivalent of like a driveway here at home, like a little incline where you'd park your car would, would have you winded at. At 10 or 12,000ft. So yeah, I felt it.

[Skip]

Amazing.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Any. Did you see any musical instruments at all?

[Jason]

There were a lot of flutes for sale. There were. There was a luthier in Cusco who I meant to go visit, but I didn't. But I don't think he spoke any English and I don't speak much Spanish and he makes classical guitars. But it was just going to be a field, but whatever.

[Skip]

Well, the latest FJ has that fascinating article about the guys making musical instruments out of basically recycled materials in the Congo.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And Africa. Yeah, that. That was wild. Yeah, well. Yeah, well, all right. Little when I see the connection. So Jill at a junk pile found a stack of these magazines from the 80s called Small Farmer, Small Farm, Small Farmers Journal.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

And you open it up and it's a completely different world. These people farm with horses and oxen and mules. Not only are they. I mean, they might be 10 miles from town, but they're old school farmers who do everything basically with old time methods, using animals as much as possible. There's not much in there about tractors, right? A little bit. And then of course there's the political aspect where they are kind of anti government. You know, they got a lot of homeschooling going on. A lot of Amish and Mennonite people are into that. This magazine was from the 80s, not from the 1940s. And it just like, wow, that's a whole bunch of people that you'd never know were out there. But if you went to Colfax, Washington, in eastern Washington.

[Jason]

Colfax, Washington.

[Skip]

There you go. And those rolling hills there were all these beautiful pictures of people, like, plowing that stuff with. With giant draft horses and stuff like that. And just to leaf through it, you know, we. We like things that we can fix. You know, we, like. One reason why we like vintage amps is because you don't throw it away when it breaks. And there's, like, there are threads there. There's continuity between people who want to live on a farm and. And raise horses. Oh, and the size. You know, the idea is that we think that agriculture got better and better as the farms got bigger and bigger. Fewer and fewer people could produce the food to feed more and more people. Their bag is no, you grow as much as you need to live and a little surplus to sell, and that's how big it should be. And I'm not quite sure now of my connection to Peru, but. No. Well, I just mean people that. Boy, we sure have a lot of stuff here in America, right? Wasn't there a lot of, you know, unpaved roads and.

[Jason]

Oh, yeah, there are people who just, you know, and we helped them or they showed us what they do. We didn't really. They didn't need our help. But, like, there are people with tiny plots of. They don't. They're not even plots of land. They're people just making. Growing potatoes on a hillside. And the community just sort of, you know, there's no property lines. Nobody owns anything. They're just like, yeah, this is where I'm going to grow potatoes this year, and then next year I'm going to move it over 20 yards so that, you know, the soil can rejuvenate or whatever. And, yeah, it's just. It's a totally different way of life.

[Skip]

And they've been growing those potatoes there for a couple thousand years, and they.

[Jason]

Cook them on the spot so that they have energy to harvest the rest of the potatoes. So they make these little, like, rock ovens in the dirt, and they're just munching on potatoes while they're harvesting potatoes.

[Skip]

If there had been salt and pepper, would the potatoes have been great? Fresh, tasty?

[Jason]

Yeah. There wasn't a lot of spice in Peru, in my experience, but. But, yeah, you know, potatoes, something would have gone a long way.

[Skip]

Wow. Well, I could talk. I could ask questions about that whole scene.

[Jason]

Well, maybe that's a Patreon episode, if anybody has any questions. But we have a lot of amp questions because it's been a month and. And so many of you out there have sent in voicemail or email to podcast fritboardjournal.com and I don't know what's on your bench, Skip. What have you been working on?

[Skip]

Nothing for a few days because I've been sick. But a tweed Harvard that was in a fire. It was like a. In a bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In fact, I got. I forgot to send that guy that amp. I'm getting there. Guy. Guy in Albuquerque. But it apparently was in a bar, and the bar burned down and the cabinet got really demolished. But the chassis survived. And it was all black and smoking out, covered with soot and stuff. But it was fine. I fixed it. No problem. It was. Looks almost the same as it did before. You know, I just. It had the original filter caps with a little cardboard thing, so I was able to put new ones in there. And just shows you what. What a handmade, solid, serviceable thing can survive and still work.

[Jason]

Yeah, yeah. Didn't need the heat. Didn't damage any caps or anything.

[Skip]

The tube still worked.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Of course, they get hot, right? They run hot. And I've had tubes work from an amp that was consumed in fire where even the transformers were just plates of metal because all the copper and insulation and wire inside it just melted out of them. But the tubes still worked. Amazing.

[Jason]

That is amazing.

[Skip]

So let's see that. And there was something else fun. I can't think of what right now. Like I said, I'm a little off my game.

[Jason]

You're up. Me too.

[Skip]

I'm a little off. Kind of like a echoey sound in my head. Hopefully I sound okay.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

The dulcet tones, you know, people are counting on. I love to go back to the telephone, and no one will know that I was sick. This is fun. And then. Then sponsors. Yep, of course, the great Kevin in Ohio.

[Jason]

Oh, boy.

[Skip]

He found. And I didn't get it, even though I really wanted it. Maybe the guy who did get it will call me someday. A teaching tool. Packard Bell was a big old company. They made TVs and consoles and all this stuff. And this thing was like a big wooden board, maybe 30, 40 inches square, that sat on a little stand. And it was a gigantic schematic of an amp drawn on this big thing, like so a teacher could go up and say. And see here the capacitor, blah, blah, blah. But wait, it gets better at every. Where there's a part on the schematic, there's an actual real part. And if you look around at the back, there were all these wires where it showed a tube in the schematic, there was a tube like they Mounted a tube socket on this board so you could see it. This thing worked.

[Listener]

What?

[Skip]

Yes, it was a working demonstration. It was like a great big schematic with actual parts screwed to the board.

[Jason]

But what was it that.

[Skip]

The whole thing, it was an audio app as a push pull. Okay, I forget. 6 AQ5. I mean it's just sort of a generic 10 watt push pull little amp with a few tubes. Right. But it was obviously designed as a teaching tool. I wanted it. Yeah, but I didn't get it. It went for a couple hundred bucks plus and it was expensive to ship. And you got me, right? Like you're standing there with your pointer going, all right, so here's the phase inverter and you point to it and here's this big schematic of it, but right in the middle of it is an actual tube that's hooked up to the whole thing and actually works. Right. Like there's, you can see the capacitors on the board right where the schematic would show a capacitor. Well, right there, there'd be a capacitor. And all the connections were made on the back. So if you looked at the back of it, there was wires going all over the place. But it was a demonstration amplifier. So even though I didn't get it. Yeah, somebody, me, somebody. We got to make a smaller one. We got to make a tweed Princeton demonstration thing like the size of a chalkboard that actually worked. So. So when we do do our in person jam at some point in the future, gotta have something like that, right? So you can say, look, it had a speaker mounted on the back and everything. Yes, it worked. It was a work.

[Jason]

This was on ebay or something?

[Skip]

Yeah, it was on ebay. Who got it? I'll give you, I'll, I'll double you. Now I usually don't want stuff. You guys know me, I just like, eh. No, I don't care about old guitars and this and that. Oh, a customer that I didn't know brought up, he said, I'm not a musician. My dad gave me a, you know, this guitar and this amp. I want to get the amp fixed. It hasn't been worked, you know, working for a million years. He brings it up. It's a 1952 champ champion 600. A little tweed champ from 1952. They're worth a couple grand if they're in nice shape. His was a little bit mangled and I said guitar. And he goes, yeah, here, Here's a picture. 52 Telecaster, clean looking right. And I said, do you know what this is worth? And. And he said, well, people have told me it's valuable. I run down get 50 grand, right. For a clean jelly, right. And how do I get into these things, you know? I said, you're not a musician, right? He goes, well, you know, I have a 17 year old nephew. I'm going, you can buy a guitar that looks just like this for $250. Now get a hold of yourself. Right? Well, what am I supposed to do with it? It was my dad's and I can't get rid of it. I'm going. Kind of reminds me of when we had Ben harper. I said, 50 grand. Your dad would be thrilled if you started a college fund or paid off the mortgage or something like that. You know, do something important with the money. If is is also good. I mean, if you were a guitar player, I could see it. But if my relatives gave me a 52 Telecaster, yeah. Even now I just go, nah, I'm not worthy or I'd rather have more land, say, for instance. Anyway, that was interesting and it was fun to put a guy straight basically about what he had and to be able to discuss some options other than just, you know, something that starts with, dude, you should blah, blah, blah, you know, because we're older and we get an idea of, you know, what could be done with a chunk of change like that. And he was, he drove off and I'm sure his mind was in a whirl, like, what am I supposed to do now? Anyway, gigantic working schematic was pretty, pretty amazing. And I think I'm going to have to build a smaller version of that.

[Jason]

Just, I think you should. And then just imagine when customers come by, you could pull out the laser pointer and say, like, well, here was your problem. And like, point to it on the, on the wall. I think that would be fun.

[Skip]

So. So anyway, I had to get that. I had to get things started with that. And thanks to Kevin, as usual, for even turning up something I could have gone to see. I could have gone to hang out with Jack White. I know, hour and a half from my house.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

But of course, you guys know I went. Plus, I was sick. And even if I wasn't sick, if I'd have had a little heads up. But the deal is, is that podcast listener, longtime guitar tech for Jack, was in Sacramento with Jack because they were going to do some gig somewhere and he didn't want to call on the Memorial Day weekend to bug me. So sweet. But he did call on like, Monday or Tuesday. And he wanted to come up but his plans had changed and he wasn't able to. And he was one of the guys that came in the van in the snowstorm and loaded up the wall, the entire sound system from the Roxy theater put in 1920 something or other that Kevin from Ohio had been storing. And he was one of those guys. So I said, wait a minute, you went to help and. Yeah, yeah. And he listens to the podcast all the time. So his name is Dan Mancini. So hi to Dan Mancini. And it's just a fun connection to have with a pro. And by the way, Jack and his team, they fixed a bunch of that stuff up. They restored the gigantic sit down console with the huge RCA thing and the big levers that look like they're from an airplane. And I think it had 15 or 16 separate rack mount preamps. And they restored a bunch of that stuff.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So in a smaller way. Well, in, in a way like a famous rock star guy buying some ultra rare flying V and then taking it out and using it, you know, some $250,000. At least that stuff's not just sitting somewhere. Yeah, right. More. And it sat for years. Of course it was installed at the Roxy. We're gonna, we're gonna have a hymn on and we're going to try to put everybody's information, they've done some research, see if we can figure out the path that stuff took to end up where it did. And I always love that about if, if there's an article about an old guitar or an old something or other, I always like to hear started here, it went to here. It sat in this barn for 20 years, it went to here. So that's the story with the wall. It was in the basement of a super well known jazz engineer who engineered one of my favorite Mose Allison records that I loved when I was like in the sixth grade. Phil something or other Leal. And it was in his basement of his mom's house and it was for sale on ebay. And Kevin, we kept it top secret for weeks until, you know, the deal went down. But he didn't pay too much, but he had to drive for two and a half days each way and rent a truck and all this stuff. And they had to cut the door and make the doorway bigger because the garage had been modified, the basement had been modified after all this stuff was put in it. So he endured a bunch of work and got it all home and he stored it for 19 years and then he decided it Was time to move it along. He thought up a price. He thought up a price. And he knew a fellow that was a vintage dealer in Nashville who knew Jack. So he was the go between on the deal. And Kevin said, I want X. And Jack says, how about Y? And Kevin said, no, I want X. And the next day Jack says, well, how about Z? Because, no, I want X. You know, three days and. Okay, fine. And the next day, there's the van, you know, and a bunch of guys ready to load it all up.

[Jason]

Incredible. Yeah.

[Skip]

And now. And now Jack took it. The final Jack. I should. Mr. White, I don't know him, but I appreciate the fact that he took that final step, and it's not just sitting somewhere, people looking at it. It's making some sounds. Fantastic.

[Jason]

Yeah. Well, when. When all this went down, that. When they were trying to visit you last week, friend of the show, Chris Young, the proprietor behind Union Tube and Transistor pedals up in Vancouver, British Columbia, who's also partnered with Jack White and third man on some stuff. He just sent me this, like, really short text that said, jack and Dan want to see Skip. And I had no idea who Jack and Dan were. So I just said, diane, I just said, well, his phone number's at the bottom of his website. Give him a call. I had no idea what they were talking about, but now I do.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Jason]

Anyway.

[Skip]

Well, he was nice, and we had. We had 20 minutes to chat, but he was obviously at work.

[Jason]

Yeah, they got to do a show.

[Skip]

And he had to tear it up. And. And what Dan wanted was to come up and get some unrestored piece of audio junk. I guess he's. He's fixing some of that stuff up. He helped work on the wall.

[Jason]

Nice.

[Skip]

So, I don't know. Just a groovy story.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Somebody saved. Somebody saved that stuff way back when. Yeah, somebody saved it again. Somebody put it in their basement. Kevin came along, Jack came along, and now we have it. My relatives never sold the ranch since 1868. All through some hard times, and because of that, I have this place and that stuff. Surviving all that at time and not ending up in the landfill or sold or junked out or whatever is just fabulous. Speaking of fabulous, our sponsors.

[Jason]

Yeah, Our friends at Amplified Parts have the new mod electronics amplifier kits. Go check those out. They have every wattage classic model imaginable. They're great. Support them. Support the show. Tell them. Dava sent you. Our friends at Emerald City Guitars here in Seattle, they just picked up a new RV. So the YouTube RV series is going strong. They also have the coolest. It's a 66 fender showman head with a 212 cabinet with the most incredible 60s paisley grill cloth on both the head and the cabinet. I know Fender Showman. Probably not the most popular amp for everybody out there, but once you see this thing, you'll, you'll want it. And then of course, beautiful. No, it's so cool. And there, you know, it's.

[Skip]

Well, there was a time, there was a time when any self respecting Fender collector would have had that hacked off in a heartbeat. And back to original.

[Jason]

So beautiful.

[Skip]

No, I know. I, I, I have a, I have a blue tuck and roll showman stack in my neighborhood that the guy had done back in when he was in a band. You know, they took it to the place that did ski boat upholstery or something in Oroville.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And had them recovered and like blue with all this fancy stitching and stuff. And, and there was a time when we would have said, I'll get rid of that. And now everybody who came in the shop went just like this thing, Right. Didn't I tell you the story about the tweed baseman with the Union Jack grill cloth?

[Jason]

Go ahead.

[Skip]

Customer. Bay area guy buys a tweed basement. It's been 20 years. Some yard sale in Marin county. And it has a, it's been recovered and it has a big Union Jack grill cloth that looked really cool and pro. And he brought it to me and of course he couldn't wait to get that off of there. And I just, something clicked. I started messing with my crew. Like the great Bill Cleland who took the picture of me at the drawbridge there. It wasn't long before we found a picture of that amp at Day on the Green or something because it was Eddie Money's guitar players amp. Eddie Money. Two tickets to Paradise. That's a great. And you know, it was Day on the green with Santana standing there and all this stuff and there's the amp and I go, dude, you, you put a new grill cloth on this and we're through. So now people have wised up a little bit and, and amps that are like that, say those ones I've seen that were recovered at Fender. Remember I've seen tweet apps that were black, black Tolacs redone at Fender. No, we're not going to retweet that, fool. Don't make me slap you. And now obviously our hip sponsors up there at Emerald City know what's cool, which is a paisley grill cloth.

[Jason]

Somebody buy this thing and Then, of course, last but not least, our buddy Barry Grez guitars. Be like Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. Be like me, get a Grez. They are the most stunning instruments you will ever find. I am staring at this beautiful black grand tour, and apparently it's just got reviewed or is about to get reviewed in Finnish guitar. I'm sure it'll be glowing. And then I got.

[Skip]

I read that.

[Jason]

Yeah. So it was hard hitting.

[Skip]

No, I've mentioned that before. That's. That's a writer's hell. Have to write stuff like that.

[Jason]

Well, but.

[Skip]

But they get the idea. You know, they get the idea buried. Hate you, love you. The simplicity, but the high quality materials and just a different slant. You know, something a little tiny bit different. And of course, we've discussed it before making any kind of a splash in this world, you know, I mean, come on. Even if I decided to make some cool boutique amp, it'd be pretty tough because there's a lot of competition out there. But Barry just has a little vision and he's keeping it small, like the small farmer's journal. I don't think he wants to have 50 people making grez guitars. No, he just got a little niche thing. And thanks to him, our very first sponsor.

[Jason]

I know.

[Skip]

And such a handsome man.

[Jason]

And word on the street is we might have a new sponsor coming soon, but we'll save that for June.

[Skip]

That'd be cool.

[Jason]

We have a lot of letters and you too can be a part of the show. All you got to do is send us a voice memo that you record on your smartphone or an email to podcastreportjournal.com. you ready to field some questions? Oh, before we get to that, we're recording another episode one week from today with the one and only Jim Campalongo. So if anyone has any questions for Jim, now is the time.

[Skip]

Today?

[Jason]

No, that's next week. I. I sent you two invites. Sorry.

[Skip]

I've been trying to get him as a customer for 30 years. 25.

[Jason]

You can grill him. You can. This could be an expose.

[Skip]

Well, he is a really unique musician. A really, like a guitar player where you just go, what? I can't. I. I could, you know, flashy, but not always. And he's been playing for a really long time. And he's an actual working musician. And I've always been jealous because there's another magazine.

[Jason]

Yep.

[Skip]

That he writes a little column for about cool old records. Yep. And that's about as cool as it gets. And he's always recommending stuff. I've never heard of and stuff that I have. And you know, just, just, just a. A well rounded guy and a guy from out here who I think has been living for quite a while in New York. So that's got to be. I always think of him on a subway, you know, with the Princeton reverb and a Telecaster, you know, ate it going to some gig somewhere. Right. So I'll look forward to talking to him. I've never met him, but he's certainly an admirable person. So maybe some questions for him.

[Jason]

Yeah, send him. Send them our way.

[Skip]

First heard him on a great Lost country album. I don't know how many years ago that was. Dave Gleason's Wasted Days. Must have been 25 years or so ago. I fixed an amp for the band. I remember the drummer was in a really famous punk band and Camp Alongo played on a cut. They did an instrumental track on that record and featuring him. And I went, whoa, this is far out. But if you like good 70s 80s country, see if you can find that. I, I of course loaned it out like a chump and haven't had it for a long time. But Dave Gleason's Wasted Days, if anybody can find that on CD and send it to me, I'll be forever grateful.

[Jason]

Wow. Okay.

[Skip]

It's really, it's really good. Of course I like country, but he seemed like he was right on the brink of some kind of like not bro country, but like newer country with a traditional sound, like very Bakersfield sounding on a lot of it. Buck Owens and stuff. But I don't know if he ever did more records or not. But I was super impressed by that record and played it all the time. So we'll look forward to talking to Jim Campo.

[Jason]

Yeah, it's gonna be great. All right, you ready for some questions?

[Skip]

Ready. Sorry. I'm be okay. Coffee's kicking in.

[Jason]

This first one, fun fact about me, I'm half Armenian. This, this first one is from another Armenian, Daniel Tashian. Howdy, gentlemen. I write to you from Nashville, Tennessee, where I share the distinctive honor of being able to claim that my dad, Barry Tashian, was featured in the Fretboard Journal. It was a great issue. Also with Ben Harper and David Lindley. Check out the Amazon prime film, America's Lost Band, if you want to know more about his band, Barry and the Remains. Awesome. Thanks, Daniel.

[Skip]

Barry and the Remains.

[Jason]

Yeah. All right.

[Skip]

I'm going to have to dig that issue out and look at it.

[Jason]

Yeah. Now on to my question. Skip. I Heard you discussing old tube hi Fi amps and I remember that my father in law had told me he had an old Bell 2122C integrated mono tube amp in the attic and he didn't know if it worked or not, but I could have it if I wanted it. So I got it and I sent it to Jim Harvath, my good friend in tech here in Nashville. He did an excellent job cleaning and repairing the amp. But now my question to you is what I should do with it? Should I try to figure out how to play guitar through it? Should I get a little turntable and have a mono set up for old Beatle records and mono? Should I plug a tuner into it? What do you recommend now? Last but not least, a food tip. Take a jar or can or two of whatever your favorite salsa is. Put three chicken breasts in the slow cooker and pour the salsa over it. Turn it on low for eight hours. When you come home for dinner, break the chicken up with a fork and mix the sauce in. It will be very delicious. In a tortilla with your favorite hot sauce. That's from Daniel Tashian in Nashville.

[Skip]

That's. That's solid. If you're not into beef or pork, I could just imagine, you know, that's just like chicken enchilada stuffing.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

You know, herdes salsa casera would be good for that. If you used el pato, it'd get pretty hot.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

I'd be saying something with some chunks in it like pace, you know, used to be the one before we discovered the. Yeah, for the Mexican, less sugary ones. Right. But. But that's an excellent idea. And who's the man who can discuss a Bell 2122C?

[Jason]

I think you can.

[Skip]

As well as salsa, that's a really fairly common, nicely made 26v6.5y3. Small, little beautiful hi Fi amp with a knob on the left that says tape tuner, TV aux and stuff like that. Right. And what you do with it is you get yourself. What you do with it is figure out a way so that you can actually use it a lot. Forget the guitar amp. Never mind. But if you have a good FM station nearby, I'm a big fan of tuners and radio because no matter how many records you have, it's always fun to let someone else pick and you're going to hear something that you wouldn't have thought of. So putting on a good radio station in the afternoon while you're working, of course, we can stream those stations right. So your 2122C really only needs your laptop as a signal source because you can go to YouTube, you can go to Voice of the Navajo Nation on Saturday night. You can go to the great KVMR from Nevada City, Grass Valley near my area. You know, just indie stations that are likely to play something that you've never heard ever. And a turntable would be fine. Don't go vintage. You know, you can get a good Audio technica for under 200 bucks, by the way. You know, some of them have a USB port, which means that if you had the skills, you know, I don't to put those two things together, like a Mac laptop and this and the Audio Technica turntable with a USB port. And every time you play a record, you could be loading it onto a file. And then you can make mixtapes, man, for your Camaro. And you, you know, dry out Route 66, but from vinyl. So any signal source is going to sound fine with that. I. I'd suggest the hard part. Might be a fairly small speaker that you can put somewhere in the room. This is where acoustics really kick in. Small speakers. If you get them in the corner, it's like, whoa, all that bass. And if you move it over here, it's like, what happened to the bass? Experiment around a little bit and you should be able to end up with something even though it's mono. That just sounds great. Well, I mean, great if way better than most people's big solid state stereo systems. So have it nearby right at the table where you work at the computer would be fine. And make it so that if you're listening to YouTube or streaming a radio station, you can just put it right into that 21:22. It's not going to crank enough to have party at your house, but for washing dishes and just cool background and listening to Sinatra and stuff. Hard to beat, baby.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Hard to beat. And try to get it handy. If it's out in some other room where you never go, you're never going to use it. So try to get it close. The classic small. A classic small speaker is called a Radio Shack Minimus 7. And you've heard them because they were extremely popular. And they. I think they came out in the. Maybe even in the 80s, but certainly in the 90s, 2000s. They're just little black or white, little bricks. You could just almost put two big hands around them. And they're kind of heavy, but they're really small. And if you get them away from you, they were ubiquitous that the first big word of the podcast?

[Jason]

Yeah, they were ubiquitous. Yeah.

[Skip]

Yes, they were ubiquitous in restaurants, background music and stuff. You tuck them up in a corner, up high, and they really fill out and sound really big and good. And I think they're still 100 quarter or something for a clean pair of them. Unless you find it at a estate sale where it would be 20 bucks or something.

[Jason]

I don't think we've ever mentioned those on this show.

[Skip]

Yeah. First for hi fi. I use those a lot down at the drawbridge because I always had a tube hi Fi rig at the bridge and in fact the 2122C for quite a while.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

So that's what you do with them. And don't convert hi Fi amps to guitar amps unless they've already been gutted. And if this appeals to you, I still have a ton of that stuff because I can't pass those up. I only. There was a while a few years back, I thought that stuff was going to take off, but it hasn't. I think it used. I used to have a setup down at the shop and someone would come and pick up their amp and. And they'd go, what the hell? And I said, yeah, it's just this little amp and you know, you could have one if you want. And I would sell stuff like a restored 2122 C. But so far there's been kind of a little lull on that. But I think people are missing the boat. A, it doesn't have to be stereo to sound good. And B, this has, this is, this is. This has to do with guitars and hi fi. We're not necessarily going to sit on the couch in the middle of the stereo field with our. Whatever classical music or. Yes. Or something, you know, and just like, no, we got stuff to do. The goal is to have something you can use all the time. Gotta. Gotta load the dishwasher. We'll click that thing on and put some cool western swing on, you know. And same with guitar. If you gotta go out to the garage and get it out of the case and get the amp and plug it all in and blah, blah, blah, because the rest of your family's gone. Nah, gotta have something. You can just flop your arm over the couch and pick it up and go boom. Start doing it. Something you can use and make it so that it's gets a little use every day. Does that make sense?

[Jason]

Makes perfect sense.

[Skip]

So many people have these big guitar amps and stuff that they never get to play, you know. Well, I'm going to try to. I think I'm going to get a chance Saturday afternoon and going, brother, should be able to have at least 10 or 15 minutes every day. Just something that you can sneak in. Doesn't take up a lot of room, doesn't take a lot of time to set up. And I would say the same thing with a little hi Fi amp. Somebody's into stereo. The only way to do it affordably these days in vintage involves the use of a Dynaco tube stereo preamp called a PAS 2 or a PAS 3. And I have one. So if somebody can't stand it and they got to do stereo, fix up that preamp. And then we cobble up a couple of mono power amps. Macintosh 30s, if, if you, if you roll that way. That's always my favorite. But they're expensive. But amazingly enough, little amps from Hammond organs and Leslie cabinets and old consoles and all sorts of stuff can be made into pretty acceptable little power amps. So something to ponder. We haven't talked enough about hi Fi lately.

[Jason]

No.

[Skip]

Yeah, and there's a lot of great sources. You don't have to find that rare record, YouTube, our one guest who had the two hundred thousand dollar speakers with Michael. But I'd rather have a crappy version of a song that no one's ever heard than, you know, some rare record that I spent years trying to find. I mean, the fidelity of things that have been digitally compressed and put on the Internet and switched. No, it's not the same. You put on a good vinyl record, you'll go, wow, there's even more guitars here than I thought. But that shouldn't stop you from ever hearing Louis Bonfa. Oh, I bet you Jim Campelongo knows who Louis Bonfa was. He is like a monster from the 30s, right? Or Louis Armstrong, hot five. I mean, if you haven't heard some of the Touchstone stuff, there's no excuse because it's out there somewhere. Red Norvo Trio. Red Norvo in a Mist, which is a super famous composition by Dix Beiderbeck, but Red Norvo plays it on vibes with this little band. It's just mind boggling. All right, next.

[Jason]

Wow, Marcus. Our friend Marcus just got his master's degree. That right? Yeah, yeah. Master Public health. Yeah, it looks prestigious. And he says thanks for the aim high advice. And one of the earlier podcasts yesterday at commencement was a surreal experience. The speeches were powerful and moving. That's from Marcus. And Nashville.

[Skip]

That's Harvard, right?

[Jason]

It looks Harvard.

[Skip]

I'm Pretty sure it's a high powered school like that. One of those.

[Jason]

Yeah. The colors look like Harvard.

[Skip]

He's old enough not to be. Not to have his brain completely changed around.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And I'll tell you that you get opportunities at a school like that. When I stood in front of the Van Gogh self portrait from a foot away with no glass, no security guard, nothing. Just right there. Just hard to get that down at the juco, you know.

[Jason]

Yeah. Congrats Marcus. All right.

[Skip]

Congratulations.

[Jason]

We have some more amp questions. David is over in Hawaii and he is an acupuncture doctor. Acupuncturist. He writes hi Skip. And action adventure. Jason, it's Dave, the guy in Hawaii with the Ampeg SB12 with six L6s. Skip told me to bring back to the local tech one more time. We wound up horse trading the Ampeg for his homebrew Hammond Organ Tuner PA Head toaster looking monstrosity with gigantic transformers and two 6L6s and we're both happy with the deal. Thanks for the help. Thanks for all the hard work and the knowledge and experience. 1. Electrolytics. I've learned from you, Carr and the legendary Steve Melka Sethian that you can use non polarized electrolytics in place of polarized in the power supply. Is that true? Everywhere else there are polarized caps. What's the point of polarizing if you don't need polarized? I'm confused. The Internet is awash with lies and mumbo jumbo on this. That's the first question.

[Skip]

What did they call who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Can we call in a life? Can we call a lifeline? We need. We need to get someone smart like Kernard on the phone for that. I don't know.

[Jason]

You don't know?

[Skip]

You got something like a 20 microfarad electrolytic in your power supply. You know, a filter cap. And there are guru types that use a 20 microfarad non electrolytic capacitor. One that's constructed in a different way and therefore isn't polarized. I'm going to try to get through this without saying something that's dead wrong. And if I do, hopefully someone smart will tell me. But I believe that the electrolytic part of it with the plus and minus. I think that just mainly has to do with construction of the part. Electrolytics were the. Were the way they could get the most capacitance into the smallest size. And the other thing to consider is that there are negative voltages in amps and positive voltages so we've got bias voltage in big fenders and Marshalls, a negative 45 or a negative 50. And that's that power supply that supplies that negative voltage. In a traditional amp, the electrolytics are backwards. So the ground is the hot lead. The plus is soldered to ground instead of the normal way like all of our little champs and regular fenders where every electrolytic, the negative end is grounded because the positive end has a positive voltage. So if you got a negative voltage, you got to flick that sucker around. And I'm not exactly sure how non polarized caps would work in that application. So, number one, I don't know. Number two, I don't really know. Number three, be careful, experiment. But I'm not quite so sure about using those in a. In a power supply that's at negative voltage. So tread, tread lightly on that. And you know me, I'd throw out at the end. Nobody ever did that. There's some really boss boutique amps that are. That some would say are better than anything ever made. But there's a lot of old classics that everybody loves, and they got regular old electrolytic capacitors in them, and they still sound pretty fair, don't they? Right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So. But for the. For the people who are bored, who want to explore the fringe, then those are worth exploring. Speaking of the fringe.

[Jason]

Oh, yeah.

[Skip]

Six sixes are so hard to get. New ones are so inconsistent. I mean, you'd think I'd have plenty, but no, I don't. And it reminds me that there's a few other tubes, 6K6, 6F6, and 6Y6, that are very, very similar in a lot of ways and are available for dirt cheap because they weren't inventors. So there's some tubes for people who are looking to have vintage tubes that they can afford and build your own little circuits around them. You know, look them up in the tube manual, have some fun. Quit crying about how expensive real 6v6s are. You said Steve malka Sethi and One of his 90s catalogs said exactly that. All right, instead of crying about how telefunk and 12 AX7s for $50 a piece, why don't you try these really fancy, you know, military dual triodes that are every bit as cool as a 12ax7 that are two bucks, you know, why not. Like, we are kind of stayed s t a I d. And they're conservative in our approach sometimes. And if you look at some old schematics, there were cool magnetones I've seen magnetone 213s that had 6k sixes. 6y6s were used in a couple really fancy hi fi amps back in the 50s. There were even some fancy output transformers that were made for six Y6s and you know, ten bucks for a beautiful American made military grade thing all packed in a box. Perfect. Free your mind. Okay, next.

[Jason]

Well, acupuncture. Dave has more question. Two acupuncture charts versus schematics. There's a load of overlap between the acupuncture points and channels. Charts and schematics, they're basically both the same. I'm working and drawing parallels between anatomy and the acupuncture paradigm. And tube amps Zhang organs equals power supply. Liver equals voltage regulators. Heart and kidney relationship equals power and output transformer relationship. I discovered another tava acupuncturist down under. So there are at least two of us. Are there any other acupuncturist keggers out there? Food tip. Grind salt in a blender or coffee grinder to make powdery to better stick to popcorn. Also try adding ghee instead of butter. Ecology update. To the best of my knowledge, the gigantic red hill fuel tanks that were leaking under Oahu are empty and the fuel has been moved elsewhere. That's from Dr. David.

[Skip]

That's beautiful, doctor.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And I don't know anything about acupuncture really, but I could see his schematic comparison for sure. And then of course, do I have to serve this up to you like a big softball? Isn't anybody going to say, can't we have a big demonstration acupuncture thing with a guy up there and you go up and poke holes and it's just like the demonstration amp, right? Yeah, the acupuncture schematic with a model of a person or actually even a real person. David gonna string you up and then we're gonna poke you. No, that's, that's beautiful. And if something's been around for that long, like there might be something to it.

[Jason]

Yeah, of course.

[Skip]

Important if true. That's the sign that's supposed to be above every church. There's something's been around that long, there's probably something to it. And you don't want to be scoffing at things like that. That's for sure.

[Jason]

No, yeah. Okay.

[Skip]

I'm going over there and getting jabbed.

[Jason]

Yeah, well, Hawaii, I mean, you don't. You have to twist my arm to go to Hawaii?

[Skip]

Well, I have learned that and I've had some pretty terrible pain that there Ain't no pill, you know, really, I mean, there isn't alcohol works on everybody, but there's no pill. It's all about not doing that thing that you hurt yourself with or stretching, you know, and things like that. Sciatica and stuff like that. You pretty much gotta heal thyself. So. Thanks, David. Appreciate that.

[Jason]

Yeah, thanks, Dr. David. Okay, next voice memo is from listener Victor. You can be a part of the show. Just record a voice memo on your smartphone and send it to podcastritboardjournal.com hey.

[Listener]

Skip and Jason, this is Victor in Connecticut. You know, I love the show. Always learn something new with every episode. So I appreciate all the work that you put into it. I have a question for Skip. So I'm a DIY hobbyist. I like playing around with different schematics, different topologies and so on. And I'm always wondering, well, what's the best speaker to put with a given amp? I mean, what criteria do you use to determine what's going to be a good fit? So I end up looking at the spec sheets from various manufacturers that they put on their websites, and I see figures like the DB rating for sensitivity and so on the resonance frequency. How do those things translate into the tone that you hear in a given amp? And of course, I also check out sound clips when they're available, and sometimes YouTube videos are helpful. But I'm wondering if Skip has any insight into how you go about selecting a good speaker to go with an amp. Okay, so now about that rice dish. One day I ran out of el pato. I know. So I had to make up something with what I had. So what I decided to do was make up a mirepoix that's a combination of onion, carrot, and celery. And I sauteed that and added some spices that I had, and it came out okay. And I've tried it a number of different ways, so I wanted to kind of run this by you. First, get a pot of rice going in the rice water. You want to add in a half teaspoon of turmeric and a half teaspoon of adobo. Now, there's different types of adobos out there. You know, they all have different blends. Some are more salt, some are more pepper and cumin. So you'll have to taste yours to see, you know, how you want to adjust the rest of the seasoning. And I usually add maybe a quarter teaspoon of salt into the rice. Then you dice up a medium to large onion, a large carrot, and A good sized stick of celery and throw that in a nice big pot. I stir that around. Oh, also with some garlic. Can't forget the garlic. You know as much as you want. And you stir that around with your hand. And then you brush aside from the middle so that you leave a bare spot in the middle of the bottom of the pot. Okay. And so this is so that we can bloom the spices first. So you pour a nice dollop of oil. I use olive oil into that bald spot in the bottom of the pot. And put in a teaspoonful of cumin, a teaspoon of adobo, half teaspoon of paprika, and a half teaspoon of turmeric. And then you can also add in some red pepper flakes or other pepper that you want to use. But hold off on that until I finish here. And also some salt, maybe a half teaspoon of salt. Okay. And keep a can of beans handy. All right. And we're going to use the fluid that's at the top of the can of beans. You can use any kind of beans you want. They can be black beans, red beans, pinto beans. I like using black eyed peas myself. All right. So you turn the heat up high, and when the oil starts bubbling, it'll start to infuse that mixture of spices that you dumped on top of the oil. So then start to stir the spices into the oil, and then the spices will actually bloom. They'll become very fragrant. So you'll get this brown, gooey mixture and then gradually blend that in with all of the vegetables that are in the pot. Okay. Now, at this point, you can add a little more oil if you want, and you keep stirring that in. And what we're gonna do is let that saute for about five minutes. All right. About a minute in. You want to double check it, make sure it's not sticking. You can add a little bit of the liquid that's at the top of the can of beans that you have standing by. All right. And stir that in. Because I don't like to keep adding oil over and over again. Gets too oily. So you put that in. That works well. You keep stirring that in. You keep sauteing that for five minutes. Okay. When that's ready, you pour in the rest of the beans with all the fluid that's in the can. All right? And you stir that in. Now, you could just leave it like that and let it finish cooking. Or you could go a step further. You could take one of those small cans of fire roasted diced tomatoes with the green peppers, green chilies, and those pack a lot of heat, so you don't want to put too much pepper in your dish if you're going to be using that. But I like to do it that way. And so throw that in too, along with the beans. Okay. And give that a good stir. Look at it, see if it needs a little more fluid. If it does, you can add a tiny bit of water. If not, just leave it like it is. What you want to do is just cover that, turn the heat down to medium or medium low, and let it kind of percolate for about 15, 20 minutes. Okay. Now, you can also add other things while it's cooking. You could add a sliced up zucchini. You could add some cooked chicken pieces or andouille sausage, something like that. That's. Those are all really good. So at the end of 20 minutes, your rice should be done right. What you do is you then take a handful of fresh chopped cilantro and throw that in, and then squeeze in half of a fresh lemon, give it a good stir, put the lid back on it, let it sit for a few minutes, just like that, with the heat off, and then you're ready to rock. And I recommend this with a nice cold ipa. Very good. So, Skip and Jason, thanks very much. Keep up the good work and look forward to hearing the next episode. Thanks.

[Jason]

Bye.

[Listener]

Bye.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

Whoa.

[Jason]

That was like, in real time, a.

[Skip]

Classic voicemail where he just leads you through all kinds of ups and downs and you think you know something and then you don't. I would have said, this guy's got to be single. But then by the second part of it, it's like he's probably got him lining up, waiting for this stuff. Right. Man, that sounds. I mean, it sounds pretty awesome. Right? And how about the things we do just because we couldn't find a $29 scan of El Paso? No, no. This is obviously on a completely different level than the last minute. Little Charlie's Spanish rice that we all love. This is a little bit more involved, but. But I could see that. I could definitely see that. I even followed along and I mean, how could that go wrong? Right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Now, the first. And the first part, the first part of his question about speakers, how to pick a speaker. Did you want to handle that one? Did you want to tell everyone what I'm going to say?

[Jason]

Well, I think you're going to say that it's an embarrassment of riches now and that you. You kind of can't go wrong. But that's.

[Skip]

That's true. How about. How about sound? Sound clips? What am I going to say about sound clips?

[Jason]

Don't.

[Skip]

Don't care what the 1 inch speakers on your little laptop. You think you're going to hear something on that? You're not going to hear anything like that. Forget that stuff. And the speaker manufacturers love them. Weber. They should sponsor the podcast. Still one of the best speaker reconers, by the way. Say again? But so many specs and so many options that the guy calls me, the customer calls me and says, but should I get the. What resonant frequency do I want? People, I'm a mechanic. I fix the amp. And then you know what I do next? I hook it up to my speaker, the one I've had forever, that I've played gajillions of amps through, and I go, that sounds about right. And then if I have the speaker that goes with the amp, a lot of times I don't, but if I do, I plug it into that and I go, well, this speaker sounds okay for what it is. Or I say, this speaker's blown or this speaker is super dark or whatever. And I just think that you'd be better off buying a couple of speakers that are affordable. The fancy Celestians and stuff that cost $250, fine, but there's speakers that cost $50 that sound really good too. And I'd also throw in, there is no one thing. The way you change the sound of your amp is by how you hit the strings, not by putting a different speaker in there. Sort of. You know what I mean? Or let's just say a monster guitar player is going to make that thing sound pretty good. Speakers absolutely change the sound of an amp. And I constantly tell people, with combo amps, have you hooked it up to a different speaker? Have you hooked it up to a different speaker? Because no matter what it is, a little tiny Supro or a twin reverb or whatever, you may find that a big part of what you thought was the sound of the amp is actually the sound of the speaker. So to the chefs first question, I say, none of it matters. All of it matters. But sitting around trying to decide by specs what speaker is going to sound best with which amp, even if I wasn't an amp repairman, I don't think I'd do that. I go with the Earl Yarrow. The great Earl Yarrow pops his head up once again. Before you sell that hi Fi amp or hi Fi speaker, hook it up to Something else, because that speaker and amp combination can be really significant. That speaker sounds pretty. Pretty crappy with this amp, but that speaker sounds fantastic with that amp, so don't be so judgmental. There's a. Well, just like your crazy food dish that you described. Mirepoix. Is that it?

[Jason]

Yeah, something like that.

[Skip]

Yeah, that's very Cajun. They call that the trinity.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Bell. Bell pepper, onion, you know, garlic. And you gotta have that on hand at all times, but it's just another flavor that you can mess around with. So beg, borrow, or steal a couple. And again, if you're really into messing with amps, I suggest a standard speaker, a test speaker that you use first so that you can eliminate some of the variables. Longtime friends of mine know I have a test cabinet and a test guitar, and I can just hit my one finger on the strings of that guitar and go, yeah, this. This sounds about like what we want. But if you're constantly changing guitars or. Or testing amps with different speaker cabinets, it can be hard to establish that. That line. Whoa.

[Jason]

No, that was a long dish. That was a long dish.

[Skip]

Does sound good, though.

[Jason]

Yeah. Listener, Jamie, speaking of mechanics, first time writing in, longtime listener. I'm on my third listen. Geez. Through this through from the start to finish, and just hit episode 109 again. Why do people do that? A listener wrote in about modding a Harmony model 420, and it just so happens I recently had one and modded it with great results. I'm a Toyota hiace mechanic, very cool during the day and an amp tech at night. In Portland, Oregon, a few months ago, a customer reached out about Getting their model 420 Working and sounding better. I looked at the schematic, and I thought I could make this into some sort of Fender without too much messing around. I had a schematic of an AB763 Deluxe Reverb on my desk and decided to use that front end as a starting point. After I fixed the amp up, I started in on the mods, and when it was done, it sounded wonderful. The customer wrote back a month later saying, hey, man, just wanted to say I'm pleased with the Harmony after your work. Been feeling revitalized with playing, digging old petals out of storage to revisit, and overall, just closer to that elusive tone in my head than probably ever. Looking forward to getting something back on your bench when funds permit. Thank you. So he says, if I remember correctly, the only things I did differently are, first, there's no global negative inverse feedback. Second, I Left the newly introduced gain stage right after the tone stack with an unbypassed 1500 ohm cathode resistor. And third, the treble and bass pots were left at 500k instead of 250k. Hope this helps with anyone hoping to make those amps sound great. Love the show and all that you do. That's Jamie in Portland.

[Skip]

Could be good to know a Toyota mechanic. Maybe he works on those old.

[Jason]

Well hiace. Those are those diesel ones.

[Skip]

Oh, is that what those are?

[Jason]

Those are those little ones from Japan, the right hand drive ones that are very popular.

[Skip]

The little tiny trucks like Bubbles has in. Well.

[Jason]

And like Mitsubishi Delicas. I don't know if he works on both but yeah, yeah, it's a very northwesty thing. I think because of legal reasons we we've been able to bring them in. I don't know.

[Skip]

Well yeah, not too many people are going to know what the hell he's talking about because he needed to frame it a little bit. Which is those amps which are the airline version of the Supra Thunderbolt.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

They basically have a extremely primitive preamp. There's a phase inverter tube and then there's only one triode in front of it. Most amps have two or more. So what he did here is he got in and he added an extra gain stage to it. Apparently it worked out. It worked out pretty well. Although there was a time when Super Thunderbolts were commanding extreme money because some somebody decided that that's what Paige used on all the early Zeppelin records. Which I do not agree with. But they only sounded good when they were dimed. You know, they thought that you were going to be playing bass through that thing. Open back single 15. So thunderbolts can sound really good. Turned up all the way stock and they can benefit from a stomp box or a preamp or something that just adds a lot of extra gain. Not necessarily a bunch of distortion between the guitar and the amp. But he got in there and he built an additional gain stage in the amp because Only half the 12 AX7 is being used and the other half is sitting there with nothing connected to it. And some people that just riles them up. They can't wait to do something with that other half of 12ax7. So global feedback. I'd have to look at the schematics. I thought they didn't have any in. He's talking about inverse feedback.

[Jason]

No, global negative inverse feedback. Yeah, yeah.

[Skip]

But I think there is he saying that he changed that or that that's the way they were from.

[Jason]

No, it sounds like that's one of the things he did differently.

[Skip]

Well, maybe they do have inverse feedback and he disconnected it. But he got lucky. A lot of times you add gain stages and get rid of feedback and stuff like that and amp sounds boss, but if you turn it up too loud, it starts like squealing or if you turn it too trebly, it starts whistling or going. So it's not something that you can just instantly expect to work out. But I'm glad that guy did it. Yeah. Probably a good mechanic.

[Listener]

Yeah.

[Jason]

I mean, after I. I would imagine work after working on a Toyota hiace like working on an amp probably feels like you have a lot of breathing room.

[Skip]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Jason]

A little cramped in there. Okay.

[Skip]

It's the mechanic. It's the mechanic mind. You know, Some people can fix stuff. I can fix a few things. I couldn't fix a car or anything like that. But he's got the right mechanical mindset.

[Jason]

He does. Greg in Indianapolis writes A number of folks have asked you about cooling fans for amps. I know most of our amps work fine without them, but if you want to add one, I found a good way to do it. All three parts are under $20. You need a 12 VDC fan, a 12 VDC supply and an inline fuse. I've added fans to several amplifiers without issue. Fans come in a variety of sizes from about 1 inch to 4 inch square and are typically less than a half inch thick. The larger the fan, the more the airflow. I used a 3 inch square fan on a 60 watt vibroking which has a total of 8 tubes and substantial transformers. It keeps the chassis noticeably cooler. It doesn't take a lot of airflow to make a difference. I've not had any issues with electrical noise. I install everything on the incoming AC line before it gets to the amp's power transformer. Obviously there are two or three amp fuse built into our amp, but the fan needs almost no current at all. So I use a separate smaller quarter amp fuse for it. If you are fixing or building amps already, wiring this up is trivial. He included parts numbers that he's used for mouser. There are dozens of fan sizes, so finding one to fit your chassis shouldn't be an issue. All the parts are relatively small and I've not had any problem finding a convenient place to mount them. I'm not going to read through these serial numbers, but I will include them in the show notes for the podcast. Thank you, Greg. In Indianapolis.

[Skip]

Fans can be a good idea. Drilling gouge in a big gigantic hole in the side of your vintage amp.

[Jason]

To mount a fan, not a good idea.

[Skip]

Not such a good idea. There were amps that came with fans, big ampegs, big boogie amps and stuff like that. And they probably most of those would have just been a puddle of melted metal if they didn't have them. And we do know that people somehow scratched by for many, many decades without fans. But we also know that wall voltage is higher. And this guy's concept sounds pretty good. He's buying the individual little components, a little power supply and a little fan. And as long as you don't drink and drill and do something cosmetically degrading to something vintage, then getting a fan in there is groovy. I, as the simpleton that I am, I keep seeing little fans from Walmart that are all self contained that just have a little cord that come out and it's just a little fan. And what's on it? A great big butterfly clip that you can clip on anything. And so I say, why not clip that on the back panel of your Tweed Deluxe or reissued something or other and point that fan up there at those tubes, especially when you're outside at the art festival in the sun for four hours. So a fan is groovy. Make that guys, if that's the way you roll. But if you look around thrift stores, you know, Walmart types of places, pretty sure you're going to find a little handy dandy clip on fan that just plugs right into the wall. And you could clip it on wherever that directs a nice little flow up to your power tubes and rectifier tubes. Yeah, how's that?

[Jason]

That's great.

[Skip]

Good.

[Jason]

Bart wants to know, should a Fender Base 6 use a guitar amp or a bass amp? Could the instrument damage guitar speakers at high volumes.

[Skip]

Somewhere? I still have a, an early 70s little chart that was published by Fender. It came in this big stack of original Fender paperwork I have. And so down the left hand side would be all the guitars and across the top would be all the amps. And then there'd be a little dot where that guitar and that amp were appropriate. Right? And of course not a dot where it's like, oh no, you can't use a Bronco with a twin reverb or whatever. So pretty ridiculous actually. And a six string bass, got some big strings, thicker strings. I bet that new Grizz has got some low end. Yeah, guitars like that put out more signal if you're going to sit there and play it real quiet. You're not going to hurt anything. You could play a bass through a tweed champ at low volume, but as soon as you start cranking it up to where the speaker is starting to become unable to handle the frequencies that you're putting into it, then you got problems. If you want a clean sound, if you want a distorted sound, well. And you might blow up a speaker, you can have a eight thousand dollar tweed deluxe. If you put a new speaker in it, you can dime that thing, you're not going to hurt the amp. It's only that old speaker that you could maybe hurt. So 6 string bass guy in the olden days would have won a showman and a 15 inch speaker and stuff like that. Especially for playing live that big. You know, pre PA days you needed some power. But if you got a basics or a reissue basics and all you have is a Princeton reverb. Well, just sit around and play spaghetti western themes on that thing at low volume, it's going to sound great. If you're distorting and cracking that speaker up, then you might blow it up someday. But oh well, right, yeah, sure, yeah. Just lower your, lower your volume expectations. When things start sounding really distorted, something is distorting whether it's the amp or the speaker or whatever. And of course a lot of classic sounds have been made through distortion Train kept a rolling by the rock and roll trio from back in the 50s with the super distorted amp that the guy swears one of the tubes fell out like one of the power tubes. And so it's just. There's nothing wrong with some hairy distortion, but if you want to keep it clean, you're not going to hurt the speaker, even if it's just a little tiny low power damp and a small speaker. Just don't, don't do that if it starts to sound bad. Right? Quit doing that. I tell people that a lot. Well, stop doing that. You have that problem.

[Jason]

Totally.

[Skip]

Yes.

[Jason]

All right, we got some more. Thanks Amplified parts. Thanks Grez Guitars. Thanks Emerald City Guitars for sponsoring the show. As always, please support all of those brands. Kevin Subject line Master Volume Silver Face. Good morning, gents. I'm a Californian in exile here in the Midwest. While I love the show for all the geeky amp stuff, I equally appreciate all the references to my old stomping grounds in the Central Valley. I'm going to try to keep this shortish and probably fail. I'm on the hunt for a new amp. A little background I play in my Basement. No gigging to speak of. So weight isn't a huge concern, but getting a good tone at reasonable volume is. Most of the affordable amps I see on the market are late 70s models with a master volume, which have more headroom. If I'm remembering right, could Skip go over what changed in these master volume circuits? And can I realistically expect to get Edge of breakup tones in my basement with any of them? If so, any models to maybe be on the hunt for? Bonus question. Skip, do you know of anyone who has the old Hal's Grub Steak barbecue sauce recipe? After Hal's closed down, I found a guy who had created a believable facsimile, but I don't think he's doing it anymore. That's Kevin. I have no idea what Hal's Grub Steak is, so you're gonna have to fill us in.

[Skip]

Wow, that is super inside. What, this was a restaurant grub steak? Yeah. Yes, I. I believe that one was. There was one in Yuba City or Marysville when I was a kid in the 70s, but I think this one, it was in Sacramento, and it was the kind of place where you went in and they had all sorts of barbecuey type stuff and beans and burgers, but they had the super theme. I remember the plates and the cups I'd kill for now that, you know, probably had like, lariat ropes around the edges and like the, you know, the horse profile on the coffee cups and stuff like that. But I have no idea of anybody so into Howl's Grub Steak that they figured out how to make the killer barbecue sauce. Now, Sweet Baby Ray is in the ballpark for that type of a sauce, by the way. That's just something you can get at the store. Wow, that is. That is inside. I made me forget about the first part of the question.

[Jason]

First part was about master volumes.

[Skip]

Big amps are cheaper. He didn't say. But there's. There's deluxe reverbs. Well, there's smaller Fender amps that have master volumes, and there's bigger ones and big amps. I mean, if you can't find a twin reverb or even a super reverb for a grand or less, you're not looking very hard. Because they're not that many people doing any logging. They don't need a logging truck. On the other hand, it's not like those big amps sound terrible or are completely unusable. People say, well, I've got to have it turned up to get my tone. Well, whatever. But a Great musician can just crack on a big old twin reverb and get a pretty dang good tone. And there's so many millions of pedals out there that hey, buy some from a place that you can send them back if you don't like them and find a few pedals. But I don't see any reason why you can't have fun playing an overpowered amp in your basement, because the overpowered amp cost you a third of what a small one would cost. I might also point out that even a 20 watt amp like a deluxe reverb or even a Princeton Reverb is loud as hell at your house, right?

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip]

So. And yes, it is true. When you turn an amp up far enough, it starts to interact with the guitar. You get a lot more variation from the sounds by how you attack the guitar. You can get it to sound distorted, you can get it to sound clean. Go watch Little Charlie on YouTube, I'll take you back. It's like a 10 minute longest guitar extravaganza where he gets so many sounds out of a super reverb, you just can't even believe it. He never goes anywhere near the amp. And what gear does he have? A reissue Strat and a guitar cord. So it is possible to make those big amps kind of get sort of gritty and hairy sounding if you're good enough. And master volumes on Fenders, they never really did anything. The idea is that you turn the volume way up and then you just barely turn up the master and you've got this cool distortion. Lots of other amps work like that. You know, most of the early Marshalls that had master volumes, they do that, those two input ones with the preamp volume and then the master volume right next to it. They get super distorted at low volume and you can manipulate those two volumes to get a a variety of cleaner or dirtier. Not the most sophisticated, not like a dumble or something, but certainly able to do to get some grunge. Fender, I don't know what they were thinking, but their master volume just doesn't do anything really. If you floor the volume and just barely crack up the master, it doesn't sound all that distorted. It's a little bit more distorted. The ones with the pull boost on the master volume, they introduce a certain amount of grind and grunge that's not everybody's cup of tea. But you know, I don't generally take master volumes out of amps that have them like Fenders. I just say turn that thing up all the way and run it. So and if you want a deal, big heavy amps that no one can move right and disconnect the speaker take run it on 112. No, the impedance mismatch won't hurt the amp, but it'll make it so that when you're playing you can only hear it out on the street instead of halfway down the block. You know it'll take some of the low end thump out of that big old loud amp.

[Jason]

Love it. We'll do two more. Please, please, please everybody keep the questions coming. Keep the recipes coming. [e-mail] this is from Bob in Kirkland, Washington. Hope this question is fit for the Tava podcast. I can't find any truth about vintage speakers podcasts anywhere online. I love playing pedal steel through vintage JBLs, especially the D130F with its big deep gap voice coil and aluminum dust cover. You just can't beat the full range sound with massive bass, creamy mids and crystal clear highs. I've lovingly kept some old D130Fs in working condition with judicious use of tacky glue to mend small tears or slits in the speaker cone. My handy tip? Use a very bright light on the other side and then carefully deflect the paper cone. The light dramatically shows even the tiniest hairs. But one speaker years ago really needed a recon, so off to Weber it went. When I got it back, I noticed the recon kit was not an exact vintage replacement. Different paper for the cone and a different dust cover. Worst of all, when I would deflect the cone, I could feel a slight scrape in the travel. The speaker sounded tight and new. Only recently did I revisit the speaker and finally tried to break it in. I set it up with an iPhone and power amp streaming heavy rock on Spotify and closed it up in my parked car with the windows rolled up. It was very loud. After 20 hours or so, I checked the speaker. The scrape was completely gone and the speaker sounded much better. I'm playing it out lately to further break it in. It's not exactly like my favorite original JBLs with their lively and responsive sound, but with a different EQ setting. The recon speaker is getting close. Any guidance or advice for breaking in new speakers? Thanks again for the podcast. That's Bob Knetzger here in Kirkland, Washington.

[Skip]

When did the police show up? Right? You've got this car out with no one in it and just a big old 15 thumping away inside that thing. Must be In a pretty quiet neighborhood, right?

[Jason]

Yeah, Kirkland's pretty sleepy.

[Skip]

The only thing surprising there is that a speaker reconed by a guy who really does a nice, nice job. I'm surprised to hear that someone says there's a scraping when the cone moves up and down. If you push that cone up and down, there shouldn't be any scraping. So I at that point would have said, hey, this isn't supposed to be like this. Of course, I know that guy pretty well. I don't know him, but I've sent him a lot of speakers. And I would have said, on the other hand, breaking in a speaker, much as I hate to admit it, there is something going on there. Because if you think about it, that cone is sort of on springs on suspension. And the more that cone moves back and forth, the softer that suspension kind of can get and allow more cone excursion. In other words, they get stiff. You see that in old Oxfords and Jensen Sometimes from the 60s they work, but they don't have much bass. And if you give them the 9 volt test, you'll see that the cone doesn't move very far. And that's just because the suspension of the cone, which is around the big part of the circle and in the pointy part down at the pointy end of the cone right there, there's another flexible thing that allows the cone to move. So anything you can do to make that part of it a little bit more flexible will make the speaker sound more full and less tight and. But you're crying about not having vintage 60s recon materials available for every groovy old speaker. We're just going to have to deal with what we have because there might be some of that stuff out there, and there are people who specialize in jbl, but I'm not so certain that there's tons and tons and tons of the exact original cones that we can put in those things, which might. Which would probably make it sound more original. Right. So take good care of the original ones and don't play them really distorted jbls I see blown up all the time. People don't realize they're not that high wattage of a speaker. The original D130 was only rated at like 25 watts. The F, which stands for Fender Dick Dale, right? Leo Dick Dale. JBL saying no, these keep blowing up. JBL going, well, too bad. And finally they ended up with the F version, which has a higher power handling capability. But I'm not surprised that a reconed one isn't quite the Same as an old one. But I'm glad to hear that this guy did the. The break in and then realized that the little change in your eq, you can make it sound acceptable, right? It doesn't have to sound exactly the same. That's what tone controls are for. So hang on to your favorites and don't blow them up. And that breaking in period is definitely got something going for it. How would I do that?

[Jason]

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you.

[Skip]

I'd put it in a cabinet and cover it with sleeping bags and put the cabinet in. In a closet and shut the door and have an amp. You know, don't put an amp under a bunch of blankets, especially not a tube amp. But I just get it rocking somewhere where it wasn't driving everyone crazy. Maybe not out in the car parked in front of your house and, you know, let her rip a little bit. If we had our $250,000 hi Fi speaker guy on, he would say, oh, well, you can't even really judge speakers unless they've had, you know, 100 hours to break in or whatever. And I say, okay, well, call me when the 100 hours is up. So it does make a difference. And how about this? Have you ever restrung a flat top guitar and it doesn't sound quite as good until about an hour later and you come back and retune it? Retune it. It's like all the wood and everything has to get all squished together. Then it starts sounding better. So there is something to be said about breaking in a speaker and most people would do it with some sort of sound source. You could even use a signal generator that just goes. But anything that gets that cone moving, I say enjoy life. Hook it up so you can listen to some music, you know, throughout the day while you're working and stuff and break it in that way.

[Jason]

Great idea.

[Skip]

Yeah. Less police intervention.

[Jason]

Yeah. Thanks, Bob. All right, last question of this episode. Keep the questions coming. Podcastritboardjournal.com thanks to our sponsors, we have a Patreon. Patreon for the show. Get to the front of the line. That way. This is from listener Nate.

[Nate]

Hey, this is Nate in Vermont and I've got a question about. I've got a 1969 Standell solid state amp. This is a two channel amp, four 10 inch speakers, reverb and tremolo. And I've got it working great. Except for the tremolo. I've gathered this is a common problem and I'm sort of Leaning towards needing to replace the red module if possible. So I'm wondering how Skip made out with that Standell he mentioned a while back and if he had a contact for that person who might be able to make a new module for an amp like that. Second thing, quick drink recommendation. I like to have a couple of these every night. And what I'll do is I'll take a pint glass, splash of apple cider vinegar. I like the Braggs, and they also make one with a cayenne in it. That's nice. Second ingredient is a splash of maple syrup or sweetener of your choice. And then I'll pour in like a half a can of seltzer, mix that up, throw in a few ice cubes, and it's quite good.

[Listener]

I enjoy it.

[Nate]

Give it a try.

[Skip]

Whoa. Sugar. And Bragg's killer cider. And what else did he put in there? Club soda.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

You better get that. Better get that sour to sweet ratio just right. And I guess wish there was some vodka or something involved in that person.

[Jason]

No, I know I was waiting for some alcohol, but. No.

[Skip]

Yeah. Oh, again the third time today. The second part of the question just blotted out the first part of the question.

[Jason]

Got a Standel solid state stand about module. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Skip]

Okay, so first email me and I'll give you the connection to the guy in Nashville who's figured out how to make these little. We talked about this. The Standell guy on the old ones, he just bought little plastic boxes from the dime store, broke them in half, soldered a bunch of parts in there, and then just poured resin inside of it. I think it was just like Howard Dumble did because he didn't want people to. To cop his circuit. But now we're here today with these little bricks of blobs of goo which you can't work on, which, by the way, everything from the 90s and 2000s and on up. That's why that stuff's not serviceable, because it isn't just a capacitor and a resistor and of this and that, It's a brick of stuff. And if something goes wrong within that brick, and of course you can't get the brick, the thing can't really be fixed. So there are some people that are so into Standel that they figured out some ways around that, and that is going to be challenging. And solid state, that's a. That's a whole nother thing. Our electrolytic capacitor question. In solid state apps, there's a negative and a positive power supply. So there's like minus 48 and positive 48 in a lot of those amps. And I'm not sure what would happen if you started replacing polarized capacitors with non polarized in a circuit like that. To go back a few minutes.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So email me Standell dude and I will forward you. And on mine my friends would know it just got back burnered. I. I emailed the guy, I reached out to him, he was really nice and, and he said yeah, we could probably do something. And he wanted me to take it out and scope the oscillator so I could tell he didn't listen to the podcast. I don't know how to scope the oscillator, but there are some hopes and those amps do sound really good. And there's a couple of tube Standells here that are going to be one of my big challenges over the next couple of weeks because they're just weird and they all look one of a kind, you know, such a small production back then that they're all different and kind of like dumbbell and you just, they're just challenging. Even for somebody who's fixed a lot of stuff. Like I have love it. Can't go without at least a couple of. Well, movie recommendation. I believe it was steel. Steven Spielberg's first movie, Duel with Dennis Weaver. Do you know that one where he's driving a car across the desert and a guy, someone in a big gigantic old truck tries, is trying to kill him. You ever heard of that?

[Jason]

No.

[Skip]

Yeah, Duel. It's very. I love a movie with no talking. It's very, very quiet. It's probably from the 70s and basically just a traveling salesman and a Dodge Dart or Plymouth Valiant, just like ones we all had. Is just on a business trip kind of through the south somewhere and all of a sudden there's this big gigantic like logging truck sized truck that keeps trying to run them off the road and kill them. And it's, it's really. And I'm sure it's a very famous producer, I think Steven Spielberg, one of his very, very first movies. And it's absolutely worth a watch, especially if you like stuff with very little dialog because most of it is just Dennis Weaver in this car going holy shit, what's this guy doing? What the heck? And there's a grim scene for mechanics where they obviously actually must have taken the water out of that slant six car he's driving and let it overheat. Oh. So the truck is bearing down on him and all Of a sudden, like, the radiator hose blows. And if anybody's ever heard an old slant 6 overheat, you can tell that they actually did it. It's like, oh, was killing me. It was killing me to hear it. But. But that's completely fantastic. And on the book front, I. I am gonna do what so many of my friends done well, actually gonna get my wife to do it. I'm gonna get on Amazon, and I'm gonna send you a copy of the Patrick o' Brien book where the guy goes up into the Andes to the high altitude and the alpacas and stuff. I. It's called the Wine Dark Sea, and It's one of 25 of those books. But I think you'd get a kick out of the 20 or 30 pages where this guy goes with a. You know, hikes and goes up into the really high altitude, and they talk a lot about llamas and alpacas and he gets frostbitten, has to cut his toe off with the chisel. It's pretty amazing. So, all right, since you've been there, some. Some atmosphere, you know, might be good. Totally. I'll be working hard on trying to. To do that. It's going to require the assistance of my better half because I don't know how to do that. But I know guys, they just get on their phone and go. And they see. I just sent you that book I just got. That was Jeff Schick. Thank you very much. It's a biography. Just came out, autobiography by a guy named Jerry Portnoy, who is a white guy who played harp in Muddy Waters Band. And it's very quick read and very interesting. And he was friends with a lot of people I know, like Rick Astrin and other harp players like that. And if you're a harp player or you just like a quick, trippy autobiography, or you're really into the blues, it's a really good book. It's called Dancing With Muddy by. Not Paul Osher. He's the other harp player?

[Jason]

No, he's the other guy.

[Skip]

Yeah, he was the other guy, but it's. He has a very casual style, and he grew up kind of poor, and he was a pool hustler. He wasn't like a guy that went to an Ivy League school or anything. And it's a pretty quick read in it, and it's pretty fun. By Jerry Portnoy. Yeah. All right. Well, we survived it. You survived Peru?

[Jason]

Yep. My voice held up.

[Skip]

Yeah. I survived my cold. Barely. I haven't been drinking coffee. And then I drank a bunch of coffee right before this. Hopefully there wasn't too much babbling or unintelligible yakking by.

[Jason]

Not by us. No.

[Skip]

Yeah. Okay, good. Well, we did it.

[Jason]

We did.

[Skip]

Get some sleep. Eat some food with salt and pepper on it.

[Jason]

Jim Campolongo next week. Stay tuned. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to you all. Thank you, Skip.

[Skip]

Thank you, bud. We'll talk soon.