Ep. 150: "Throw It In the River"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons – Ep. 150: "Throw It In the River"

Release Date: July 5, 2025

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Introduction and Milestone Celebration

In the landmark 150th episode of The Truth About Vintage Amps podcast, hosts Skip Simmons and Jason celebrate this significant milestone with enthusiasm and humor. The episode kicks off with Skip humorously commenting on punctuality:

[00:14] Skip: "This is unprecedented."

Jason joins in the excitement, acknowledging the continuous support from listeners that has sustained the podcast over numerous episodes.

Recent Events and Local News

The hosts discuss a recent fireworks explosion near Esparto, Sacramento, which led to the postponement of local celebrations and left seven individuals unaccounted for. Skip recounts his initial confusion upon hearing about the incident:

[01:34] Skip: "Rumor has it it's not zoned properly, so. Intrigue Norcal. Intrigue."

They reflect on the implications of such accidents, emphasizing the importance of proper storage and licensing for pyrotechnic materials.

Personal Anecdotes and Community Connections

Skip shares a nostalgic story about reconnecting with old friends and the unexpected joy of salvaging valuable wood from his late father's property. He recounts helping Keith Carrie repurpose madrone wood and old organ parts into guitar necks:

[03:42] Skip: "I spent an hour carefully unscrewing these things from this gigantic Get pedals... and put all the little pieces of maple together."

Jason discusses his involvement in community events, including attending the Western States Endurance Run and cheering for Ben Gibbert of Death Cab for Cutie as he crossed the finish line. This segues into a conversation about endurance running, highlighting Jason's passion and the dedication it requires.

Technical Deep Dive: Ample Amp Insights

The episode delves into technical discussions about vintage amps, featuring complex questions from listeners. Skip addresses an intricate issue with an Ampeg V4 amplifier's bias supply:

[25:21] Skip: "These are real early tube standells... they just have a ton of clarity and headroom."

Skip and Jason explore various amplifier classes (A, B, AB, etc.) and their significance in amp design. Skip simplifies these concepts for the audience, making them accessible even to those with limited technical knowledge.

Listener Questions and Solutions

1. Keith's Inquiry on Amp Classes and Configurations

Keith from Charlotte, North Carolina, poses a fundamental question about amplifier classes and configurations. Skip provides a detailed explanation:

[28:07] Keith: "What's the difference between a single ended and a push pull amplifier and how does that relate to and really what is a class A amp, a B, an ab, a C, a D class amp?"

[38:39] Skip: "In our world of vacuum tubes, we basically just have A and a B... Single ended. Push pull. Dinky little amps with one power tube are called single ended."

2. Zach's Query on Channel Jumping in Fender Amps

Zach from Seattle questions the practice of channel jumping in Fender amplifiers compared to Marshall Plexi amps:

[42:01] Zach: "Can skip riff on this topic and maybe discuss why you would or would not do this with a Fender tweed black panel or silver panel amplifier."

Skip explains the technical reasons behind channel configurations and their impact on tone:

[43:34] Skip: "A Marshall plexi is two channels, four inputs... it's just putting your guitar on both sides."

3. Bernie’s Question on 12/7 DC Power Supply for Tube PA Amps

Bernie from New York inquires about the feasibility of running tube PA amps off a dedicated 12-volt DC supply:

[86:22] Bernie: "Was wondering if it would make sense to keep [tube PA amps] in their original form and run them off a dedicated 12 volt DC supply."

Skip advises on power configurations for such setups:

[90:34] Skip: "Most of the big PA companies made amps like that for mobile use. Most of them are 6 volt, some of them are 12 volt... A power transformer that can do either one."

Sponsor Highlights and Promotions

Throughout the episode, the hosts seamlessly integrate promotions for their sponsors, offering exclusive discounts and highlighting special products:

• Amplified Parts: Offering a 10% discount during their Fourth of July sale.
• Emerald City Guitars: Featuring a vast collection of 60s Fenders and boutique guitars available in Seattle or online.
• Grez Guitars: Showcasing their handmade guitars, with a special mention of their appearance at the upcoming 2025 Fretboard Summit.

[16:00] Skip: "I say there's nothing wrong with that in a way... But those standells are made so crappy. But if the guy had been, you know, like a neat freak and spent all this time laying out all the parts just perfect and doing things the way I like to see, maybe he wouldn't have come up with that circuit."

Community Engagement and Listener Contributions

Listeners contribute not only questions but also diverse content, including recipes and music recommendations. Notably, Keith shares a step-by-step recipe for a cherry chocolate cake:

[28:07] Keith: "It's a delicious chocolate cherry cake with a cherry with a chocolate glaze... pretty easy."

Additionally, Bill Downey introduces a band from Shanghai’s punk scene, and Chris discusses modifications to preamp circuits in Harmony 420 amps, fostering a rich community dialogue.

Historical Reflections and Storytelling

Towards the episode's end, Skip reminisces about the historical figure Ishi, the last known member of his tribe, highlighting his integration into modern society:

[97:24] Skip: "He really liked people, and he wanted to show people how he did stuff. It's just amazing... Ishi in Two Worlds."

This segment underscores the podcast’s dedication to blending technical discussions with broader cultural and historical narratives.

Conclusion and Looking Ahead

As the episode wraps up, Jason and Skip reflect on their journey to the 150th episode, expressing gratitude to their listeners and sponsors. They tease upcoming events, including the 2025 Fretboard Summit and the Pinewood Derby, encouraging continued community participation.

[100:57] Skip: "Thanks to our sponsors and Amplified Parts, where there currently is a great sale going on. Be a part of the show podcastritboardjournal.com follow us on Patreon and here's our last question from listener Sean Skipping."

Key Quotes

• [00:14] Skip: "This is unprecedented."
• [01:34] Skip: "Intrigue Norcal. Intrigue."
• [25:21] Skip: "These are real early tube standells... they just have a ton of clarity and headroom."
• [38:39] Skip: "Single ended. Push pull. Dinky little amps with one power tube are called single ended."
• [83:53] Jason: "What did that thing sell for?"
• [97:24] Skip: "He wanted to show people how he did stuff. It's just amazing."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 150 of The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons masterfully blends technical expertise with personal stories, community engagement, and historical insights. Skip and Jason maintain an engaging dialogue that not only educates but also builds a strong sense of camaraderie among vintage amp enthusiasts. Whether you're a seasoned collector or a curious newcomer, this episode offers valuable knowledge and a heartfelt celebration of a significant podcast milestone.

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Connect with the Podcast:

• Website: podcastritboardjournal.com
• Patreon: Support the show
• Social Media: Follow on Instagram and Facebook for updates and behind-the-scenes content.

Sponsors:

• Amplified Parts: Quality parts for vintage amp restoration.
• Emerald City Guitars: Exclusive collection of vintage and boutique guitars.
• Grez Guitars: Handmade guitars featured at the 2025 Fretboard Summit.

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Thank you for celebrating Episode 150 with us! Stay tuned for more insightful and entertaining discussions on vintage tube amp repair, restoration, and collecting.

Transcript

[Skip]

This is unprecedented.

[Jason]

What?

[Skip]

It's 8:59. You've never been a minute early for anything. Hi Jason.

[Jason]

Hi Skip. It's the 150th episode of the Truth About Vina Jamps podcast.

[Skip]

Is it really?

[Jason]

Uh huh. It really is.

[Skip]

Whoa.

[Jason]

I know.

[Skip]

You know, you didn't know we'd ever do that many, right?

[Jason]

No. Who knew all these questions would keep coming?

[Skip]

Yeah, people have questions, but I just somehow didn't think the mechanics of it would ever last very long or not this long. So I say great. And an unprecedented cool fourth of July morning in Northern California, which as you know, is usually a day when it's going to be 100.

[Jason]

You're talking weather? Actually, it's actually cool. Okay.

[Skip]

Yeah, it's a little breeze and curtains are kind of clacking and usually it's 4th of July is where you just, oh, it's hot. And of course we have to think about fireworks up here. Fire, danger fireworks, stuff like that. And no, I don't know much about the gigantic fireworks blow up that wasn't too far from here.

[Jason]

It wasn't.

[Skip]

It was in wall, it was in the Wall Street Journal. So. Yeah, Sparto, just outside of Sacramento, not too far from here. Apparently it was some kind of big old warehouse where they stored real fireworks, pyrotechnic, big ones like professionals use. And it went kaboom a couple of days ago and I had a couple calls from people that don't live around here saying what the heck I thought it was when I first heard about it, I figured it was something nefarious, illegal. But no, it was like a, some sort of storage setup for pyrotechnics company. Some of the big fireworks celebrations around Northern California had to get postponed. Oh. Because that's where all the stuff was coming from. And there's still seven people that are unaccounted for. Oh my goodness. Yikes.

[Jason]

And now did you smell did the scent of a million fireworks?

[Skip]

You know where Esparto is? That's over there by Keith's house or you know, maybe 40 miles away or something like that. I didn't know anything about it until it started coming on on the radio, so. But anyway, just in case anybody was gonna ask me about that. No, it was nowhere near here really. But it is really odd. And there's, there's some questions to be asked there, like what the heck happened there? That's like running a ship into a bridge. It doesn't just happen. There's like a bunch of things that happen Right. They gotta take care of stuff like that. You have to have licenses and everything to even handle that type of stuff. And it kind of looks like it was all stored out in some sheds. Rumor has it it's not zoned properly, so. Intrigue. Norcal. Intrigue. Okay. All right. Well, I guess I was gonna say you asked, but you actually didn't ask. So I saw Keith Carrie at my house with his friend Mark. Very rare. I've known Keith forever, but I never see him unless it's work related. And I think he's only been here once, maybe 10 years ago. And he came up again. I had some wood. Why is it always about the wood? People's dads and wood.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So my dad rest in peace. When I was moving him out, there was a bunch of. We think. I think it's madrone, which you know what madrone is. Most people probably wouldn't, but it's pretty unusual wood. And there was a bunch of it all milled and made into boards. And Keith wanted that. And I also found. I'm sure it was George Danger uxp. There's an organ with a giant. You know those things you hit with your feet that do the bass pedals on old organs? They're wood.

[Jason]

Oh, yeah. Like an E3.

[Skip]

Yeah, yeah. Or even a bigger con or theater organ. I forget what it came from, but I realized that there was about 15 or 20 of these pieces of maple. And I got out a tape measure and I measured him. And I called Keith and he goes, what? Like they could be made into necks of guitars or something that he has in mind. And they're, you know, jillion years old. Totally cured rock maple. And he was excited to get those. And I spent an hour carefully unscrewing these things from this gigantic. Get pedals, bass pedals, that's it. And when it's all put together, you can hardly lift the thing. It's gigantic. But I took it all apart, put all the little pieces of maple together, and he was. He was fired up to get them. So we hung out. It was fun. Yeah, I had a few visitations. Jeff Chicatano from Pennsylvania knows someone who knows someone who runs my pizza place in Lome. Yes. And he travels for work and he's been here once before, and he came and brought all kinds of good liquor and stuff. And then he told me that he'd got pizza dough from the pizza place. Like when he was here a year or two ago, I went over to the Pizza Roundup where I've met a jillion times and said, hey, I want to buy some pizza dough. I said, no, we don't sell pizza.

[Jason]

You're not a blood relative.

[Skip]

And I said, okay. So, Jeff, just like a week or so ago, just a few days ago, he goes over there. He shows up. He has two. Yeah, they charged me $2 each for him. I'm going, what? Goes, yeah, he's a. He's a salesman. He's a yakker. And anyway, if you have good pizza dough, it's easy to make pizza at home. That's. That's extra good. And he took a fun picture of the goats, which I'll send to you to put on the kegger.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

You know, part of the local color.

[Jason]

Okay. I love it.

[Skip]

Yeah. How about you? What do you got?

[Jason]

Well, it's Fourth of July, as you said. We're doing a 150th episode of the Truth About M Jams podcast. I'm trying to get the 57th issue of the Fretboard Journal off to press next week. So everybody subscribe. We're locking in all the Fretboard Summit stuff.

[Skip]

Good.

[Jason]

And I was just in California, so I know the fire danger's real because it was hot.

[Skip]

Yeah, I hear you were in California. Actually, no, you told me. But I do think it's interesting that you're an aspiring. What's that called? An endurance runner.

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip]

Is that what that's called?

[Jason]

Yeah, you could say endurance running.

[Skip]

Or not around trail running. Right. Not round and round the track, but go from here over to there running, please. Which is pretty amazing. You know the great Black Bart, famous stagecoach robber in California who never shot or killed anyone. He could walk, so he'd. He'd rob a stage, and in the middle of the night up here in the mountains, he'd wake up the next morning in some hotel like 40 miles away. And so no one would ever suspect it was. It was him.

[Jason]

That's what I'm doing.

[Skip]

Yeah. That's what he could. He would have been. He would have been good at that. So. So we're super impressed with your healthy lifestyle.

[Jason]

Well, to be clear, I just went and cheered for the people running the most famous endurance trail run in America. The Western states. Western states endurance run. So I was just cheering for my running hero. I was about 10ft away from him when he actually pulled out of the race, which is kind of sad. But did you know?

[Skip]

You were there to see him? Did you talk to him?

[Jason]

He is very popular, so he has tens of thousands of fans. And I'm One of them. But we have had correspondence and after the fact he knows that I was there and I'm going to try to do a podcast with him at some point in the future about nothing guitar related. So.

[Skip]

Well, you, I'm sure you have time with all your slack hours to have another little thing. I can only imagine it'd be a small but hardcore following that would be people that would be interested in talking about that, about endurance and trail running. Just makes my knees hurt thinking about it.

[Jason]

And to bring it at least sort of back to music, I dragged my sister to this and the morning after they started. So about 26 hours after everybody started at 5am we watched our friend Ben Gibbert of Death Cab for Cutie, frontman for Death Cab for Cutie, cross the finish line. So that was fun.

[Skip]

He is an endurance runner.

[Jason]

He, he is an endurance runner and is impossibly hard to get into this race. They have about 360 competitors every year and most of those slots are taken by, you know, professional athletes, people who won qualifying races. So for the average Joe or even the front man of a rock band to, to get into this race, it's like a lottery system and it's like, you know, very, very slim odds. But he got in so he finished. It's amazing.

[Skip]

So so many people want to do it that not everybody can do it or it would just be too unmanageable.

[Jason]

Exactly. And it's a hundred miles and it starts at the ski resort formerly known as Squaw Valley, now called Palisades Tahoe, goes over the ski hill and then through all the fire danger zones all the way to Auburn, California which is where it's been going for 50 plus years.

[Skip]

So did you all catch that 100 miles? You know we're not just, we're like running.

[Jason]

Yeah, 100 miles of running.

[Skip]

I remember 100 mile century rides on bicycles. You know, you have to be pretty sturdy to do that, but this is just a whole nother level of. So you don't have to, you don't have to qualify or prove yourself. Any schlub could go out there and say I'm going to do it.

[Jason]

No, there's, there are some qualifications you have to do even if you win the lottery.

[Skip]

So have you, have you ever done any less prestigious and or shorter runs like that yourself?

[Jason]

Well, I did a run in April for 100, 100k run in Oregon, which does qualify me to be in the lottery for the 2026 Western States Run. So if I somehow the lottery gods are in my favor. I don't have to go find a race to sign up for, to qualify.

[Skip]

How long did it take after that race before you were normal again?

[Jason]

I mean, didn't it just. You got to give yourself a week off?

[Skip]

Yeah, yeah, I would think that's just. That's just crazy. Yeah. And I would. Like I said, I think it'd be a small crowd, but a dedicated crowd. That. I mean, a lot. Lot going on there, the training, the conditioning. But also I think of the mental attitude where. Okay, that's it. Why am I doing this? I mean, that has to occur to you a gajillion times. And you must have some. Some defense mechanisms for that.

[Jason]

That's what did in my guy. So he had a panic attack. So, yeah, sucks.

[Skip]

That's what. That's what gets me to give up on an amp and say, well, forget this thing. Throw it in the river like this. Like a Standell. I've been working on old standells lately.

[Jason]

Okay, Like a bunch, like multiple.

[Skip]

Well, between me and our friend Bill Kernard, all of a sudden we had like five or six of these things at once.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

And these are real early tube standals, not the ones that were what you call the butcher paper amps that he made in his garage that all have a little plaque. Oh, there's a picture of one in the article you guys did about me. That one's Louis. Has a little plaque on the front that has the guy's name that he made it for. And I think there's 80 of those. And a lot of the names are Merle Travis and Chet Atkins and famous guys like that. But these are right after that. And like, the first time I fixed an AC30, by the time I got the thing going, what a piece of junk. But just fragile, hot running hard to work on. Just ridiculous. But like an AC30, you start playing that thing and you go, okay, all right. Guess we gotta have these old standells. They sound like tweed amps with high fidelity power amps and JBL speakers. They just have a ton of clarity and headroom. And even though they're made super crappy, I could imagine that when some steel guitar player in 1958 was handed one of these things, he went, whoa. It probably gave Leho a. A little something to think about. I could go into the. Well, we're going to know more. Bill Kernard can draw schematics, and we're going to try to document some of them, but they're all different. The main thing is they are Very high fidelity. When you hit the guitar really hard, they get louder. They don't just compress. Like a lot of smaller amps and Fenders do. High voltage on the plates, low volt, 500 volts on the plates, 150 volts on the screens. Half of our crowd just turned out turned off, which is really unusual. Usually the plate and screen are real close together. And that screen voltage is regulated by a tube called a voltage regulator tube, an extra one. And when you play louder, it maintains that screen voltage constantly instead of letting it change. And that's part of what gives it a super punchy JBL type of high fidelity sound.

[Jason]

Are any modern amp makers kind of implementing that?

[Skip]

There's always been people that have reissued some of that standalone stuff, but I don't really have much experience with it. And. No, I don't. That's an excellent question. Is. That's a no, I don't, I don't think so. Maybe somebody really far out, like, you know, satellite or something like that is doing regulator tubes and things like that. But it's, it's a good idea. You could make something that had a lot really cool big headroom sound if you utilize that circuitry. All right. As usual, I'm gearing well that you.

[Jason]

Brought it to amps though, which is what most people want to hear about, so.

[Skip]

Well, now I can bring it to Kale.

[Jason]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[Skip]

Apparently there's a newish chicken chain called Dave's Hot Chicken. It's supposed to be really good. I gotta go there. Why? Because they have kale slaw. It's a trademark thing. And I'm going, okay, you put enough, put enough mayonnaise on that stuff, I can eat it. Right? So I'm looking forward to someday getting some Dave's Hot Chicken and having kale slaw. Right.

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip]

Another thing we can share.

[Jason]

Yes.

[Skip]

Since I'm not an endurance runner.

[Jason]

Yes.

[Skip]

No, I mean kale. We can, we can, we can join over. Kale. Yeah. You can have it plain and I'll have it in slaw.

[Jason]

No chicken for me.

[Skip]

Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's super impressive that you do that and eat kale.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

No, the. No do the running. It's just, you know, something that you'd never expect. I wouldn't expect the Death Cab for Cutie guy to be into it either.

[Jason]

No, he's really into it, you know. Yeah.

[Skip]

It's like mechanics who can also play music. Like Keith Gary.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

You know, so once again, I'm the lame one sided person in the conversation. But you and I are supposed to be on the same team as far as that goes, when we have a guest who's super interesting. But now I'm in awe. I'm in awe of Jason.

[Jason]

So I am. Okay. You know who I'm in awe of? I'm in awe of our sponsors.

[Skip]

Oh.

[Jason]

Especially Amplified Parts. Everybody's been asking, when's there going to be a discount code? Well, I'm going to race this episode out because for the next few days, you can get 10% off anything at Amplified Parts. So nice. It's for their fourth of July sale. Our friends at Emerald City Guitars continue have dozens of 60s fenders and everything else. All the boutique stuff like Benson's and cars and everything in between on the amp front, as well as the coolest guitar collection around. You can go see their showroom here in Seattle or go on their website, tell them Tava sent you. And then last but definitely not least, our friend Barry over at Grez Guitars. He's going to be at our 2025 Fretboard Summit. Continues to make incredible guitars. And I will tell you all that on Monday, which I guess will be the 7th of July. I'm posting another Bill Frizzell video from the Fretboard Journal. And Bill played my. My Grez. So that's exciting.

[Skip]

Whoa.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

You chopped your fingers off after that.

[Jason]

Or I'm just gonna bronze the guitar. He played the grand tour, the black one at the office. He loved it. And so he liked it. Oh, totally. He was. He gave it the stare down. He wanted to see all the. Wanted to look at it up close.

[Skip]

Even the setup and everything. He liked everything.

[Jason]

He even asked what strings are on there, and they're string joy strings, in case anyone's wondering. So.

[Skip]

Fabulous.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And then you took the guitar and showed him how it was done after that?

[Jason]

Yeah, I played Eruption for him after. Yeah, it's really amazing.

[Skip]

Well, someone got an. Someone within the last month brought me an amp. I think it was basement head that came from Emerald City. And he was really thrilled with them. And the price was reasonable. If. If there is one complaint you could make about a big brick and mortar store that has a ton of overhead is sometimes prices can be a little on the high side, but this thing. I went, what? How much? And you. Professional packing and shipping and just an overall groove from our sponsor. And of course, Barry, the beautiful guy. I don't know. I don't know how he somehow carved this little niche out of a really crowded market, but he Did. So don't go see one or play one unless you got money to burn because you'll want it.

[Jason]

Probably true. And if anybody finds themselves in Seattle and I happen to be around, come check out the one that Bill Frizzle played.

[Skip]

Well, that's nice of you.

[Jason]

Yeah. You know what Barry's doing at the fretboard summit, which I foisted on everybody? We're having a Pinewood derby track. And I've invited all the world's great guitar makers to make a Pinewood Derby car. And so he, he got a kit. He's gonna be opening his kit maybe tomorrow because today's a national holiday. But I sent it to all the folks who were initially interested, including some folks like Chase Bliss and some pedal makers. So maybe we'll have some pedals on wheels. Maybe we'll have who knows what.

[Skip]

Whose idea was that?

[Jason]

That was my. All the dumb ideas that happened at the footboard summit are from yours truly.

[Skip]

That's fantastic. I was in Cub Scouts. I did the Pinewood Derby car.

[Jason]

Were you good?

[Skip]

And I don't think I won or anything, but it looked cool because I was, even as a little kid, I was kind of into making stuff nice, you know. But that's a great idea and something fun. And you can bet there's going to be some, some people who go rat Rod. And then there's going to be some people that look like they spent a week painting it, you know, I expect some hand done flames by some of these luthier types, you know.

[Jason]

Well, and I encouraged, I encouraged if folks wanted to, to cheat because if they want to make it out of like a solid chunk of ebony, who am I to deprive them of their joy? So we'll have the official class for the real, you know, wannabe boy scouts.

[Skip]

And then where do you get us? Pinewood Derby track in a far away town.

[Jason]

This is a great question. This is why this didn't happen in 2024. You have to find a local troop and then make a donation and then make sure that they can truck it to your location. So we'll, we'll have one that actually has like the laser timing. It's like a real one. It's going to take up a lot of room.

[Skip]

Well, that's just enough to push me off the edge. And you know, I don't know. I think I'd have to get a rental car and drive across the country.

[Jason]

But not driving to Chicago. That would be awful in the summer.

[Skip]

What's awful, awful is going to an airport sitting on an airplane.

[Jason]

I mean, you could, you could deliver amps across the country if you needed to.

[Skip]

No, you just. Well, you did, you did a big by yourself long haul recently, didn't you?

[Jason]

Well, no, I did that drive a couple years ago and vowed never to do it again. But I was coming from Washington.

[Skip]

You weren't, you weren't prepared or you didn't have the right attitude, which is like, yeah, I'm going to just sit here for eight hours and look out the window and go 80 miles an hour on I80 and contemplate something. But no, that's a fantastic, that's a fantastic idea that you got.

[Jason]

And come anytime we, you know, we got it. We had to retire. Cardboard cutout skip. He was looking a little beaten and battered. Yeah. So.

[Skip]

Well, we have a honorary sponsor again, I, I gotta mention Tin Can Alley, the letterpress company. That's the letterpress guys and people. Do you want something on paper that just grabs people's attention? You talk to that guy because he gave, gave you a box full of stuff too, right?

[Jason]

It's amazing.

[Skip]

Yeah, he gave me a box full of stuff. People flip out. I just open up the box and say, hey, look in here. The coasters went right away. And just notepads and little tags and it all just has a real cool textural quality. And I wanted to thank that guy again. And I might have to contemplate making some new business cards or something like that.

[Jason]

Yeah, Tin Can Valley.

[Skip]

Tin Can Valley in Minnesota. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's. I don't know, any, any sized company that needed. That had something that you handed to a customer. It's immediately apparent that it's something different. Yeah, the. There were some cards, right? Like thank you note cards and stuff. Like, oh, yeah, it's beautiful, so thanks for that. And I keep forgetting to thank Matthew Zapruder, like the Zapruder tapes. He's a real poet and author, like, serious. And he sent me a book in the mail a couple months back, Story of a poem. And I keep forgetting to mention him. He knows Vander Slice somehow.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

And he's a typist and he's a. What is this guy here? This guy? Yeah. From 2016 on, he held the editor of poetry column for the New York Times.

[Jason]

What? And he listens to our show?

[Skip]

Yes, he lives in the. He lives in the Bay Area. He teaches at St. Mary's College. Yeah. He's a serious writer. And I haven't slugged my way all the way through it, but it's it's really beautiful writing and it's about his relationship with his son, really. And it has poetry and story of a poem. It's beautiful and I'm glad he sent it. And just never know with that fretboard journal connection. I just read that the Folger Shakespeare Library has a big old giant, this new display thing. And it was. I was reminded one of our very first people that called me or called the show was the curator of the world's largest Shakespeare library. Hey, we got, we got a wide range of people here.

[Jason]

I know. We need to get them all in the same place. We need to have a little Tava party maybe for episode 200. Who knows?

[Skip]

Maybe so. All right.

[Jason]

Story of a poem, though.

[Skip]

Story of a poem, a memoir.

[Jason]

I'm going to include this on, on our show notes so folks can order it.

[Skip]

It's got poetry, but it's also about his relationship with his son. Autistic, I believe, or something like that. And it's, it's fabulous.

[Jason]

All right.

[Skip]

I love it.

[Jason]

All right. Do you want to field some amp questions?

[Skip]

I'll start with an amp baffler that I don't know the answer to. Okay, how about that? We love a bath. Okay. Ampeg V4, V4B. These are big 70s high powered tube, very popular amps in the day. Stones used them and stuff like that. So I've got a V4 here. It actually uses the V4B bias circuit. If you're looking it up in say the groove tube book, all those schematics are in there. And my problem is that I can't get enough negative voltage out of the bias supply to get the power tubes to run right. So smart guys know what I'm talking about. But in a cathode bias stamp, you just have a big resistor to ground that that does all this controlling of current. But in a fixed bias amp, cathode is grounded. And you've got to have a negative voltage supplied to the grid of the tube to maintain the bias of that tube. So it'll won't run too hot, won't run too cold. This thing is supposed to have maybe minus 60 and I can only get it up to like minus 45. It doesn't have a pot, doesn't adjust, it's just fixed. And I have gone over that circuit like a lot and all the normal ways that you use to, to change that negative voltage don't work. And so the baffler is. If somebody's going to tell me what is going on I always think people or I always think amps worked. You know, these are ampegs. I fixed lots of these. And why doesn't this one work? The all the parts have been carefully checked over and or replaced by me. And I still can't get enough negative voltage out of the bio supply so that the really expensive power tubes don't run too hot. So maybe there's an ampeg guru out there. I know there's different ways to do it. I've got. I've got some of those figured out. You could ask like Bill Kernard and he'd say, oh, we'll just junk all that and do it like this. But what I can't figure out is how come it doesn't work? You know, it's supposed to work. They always did. Why doesn't this one work? So maybe somebody has some ideas for me on that.

[Jason]

I love it. Okay.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Jason]

As always, if you have an answer to the Baffler or a question for Skip, send it to podcastretboardjournal.com we accept voice memos, which is what we mostly have today. Thank you, everybody. I get to save my voice. And we also have some emailed out questions. We also have a Patreon if you want to get to the front of the line. I'll include a link to that. Do you want the first question?

[Skip]

Lay it on me.

[Jason]

I'm turning over a new leaf. I actually screened all these voice memos and so going from Bunny Hill to Black diamond, expert level. So here's our first question from Keith.

[C]

Hey, Jason. Hey, Skip. This is Keith Listener in Charlotte, North Carolina. Been with you from the beginning. Love the podcast, love fretboard journal and everything you do over there, Jason. So I did have some basic amp questions, sort of terms that I hear people use a lot. And I don't exactly know what those terms mean. So just for us amp dummies, the difference between a single ended and a push pull amplifier and how that relates to and really what is a class A amp, a B, an ab, a C, a D class amp? Like what do those terms mean and how are they different and how does it relate to single ended and or push pull amps? Yeah, I'm sorry if that's kind of like basic stuff, but just terms I hear used about amplifiers and would be good to know what those terms mean. I guess that's my only amp question for today, but I do have a food recommendation. I got this recipe. It's from a chef who worked at the Stouffer's Hotel. In Cleveland, Ohio. It's actually kind of fancy Stouffer's. It's not just the little packages of frozen Mac and cheese at the grocery store. That's actually a nice hotel. They once upon a time operated tons of restaurants and stuff, but there it was a big deal in the, in the Cleveland area. Anyway, this is for a cherry chocolate cake. And it's super easy, which is something that I need. It helps to have it come out right, keep things simple. So first thing, just a box of Duncan Hines devil's food cake mix. You can use, you know, whatever store brand. I guess it starts with a box, but I promise it's. It's actually pretty good. You need a 21 ounce can of cherry pie filling, three eggs. We're gonna glaze this chocolate cake with, of course, more chocolate. So for that you need a cup of sugar, 5 tablespoons of butter, 6 ounces of chocolate chips. You can use, you know, whatever kind you want. Semi sweet or milk chocolate is good. If you, you know, want that sort of less sweet thing, you can use dark chocolate. It's all good. Half a cup of milk. So you take the pie filling, that 21 ounce can of pie filling, mix it with eggs and the cake mix and, you know, beat that out until it's like a cake batter consistency. Then you want to grease or, you know, you can use like a PAM type cooking spray to grease a Bundt can, the Bundt cake pan. Pour that, that mix into the pan. After it's been greased, preheat your oven to 350. You're going to. Once it comes up to temperature, throw that cake pan in at 350, cook it for 30 minutes, and then just check it after, like every five minutes. After the 30 minutes, just stick a toothpick in there. And if the toothpick comes out wet, you're not done baking yet. Usually like 35, no more than 40 minutes. Usually depends on your oven, I guess. Take it out of the oven, let it cool. You know, get it out of the Bundt pan, which should be easy because remember, we greased it or hit it with PAM cooking spray, let it cool, and then while it's cooling, slowly heat up that half a cup of milk. Add the 5 tablespoons of butter and the cup of sugar. Let that go in a, in a saucepan until it just about comes to a boil. Then you put in the chocolate chips and you blend that melted mixture until you get like a chocolate glaze. You can see this coming. You pour that glaze over the cake let it cool.

[Skip]

Boom.

[C]

It's a delicious chocolate cherry cake with a cherry with a chocolate glaze. Yeah, it's pretty easy. Have the whole thing done, ready to eat in like hour, hour and a half. And most of that time it's just sitting in the oven. Pretty easy. Anyway, that's all I got. Again, thanks for the great podcast and yeah, have a good one. Thanks, guys.

[Skip]

Wow.

[Jason]

Mm.

[Skip]

Keith.

[D]

Well, the.

[Skip]

That was a step by step. Yeah, and that sounds easy. I wonder if the cherries stay whole or if you blend it all up into like a cherry, you know, homogenized thing and then he goes homemade on the ch. On the icing. Some people would just buy the little tub of, of pre made frosting and put it on there. But yeah, I could see making another pot of coffee and getting that going. Keith. Oh, those keys. Our Keith, Keith Carey also brought a mandolin he made from scratch that I helped my stepdad mill the black walnut like 30 years ago. And the headstock veneer is a piece of wood he picked up in my yard. And he's looked at it. He goes, look at the curly figure in this piece of black walnut. And I said, hey, I'm throwing it in the burn pile. And he took it and saved it and he showed me. It's got this beautiful veneer black walnut peg head with this unbelievable figure from a piece of wood that I was going to throw in the burn pile. So another Keith. So let's see. I think the first question, though, we couldn't. We wouldn't want to spend all day. But what I can do for people is tell you that a lot of that stuff just doesn't matter. And if you want to know about it, go ahead. But it's not really in our ballpark, like class A, B, C, D. I don't even really know how the C's and D's work. In fact, they're solid state amps that those power classifications apply to as well. But in our world of vacuum tubes, we basically just have A and a B. And it. The. What I'd say about Class A is that it's not a fixed thing. It has to do with how much current the output tubes are using. Basically, in a class A amp, the power tube is going all the time whether you're playing it or not. In a fixed bias amp, like say that amp, big ampeg we were talking about, if you're not playing in it, the current is way less. When you hit a big note on the guitar, the current of the output stage goes Way up. And those relationships have to do with A and a B and who cares? Single ended. Push pull. Dinky little amps with one power tube are called single ended. When as soon as you need more than about 8 watts. In general, sure, there's a few exceptions. You got to move up to two power tubes, not just one. And the way you really do that is what's called a push pull circuit. Where there's an additional tube in front of the power tubes that divides your sound up into this oscillating back and forth thing that's applied to the two power tubes in a push pull circuit. And that's the only way to continue to get more and more and more power out of tubes. You can only get so far on single ended. Unless you have exotic transmitting tubes and things like that. So push pull needs a phase inverter. Single ended doesn't. There's a few exceptions, like little Gibsons that use two 6v6s that are single ended parallel. But in general, that's, that's, that's the basic thing. And I don't know what AI would tell you, but that stuff. Just don't want to get too bogged down in it. How about this? I'm kind of lucky in music. I never had to learn how to play the bass. I just sat on the couch with my friends and went. And we got to learn these songs in 10 days. And in electronics and working on amps, I didn't have to know that stuff. I read these books that were basically how to go to someone's house and fix their TV and get out of there and get paid. So my focus was on servicing and maintaining stuff that already works. Thank you, Jack Dar. So my knowledge of the real serious electronics is not all that deep. And I can't play the guitar very good either. But on the other hand, it didn't stop me from being in bands and not knowing a bunch of electronics. Sure as heck didn't stop me from fixing a bunch of amps. But when you get into designing and things like genius stuff like Kernard would know. But again, I say there's nothing wrong with that in a way. Okay, here's your segue back. Those standells are made so crappy. But if the guy had been, you know, like a. A neat freak and spent all this time laying out all the parts just perfect and doing things the way I like to see, maybe he wouldn't have come up with that circuit. I had a friend years ago who made his own hi Fi amps from Scratch from old junk organ parts and they looked horrible inside. There'd be stacks of solder an inch tall. Because he didn't bog down in the craftsmanship aspect. He just tried. He would work on them when they were on. Like he'd solder in different resistors while he's playing music, you know, through them at the same time. So it frees you up to try stuff. And maybe if that guy had been a super clean freak where he spent months organizing the part board and making sure every little wire was just perfect, like say a matchless, he might not have come up with that circuit. So the lazy man way has some advantages is all I'm saying. Did that make sense?

[Jason]

Makes perfect sense. Good rule to live by too.

[Skip]

Well, you wouldn't know. You do everything great. But I, I, well, if I had had to go to six months worth of lessons to learn how to play bass, I never would have done it. Yeah. You know, ever. And so you don't have to make it really hard to get to have some fun making some stuff. Our sponsors and amplified parts, the, the kit world is just blowing up. You know, there's so much of that stuff that you can get now. So if that interests you, go for it. I just did a couple of little out of my normal world, but vintage Heath kit hi Fi power amps for Mark. I don't think he listens to the podcast, but there's a book. Well, not. Yeah, it's a pretty good sized book. It's, it's a manual that they sold with the kits and it is, is every little step. And they're starting to do this with the new kits as well. Take this wire 2 inches long, solder it from here to here, and then when you're done with that, you put a little check. And I've got the book from these Heath kit amps that some guy did a million years ago when he was building it. And you can just go through the whole thing and you can end up making something without really knowing what you're doing. Sort of like I got to play in the band even though I couldn't really play. Right. So. So don't let not knowing anything slow you down. And those, those kits make it so that you can learn if you want, but you don't necessarily have to.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

By the way, out in the barn is a really fancy hi Fi integrated mono amp that has the book like that and it's built. But a guy could just start at the beginning with this old thing and just go through the book. Again and make sure. And kind of like either if it's already done good, you can check it off again, and if it was done crappy, you can do it over. And I think that appeals to a certain type of organized mind where you don't have to understand every little step of it because you're just doing little baby steps along the way, right? Like, I can't clean the kitchen, it's a disaster. But if you just start with, okay, get these pots and pans out of the way, right? And you just get going and pretty soon, you know, so. All right, we've only made it through one question.

[Jason]

I told you, I screened all these. There was one about a hi fi. Now I can't find it, but we'll continue with my original.

[Skip]

The cake recipe does sound delicious. I'm sure that. Yes, absolutely.

[Jason]

Zach here in Seattle, I have a question about channel jumping. I have a Silvertone 1482, 2.6V6 tubes, one 12 inch speaker, and the knobs on the front like an old school television. I have the instrument channel jumpered into the microphone channel and I get a little more gain. I've also seen people do this with Marshall Plexi type amps. However, I've only seen it done on Fender amps once or twice. I saw a friend do it with a silver panel pro reverb the other day. Can skip riff on this topic and maybe discuss why you would or would not do this with a Fender tweed black panel or silver panel amplifier. And why is it popular with single channel amplifiers with four inputs like a Marshall Plexi? That's from Zach.

[Skip]

A Marshall plexi is two channels, four inputs. It has two volume controls, not single channel. But what he's talking about electronically is let's pretend you have a guitar cord that you're plugged into your guitar, but on the other end of the cord there's two quarter inch plugs instead of one. And they both have, you know, it's a Y cord, right? So electronically. What. What this question is about is using two channels of a two channel amp at once. It doesn't look like people are doing that because what they're doing is they're taking advantage of the old school circuitry of these old amps where there's a bunch of inputs. Because honestly, they thought a bunch of instruments were going to all plug into it at the same time. Even though by this. I don't know. When did people stop doing that? By the time people had some decent PAs, you'd very rarely find, okay, the the organ and the lead guitar are both going to play through this vendor amp. You know, everybody has their own. But when they came out, Leo was convinced you had to be able to plug a microphone in there and a guitar and whatever. Right. So Fenders and Marshalls with multiple inputs. If you just go from one of the input jacks over to the other channel. Input jacks with a guitar chord, you're doing the same thing basically, as if you had a Y chord from your guitar. It's just putting your guitar on both sides.

[Jason]

Okay, cool.

[Skip]

Marshalls have one channel that's insanely bright. As soon as you turn it on, it's like. And the other channel is super deep and bassy. So a lot of people figured out that they could just run a little guitar chord there between the two sets of jacks and get both volumes to work so that it could have kind of a big, fat volume and then a. A thinner, crunchier volume, and they'd both play at once on Offender. I don't. I know people do that, but I don't really see a whole lot of practicality for that. This also was further complicated by our buddy Neil Young. Remember when he was on the podcast?

[Jason]

Yeah, that was a great episode.

[Skip]

One thing he was really into was the Tweed Deluxe, which has a mic channel and a normal channel. And he figured out that if he was playing the instrument channel, but he went over to the channel that he wasn't even using and turned it up a little bit. It. It did something to the tone that he thought was really cool. In fact, I think that's why he made the groovy electronic mechanical thing, the wizard that would turn the knobs to a certain spot when he hit his foot switch or something. But fast forward to a few years ago when I fixed a Tweed Deluxe for a guy, like, back in North Carolina or someplace, and he's calling me and he's going, I kind of thought it would be brighter. And I'm going, what. What kind of a speaker have you got? You know, I mean, Tweed Deluxe, they get pretty bright. So it took a few phone calls, but he finally admitted that he had read on the Internet that you always had to have the channel that you're not using turned up. Leo would have told you, no, if you're not using a channel, you turn it off, because all it's going to do is add noise. But the Internet has decided that the Tweed Deluxe controls are, quote, interactive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of that was designed on purpose. And if you turn the mic Volume up on your Tweed Deluxe. When you're playing the instrument channel, what happens? It gets mellower and darker. Finally I said, what do you mean you got the mic volume on 5. Turn it off. And he turned it off. And the amp just poof. You know, like bright. There's the highs, right? So take some of that stuff with a grain of salt. I think a good A B box in two channels is way better than jump ring. Next.

[Jason]

Okay. Love it. Our friend Bill Downey, who is one of the great winemakers in the world down in Yaragon, Victoria, Australia. When he's not pulling a horse behind to till the Pinot noir fields, he.

[Skip]

Says he do that. He does Small Farm Journal.

[Jason]

Yeah, he's the Small Farm Journal guy. He says, I just got back from Shanghai, discovered that there's a very cool punk scene there. Apparently was started in Beijing in the 80s and then ended up in Shanghai a little later. Check out the band called Round Eye. That's the entire email. So thanks for the music.

[Skip]

Sounds adventurous. Jim Campelongo probably knows all about them.

[Jason]

Probably. That's. That's probably safe to say.

[Skip]

We didn't say hi to him again, but you just can't you just. All that stuff about western swing. I asked a few people since we've talked to him and they said oh yeah, heck yeah. He took lessons from all those old timers and blah blah blah. But he was fun.

[Jason]

He was fun. I was hoping that he had a connection to your 4H people, but I.

[Skip]

Know that would have been even more fun, huh? Yeah. My aunt. My aunt. Blah blah blah.

[Jason]

Yeah. Okay, moving right along. Franklin, a quick question. I just got a couple of homemade 5F 15F 2amps on Craigslist. They are all wired point to point. One thing I noticed is that the input jacks both have the inner lugs blackened out, which I heard maybe an issue with the plating. These are switchcraft jacks and I've never seen something like this before. Any ideas what would cause this? He included a photo which I neglected to send to you. Seems like the original builder added a small coupling capacitor to the input resistors. But other than that, the input circuit is pretty much a vanilla 5F one. So these are kind of like darkened, you know, like they were burnt input jacks.

[Skip]

Are we talking about the solder lugs or the whole jack?

[Jason]

The actual jack, the little U shaped thing is just looking really gnarly.

[Skip]

Some a clean it good. Remember 22 rifle bore brush. All you, you know, gun toting people or non gun toting people just go to the dang Walmart and there's these little brushes that go on the end of the of the rod to clean a.22 rifle barrel. It's not illegal. It won't. You could poke yourself in the eye with it, I guess, but it's not dangerous. And it does a fantastic job of cleaning that inner part of the jack and the little J shaped piece all at once.

[Jason]

That was not my J shaped piece though.

[Skip]

Before, only on. No, only on really old stuff. There. There was some. There are some jacks that I see more like World War II era that aren't really a shiny metal. They're a different type of metal that has like a dark finish on it, but it's not really a finish and it still should be cleaned, whatever it is. And make sure that that jack is cinched down tight on the chassis. And a kit that some other fool built. If it's cheap enough, like in a way, you could get a kit for half the price that the guy paid for it because he already put it together. And you could take it all apart and do it over yourself. If you don't like the way it was done. Lose those capacitors or whatever that is on the input jack. I'd start with stock. Start stock?

[Jason]

Yeah. Bud from Maine writes you guys get all sorts of recommendations. Food, music, books, etc. Well, having become a total amp geek from listening to your podcast all these years, I'd like to make a schematic recommendation. Put your feet up, pour yourself cold one and curl up with the schematic of the mighty Fender 400 PS. The whole 6,6550s. A transformer phase inverter driven by a 6L 6,700 volts on the plates. It even specifies a particular special design and selected Tung Soul 6550. There's all kinds of crazy stuff going on in there, a lot of which I don't quite understand. The secondary has three separate windings. Wtf? Maybe Skip can shed some light. I may be wrong, but this amp seems a bit more muscular than an svt. And it's got reverb and tremor. I bet the power tranny weighed 30 pounds. Skip, have you ever worked on one or its puny little brother? The 300 PS base. Anyway, it's a good read. That is from Bud in Maine.

[Skip]

The good part is that. Yes. Just when you think you know something or you're starting to know some something, I could hand you a schematic and go, yeah, you think you know about that. Well, here's. This is true as well. And you look at something and your mind is completely like blown. Like what? And this, this circuit is kind of like that. I'd prefer something a little less powerful. I've never worked on any of those because I don't have to. They're. They're humongous. They're really complicated. They have. He's talking about different multiple secondaries on the alpha transformer. It's some sort of deal where they would sell you that huge amp, but if you bought the other cabinet that cost like another thousand dollars, it would. There is something tricky about that alpha transformer, but I can't exactly remember how it works. Thank God. Another cool thing in there, if you're really weirdo, is that it has tube graphic equalization, you know, not just a capacitor to ground and the stone age type of circuits that are in most guitar amps. So if you've been. If you got a grip on your tweed Princeton and even your basement head, you try to wrap your brain around some of that late 70s stuff where they're using a ton of tubes, real sophisticated circuitry. But in the end, that's a. Not only a logging truck, but it'd be like a Ferrari logging truck. You know that you have to like put new spark plugs in every six. Every six days. And you got to take the engine out of the thing to do it. So I, I would. I would avoid one of those unless you're really skilled and it's right in front of you for really cheap. But I do love the suggestion of schematics that. That Garnett book, you know, I've talked to lots, by the way. They keep selling out on that thing. We should. We should be getting a cut. But it's the kind of thing where. Oh, this gives me an idea. It's just that something that wasn't 3 or 100 watts or something like that would be. And I also might check the value of one of those rigs in primo shape. And I think you'll find that it's not something that a lot of people want. So if you did see one, it would probably be pretty affordable. 6, 6, 5, 50s. Sorry. Tube amps should be 100 watts at the most. After that, I don't want to hear about it. I don't do svts anymore. They're printed circuits, you know that. And they got all that heat in there. And we want things to run cooler, not hotter. Those Heath kit hi Fi amps I just did for that guy, the previous bonehead he'd taken them to, decided they needed diode rectifiers instead of a tube rectifier, which is way more efficient and raises the voltage way up. And the voltage on these things was sky high enough with the tubes. And when he got these things back with the solid state rectifiers, they just, they ran so hot, all this wax and it was melting capacitors inside there. So we don't want hotter and bigger and higher voltages. We want stuff to be a little calmer. But nothing like seeing some oddball schematics when you're getting cocky about, you think you know how stuff works. So thanks for that email.

[Jason]

You could be a part of the show. Everybody, please send in your amp questions or voice memos to podcastritboardjournal.com and this next voice memo is from listener Mark.

[E]

Hi, Skip. Hi, Jason. Mark Pollock here. A couple years ago I sent in a voice Message about Harmony 420amps. Don't want to really rehash it here. Let's just say that there's some weirdness with the preamp section of those amps and we can certainly have a nice long discussion another day about that. Listener Jamie wrote in a couple episodes ago saying, hey, I modified one of these to have a Fender blackface preamp in it. And it sounded great. And I heard that message and went, wow, that sounds like a really cool thing. Boy, does that sound like a lot of work. I don't want to do that. Then I remembered I have a preamp. Keith Carey gave me one of those Heathkit voltmeters, tube driven voltmeters, and said, hey, turn this into a preamp. And I went, okay. And it's got a tweed Deluxe preamp in it now. So I went to My Harmony 420 and took the middle input jack and instead of having it go to the original preamp, it now goes directly to the phase inverter. So I can take that little Heath kit preamp, jack it directly into the phase inverter, the Harmony 420. And it sounds great. It's got a little more oomph, a little more crunch. Just lovely. So that's where I ended up going with this. I am very satisfied. I might build a blackface preamp in another box someday just for fun. But I completely ignored everything about modifying this amp and just went ahead and I'm using it pretty much as is. It still works the way it was built, but I can also put in a different preamp and it sounds different and I'm really happy. So modular amps, guys. Think about it. Kind of a cool way to go. Thanks gentlemen. Have a great rest of your day and I hope to see you guys sometime. Take care.

[Skip]

That guy's got the DJ voice. Yeah, that's who came with. That's who came with Keith and he brought coffee beans that he'd roasted the day before. Fresh roasted coffee beans. So I think he said it was Bolivian or Peruvian or it's probably that high altitude, ultra high caffeine stuff. I'm probably going to need some a little later on today. So. Harmony 420. Valco was a big ass company that made amps for a bunch of different companies. Harmony, Supro, gretsch and the 420. Unless I'm way out. No, I'm right. Is what's commonly known as a Supro thunderbolt. It's a 115amp with an amp chassis sitting in the bottom. Very simple volume and tone or volume treble bass. Two 6L6s, 15 inch speaker. And they sound good when they're on 10 if you have a really loud guitar. But they were made for bass. And I could see where the preamp circuitry might not be quite perfect for a guitar player. So all this guy did was he made his own little preamp and plugged his guitar into it, took the output of it and just stuck it into the phase inverter of this amp, which is where the original preamp comes into the circuit. So his point is he could play it the regular way or he can play it through a different preamp, which is pretty cool. If I really liked it like that, I might consider just making it so that the amp had the preamp circuit that you like in it. But we like to make things more complicated, right? Not less. Yeah, always. I say, I say go for it. That's a real simple circuit that just has one triode in front of the phase inverter and he, he's using. He made his own preamp from a voltmeter and. And put a higher gain brighter preamp in it by swiping it from the tweet amp. So I say, I say experimentation is always good. Not on your tweed something or other because you don't want to devalue it, but on something like that. Oh man. A guy was here a few weeks ago, brought his 52 Bender champ that his dad passed away and gave to him. And I fixed it. But then I found out he got the guitar and I said, really? You got a Guitar too. And he 52 Telecaster in like the little form fit case and everything, like super clean. Bought at the same time as the chest as the champ. And one of his relatives that he does not play the guitar. And one of his relatives said, oh, those old guitars are pretty valuable. Well, I went down and got a price guy and I said dude, 40 grand, 50 grand. And he just went what? And I said get rid of that thing. Well, I got a nephew. No, no, no, don't give it to some 15 year old nephew. I said just keep it under the bed, keep it secret, keep it safe. But maybe, I mean you could do a lot. You could. That's some life changing money for most people. But he was all worked up that his dad wanted him to have the guitar. And how did I veer onto that topic?

[Jason]

I forget you were just talking about. I don't know how you got to that.

[Skip]

Actually, I don't know how I got to that. But sometimes I see things like that and I can provide the person with a little bit of information, but I also see the bigger picture. Like man, if you could pay off your mortgage or something like that, wouldn't your dad be fine with that? Kind of like when I suggested to Ben Harper he should sell one of those dumbles and found a scholarship, music scholarship at his local college, you know. So anyway, it was. I'm glad he brought me the amp because I made sure he realized what he had in that guitar. And people would, people would really get excited. Somebody would steal that guitar if they had a chance just because it's so desirable. And it could have been, you know, something a lot that's worth a lot less money. But it wasn't. People need to at least put that into the plan. I said, at least put it on your insurance. So. All right, I guess. Oh, you, you go first.

[Jason]

No, I was going to say, speaking of Ben Harper, the movie we made with Ben and his number one dumble is now on the Fretboard Journal's YouTube channel and everyone can go watch it.

[Skip]

That's what I was going to say, which was I had three or four people who aren't in our little universe say, hey, I happen happen to see that thing has gotten a lot of views, man. Like way that thing, that little. It's gotten a lot of views, let's just say. And I've had quite a few people mention it to me who didn't go looking for it but just happened to find it.

[Jason]

That's.

[Skip]

And yeah, and of course the passion of that Guy. Sometimes I wish I was there so I could say, get out of the way. Let me show you how you do this. But the passion of the guy really comes through for sure.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So it's a super cool thing. Yeah.

[Jason]

We aired that at the first fretboard summit and we have lots of surprises in store for 2025 summit. And so everybody go. We've got comedian and guitarist Dave Hill performing on Friday night and there's all sorts of surprises.

[Skip]

Please. Comes the Pinewood Derby.

[Jason]

Pinewood Derby's Friday afternoon. But let's have a big lineup of all the cars before then.

[Skip]

You better have security for that. People are likely to, you know.

[Jason]

Yeah, it's going to be great.

[Skip]

It could get. It could get competitive.

[Jason]

I hope so. I hope there's wagering going on. And maybe, maybe you could buy a famous guitar makers Pinewood Derby car and maybe it could go to some charitable cause or something. That'd be fun. Awesome. Okay, this next question is from our friend Bruce.

[D]

Hey, Jason and Skip. This is Bruce from Orcas Island, Washington and I'm currently at the Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival. And I was perusing the interwebs and I found this description of the Gibson Falcon amplifier. The Gibson GA-RVT Falcon is a sleeper amp. They are amps built in Kalamazoo during a golden era of vintage guitar equipment using good quality transformers, redwood cabinets, good quality components, and usually gents and speakers. So my question is, I've recently acquired a couple Falcon amplifiers, one of them from Barry over at Graves. So there's full circle for you.

[Skip]

And.

[D]

I. I love these amps. They're really great sound and amp just plug and play. My question is, is the redwood contributing to that? How many other ant manufacturers at the time were using redwood or some other non ply woody wood? And how does that contribute to the sound of an amplifier? Okay, music suggestion. Jason, this is for you. Check out Los Psychos from Lima, Peru. They founded in 1964 in Lima, Peru and they're kind of. Kind of. They play Japanese guitars in kind of a surf style, punk style even. And the singer, I swear it's like Tuvan throat singing. You're hearing two notes at once. So it's just a crazy band. Los Psychos from Lima, Peru.

[Jason]

Okay.

[D]

Love the show. Thanks for everything you guys do.

[Skip]

Wow. Los Psychos.

[Jason]

Psychos. I'm still trying to forget about Peru, but I'll listen to that band.

[Skip]

You're still trying to forget about Peru.

[Jason]

Anyways.

[Skip]

The. The cabinet.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

What does it. How does it contribute to sound? A I don't know. B, who cares? C, yeah, sure it does. Of course it would. Heavy, heavy particle board cabinets, say at one opposite end, produce more bass. They don't vibrate, you know, when the speaker goes, they just project the sound at the opposite end. You've got early tweed amps made out of pine and you've got Gibson amps and maestro amps that I guess. It sure looks like redwood, but it's definitely solid wood up until around 64, 65. And I'm sure it would contribute to the sound if you were listening closely and sitting around and really taking notes and a being with different cabinets and stuff. I'm sure you could hear some, some resonances that jump out like a flat top guitar. Right. But I wouldn't go crazy and suggest that you upgrade your amp to a redwood cabinet right off the bat. Right?

[Jason]

Is anyone even making them?

[Skip]

Does anyone use redwood cabinets now?

[Jason]

Yeah. Can you even buy one?

[Skip]

I'd be the wrong guy to ask about that. I don't know. Barry's going to have to start selling 500 year old redwood tweed cabinets. I don't. It is super cool and it definitely would make a difference, but it's just part of the stew. And I can't let a falcon call go without a little falcony overview. Some pretty crappy parts for one thing, and he's talking about the GA19 RVT Falcon. They were in pawn shops forever because they had cool tremolo, they had crazy spaced out reverb, but they sounded terrible. They just even on 10 it's like is that thing on 10? It sounds like it's on 2 and then you turn the tone control and it goes from like three thin to thinner. And they just sounded bad. And me and by now plenty of other people have delved into those circuits and figured out that there's a bunch of things, a bunch of different things that Gibson did to those amps to make them sound crappy. And if you can find it and change it, then you end up with a falcon that are the ones that I built, which you know, I've been in every studio and everywhere around. Van der Sluice says if you can only have one amp and you have a recording studio, make it a falcon because they sound fantastic, but only after some really significant changes where the amp gets really loud and the tone control works a lot more effectively. So there were old timers that played those things stock, but they are. And all the capacitors are bad. As opposed to a Fender where all the capacitors are good. So if you end up with a falcon, keep that in mind. And the reason why I don't tell people how to do those like I did with the Champ Tweed Princeton conversions, is because it's hard and they did a lot of different things. I've seen at least five or six different schematic variations in those amps where this is what Gibson did to make it sound crappy. Some of them have inverse feedback on the output stage, some of them don't. Some of them have inverse feedback in the preamp, some of them don't. Some of them have that little multi wire brown thing that people are hip to that's attached to the volume control. If you get rid of that, they sound louder and better, but it's not super easy. And they are fun. They're like the most fun amp for a basher, you know, who can't really play because it just makes you sound. You get that reverb and tremolo going and you just sounds like you're in Sun Studios or something. You can play something real simple that sounds real cool. Whereas if you try that with your deluxe reverb, you know, you just sound crappy because it sounds so clean and you know, it shows up every mistake you make. But redwood build it. Let's see. I mean, resonant, right? There's something to that. But it's not the only thing. If you were going to take a falcon and play it outside at a backyard party, you'd be able to hear it better if it had a heavy solid cabinet than it than if it had a lightweight redwood cabinet. Huh. But if you're sitting around at home, you might find that it has like a beautiful reverby tone with the reverb off that you wouldn't get with a really heavy duty cabinet. So just a choice.

[Jason]

Yeah. Barry, who was mentioned as the seller of this amp, he deals in reclaimed red. What he should. Barry, I know you're listening to this. Make a matching guitar amp cabinet. Have one of our friends fill said amp cabinet with something cool. And yeah.

[Skip]

Yes.

[Jason]

Out there it's easy for me to tell people how to live their lives.

[Skip]

Precisely. And Barry, idiot, you should have me fix that falcon before you sold it. Yeah, because they're cool, but they're not that cool and they're still pretty undervalued. Speaking of values, I've noticed that the expensive, the high end stuff is still pretty high end, but not Covid prices like for tweet amps. But a lot of the regular stuff is still pretty Affordable. I mean, if you're out there shopping on ebay, you're going to see mostly people trying for absolute top dollar. But if you start looking at shops and doing some shopping and maybe doing a little haggling, there's still a lot of really cool ampegs and certain Gibsons and silver tones and things like that that are really cool and still pretty affordable. Especially if you're going to pony up for some new handmade thing, you know, like a beautiful milkman. Princeton Reverb copy. Right? That stuff. That stuff's. It costs a lot of money to make that stuff, believe me. I made a tweed Vibrlux from scratch recently for James Patrick Regan, old friend. And it's. I'm just kidding. $5 an hour, it just takes forever. So don't be complaining to people like to rock that their stuff's too expensive. Because when you make stuff by hand, it just. Just can't imagine how hard it is to do and how long it takes. And if you want to be a real boutique amp company, you or somebody you know better like doing that every day, right? It's like, I don't know, like weaving at a loom, you know, you've got to just be able to just free your mind, but yet pay super close attention for hours and hours. Believe me, if I wired up an amp, I would not want to do anything the next day, much less go and do another one. So just have to understand that's the difference between a tube amp that costs a few hundred dollars or even a thousand dollars brand new, and something that's really made by hand because that printed circuit board construction means everything's done on a machine.

[Jason]

I love it. You know where I went before I went to the Western states Endurance Run finish line? I went to a store in Sacramento right off of I80 that is like the largest dart store in North America.

[Skip]

That's your new thing, darts?

[Jason]

Yeah. Well, we play it in my garage all the time, but I've had a crappy set of Amazon darts and then I was determined to buy.

[Skip]

Proper pub darts. Yeah, you always see that in the pubs and English shows.

[Jason]

They have like a little mini driving range where you can try them out. And they were all under glass and you pick your price point. Just like going into an overwhelming guitar store. And I had a lot of fun. A to Z darts.

[Skip]

You have to have three, right? Isn't that three?

[Jason]

Three darts. They would only give me two at a time because they didn't want me to, like, shoplift, but.

[Skip]

Yeah, but a Dart might be handcrafted. Thing might be a hundred dollars there.

[Jason]

I. My darts were $135. Yeah. But it's the only place that I. I think. I mean, I. I looked extensively. I think it's the only place in America where you can actually, like, try out hundreds of different dart sets in person.

[Skip]

In Sacramento.

[Jason]

In Sacramento.

[Skip]

I would have thought that would be an east coast thing.

[Jason]

They're more pub, like right off Auburn Boulevard there.

[Skip]

Well, that's a cool thing to do. And that's just. I thought I had an obscure job, but that's even more obscure.

[Jason]

And they were not very helpful. You know, this was probably their father's or grandfather's or uncle's business that they inherited. But they. They opened everything up. They let me try it out, but when I asked them for advice, I was kind of on my own. But that's okay. I got my darts.

[Skip]

So I bet you'd think that would all be Internet. I wonder if people in England, I mean, they got to have that in Oxford and London and stuff like that. Right?

[Jason]

I think the challenge is there are so many, like, signature model darts and high end darts from Japan that no one has ever bothered to review. So you kind of have to go try them out and see what works for your throw. Like guitars.

[Skip]

Are you. Are you super good at that too? Tell me you're not.

[Jason]

No, I'm not. Not. I mean, the darts just came, so I'll. We'll see how good I become.

[Skip]

No, well, that's a thing where you have to. You have to have a move emotion. Well, like golf. Like, you have to have a motion that's just the same all the time. Right. Like, you have to have it down.

[Jason]

To just, I mean, practice. It's been a great thing that got us through Covid. If anybody has a wall they don't care about and wants to do something while they're watching bad TV or listening to music, like a dartboard and Darts costs like 100 bucks at most, and you can have a lot of fun with your significant other.

[Skip]

We spent hours with the. The net and paddles for ping pong that we got with stamps. Are you old enough to remember blue chip and green stamps? Of course, yeah. You'd go to the grocery store and they had this little machine, and it would kick out these stamps, and you'd glue them in this book when you were a little kid. And then there was a catalog, and you could get the volley, the tetherball set. But I remember one winter with just the kitchen table with the net stretched across it. And Tinka, Tinka, Tink. Ping Pong's great arts. The many, the many phases of Jason today I can keep up. Don't combine that with the endurance running. I don't see any kind of intersection there at all.

[Jason]

I wasn't planning on it. All right, we got a couple more. This one is from listener Chris. Join the show. Send us a voice memo. Just use your smartphone and send it to podcastretboardjournal.com hello skip and Jason.

[F]

This is Chris from up in Vancouver. First, Jason, I'd like to personally thank you for helping replace my lost issue, the Fretboard journal, issue number 32 with Ry Cooter. It was one of my favorites and I foolishly forgot it on a little airplane. And you and my friend Chris Young helped replace that really quickly. Much appreciated. Thanks. Next, I want to congratulate you on doing such a great job with that documentary, A Life well Built. I thought it was beautiful, wonderful storytelling and I loved Ben's enthusiasm and particularly his moving tribute to Alexander Dumble. Next, Skip, I'm really interested in having a dedicated tube hi fi amp in my shop just to listen to records off the phone, etc. And I'm thinking a basic single ended one mono. I'm wondering what your recommendations and good ideas around that would be. And thanks for pointing us towards that. Next. I understand that Jim Campolongo is going to be on the episode and so that's exciting for Jim. I would like to thank him just for his excellent music and his recordings, his spirited performances. I've got your vinyl right here in front of me. I played often in the shop with the honey fingers last night, this morning and want to thank you for beautiful memories too. In my home I would put this on and drop the needle on side A and Billy's bird, the song would come on and my kids, my little kids would just get up and they would start dancing and laughing and spinning around and you know, if kids really love the music, it's got to be really great. So thanks, Jim for that. I guess that's all I have to say, just a lot of thanks for you guys. Can't wait to listen to the episode.

[Skip]

Bye. Bye.

[Jason]

Well, I missed the Jim part, but okay.

[Skip]

Wow. Well, yeah, Jim can die now. Kids. Loving your stuff. That is pretty beautiful, right? And I hope he listens once in a while. He probably doesn't, but we usually don't have people calling to say that one of the guests is awesome. Well, I guess we do, but I got A feeling he's a little too busy to become a regular podcast listener. But I'm sure he'd be thrilled to hear that because that's beautiful. Where did this start?

[Jason]

This started with Chris, in addition to lavishing praise on all of us, wanted a mono tube hi fi maybe for his shop.

[Skip]

And did he say mono?

[Jason]

Well, he said he was open to mono, so maybe that's an easier way for him to get into it.

[Skip]

So all y' all should have two PI fi. I, I, I can't believe I still keep buying that stuff and wait for people to want it. And even a dinky little 10 watt amp from the 50s that was made for hi fi hooked up to a decent speaker. Even that with your phone as a signal source will just crush whatever you have. Most likely because it's tube everything sounds better. You get in your car, brand new car, and listen to that hi fi in there. It's like, it's like a movie theater. You know, it's all super bass and super treble, but all the middle, all the Sinatra and all the air in a recording just isn't there. And I'm not crazy. I've had people come to my shop and go, whoa, that sounds good. And I say, well, go get your phone or whatever you've got play the song that you were listening to in your car on the way up here and put it into this old ancient piece of junk. And they go, what the heck? I didn't even, I didn't even know there was trombones or whatever in that song because it's all right in front of you, so everyone should have it. Mono is way, way, way more affordable if you're going to go vintage. And there's all sorts of modern stuff, brand new stuff from offshore that you can buy for shockingly cheap. But remember, it's just junk. It might sound good, but it can't be fixed. So I suggest a 2 6v6 mono integrated amp, not single ended. Nobody made stuff like that back in the old days. That's too obscure. Just a one thing that's about 10 inches wide, a couple 6V6s, maybe two 6L6s if you're bold. That's like 15 watts or less. And any stereo source can be wide together simply CD player, DVD players sound great with CDs in them and they're cheap. Your phone, your computer. And it can take a little experimenting deciding which input sounds the best. And there might be some potential little mods that you could do to the amp, but just a small Mono integrated hi fi amp Groans bell precision. Trying to think of a few more. They're all out there. And they're a couple $300 on. On eBay. And they're. They're a bit of work to restore. It's not like it's going to work perfect right off the bat. But if you're handy, you can do it. And if somebody wants to buy something like that from me, I would consider selling it unrestored and I'd consider restoring it for them. So if you gotta have stereo, it's just way more complicated. You gotta have a dynaco stereo preamp first. That's the only kind of affordable tube stereo thing there is. You're not gonna get a fisher scott receiver or any of that stuff because it's all too expensive. And gotta have two power amps or a stereo power amp. And believe me, a vintage stereo tube power amp is pricey. So I suggest entry level little 2.6v6 thing will just shock most people when they hear it if it's fixed. So. More tube hi fi. Yeah. And remember, we want something we can turn on right now. While we're making the cherry chocolate cake, we're not gonna, you know, sit on the couch with the dark side of the moon or the beethoven symphonies for an hour. And I mean, hopefully we'll do that. But if you want to get into tube hi fi or guitar amps around the house, don't get some big, complicated rig. Just get something that's really easy to use and you'll find that you're using it more often.

[Jason]

I agree. Also helps if your significant other can use it without breaking something.

[Skip]

Absolutely. You didn't have the tape monitor switch on. What? What's the tape monitor switch Now? Something that's easy. And something where the signal source can be what you're already listening to, which is most people. It's the Internet. And you don't have to have rare vinyl. And know the fidelity of stuff that's been banging around on the Internet is not as good. But who cares? All the great music. A lot of the great music is on there. And if you want to hear the Hot 5 or Jim Camp a longo, you're just a click away. For better or worse. Sometimes I wish Jim Campo could get 25 cents every time somebody played his music on the Internet.

[Jason]

All right, let's do one more.

[Skip]

I have another. I have one more. Thank you. To. To remember.

[Jason]

Go for it.

[Skip]

Listener Yan, who went from knowing nothing to make to making some of the coolest little pedals that anybody's ever seen. The one he sent to me, I wasn't worthy and I gave it to a monster player who has lots of great pedals. Yan makes some good pedals. He sent There's a new book about Robert Johnson.

[Jason]

He sent me this book too.

[Skip]

And there's a picture on the front that's a brand new picture that nobody's ever seen of a smiling Robert Johnson. And it's a memoir by his stepsister and I haven't gotten all the way through it, but if you dig the blues, you're probably going to want to check that out because there's just not much known about him, especially for somebody with such a huge impact that was made in, I don't know, two years. I think there's maybe 20 songs by him. That's it. But yet they're bedrock. And learning a little. A little bit more about the life of a guy like that is interesting. So thanks to Yan for sending us that book.

[Jason]

Yan is on Instagram BS Instruments. I'll include a link because I think there's one store in San Francisco he sells through, but you can probably DM him for orders or anything.

[Skip]

We changed his life.

[Jason]

Changed his life, yeah. All right Bernie. Subject line 12/7 DC Power Supply Happy 150th podcast though I've made the whole run through all the episodes. I always listen through a random selection while mowing the lawn or on my way to work. With that said, I've heard of and seen a few tube PA amps that run off a 12 volt DC. I know common practice would be to convert them to standard wall voltage but but was wondering if it would make any sense to keep them in their original form and run them off a dedicated 12 volt DC supply. It also led me to the question if it would be feasible to hook the amp up to a 12 volt battery charger or use that as a dedicated supply. My main drive for asking this was a Soundmaster Model 612 on eBay I saw for sale and was trying to decide if I wanted to take the plunge on having it converted. Thank you both for everything you do and all the tube driven dreams you curate. For all of us goofy bottle heads, that's Bernie in New York.

[Skip]

A sound master sighting on ebay is like a red alert. You know. Of course the great Kevin from Ohio was on it from the very beginning and so if you had an ice cream truck you had to play music while you were driving up and down the street with that little song in 1955, what did you have? You had a tube amp that ran off of DC. Most of those are really 6 volt because cars were 6 volt for a long time, like way up into the 50s and then they switched to 12 volt. But the idea was you just take those big old alligator clips that you could see in that sound master. I wonder what that thing sold for. And you just like somehow clip them to the battery of your car while you're driving around and it would work. Most of the big PA companies made amps like that for mobile use. Most of them are 6 volt, some of them are 12 volt and also most of them. And maybe the sound master, you couldn't tell because the pictures were terrible. They used a transformer that could do either one. So most of the big PA companies that made 6 volt amps, if you have the schematic and you look at it, figure it out. There's a way to just plug it right into the wall and not use the part that was designed to run off of DC. Yes. You could get a 12 volt amp and make a 12 volt power supply for it or use a bunch of batteries or something like that and it would work. But most of them, not sure about the sound master. But most of those things. The power transformer can also accommodate normal 120v AC. And if you're going to use batteries, those things suck the juice. Right. Better have a good battery. That's why we threw away all the tube amps. They use a lot of energy to produce the sound compared to something solid state. It's the filaments. Right. That have to be heated up. That's what uses all the juice in a tube amp. So I think that that covers it. I think.

[Jason]

Yeah. Do you want to be horrified?

[Skip]

I do.

[Jason]

The sound master very crusty, had a lot of pitting and rust and was, as is obviously sold on June 28 for $228.

[Skip]

It had a cool badge.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

It said Soundmaster, but it was a terrible seller. You couldn't really see what was going on in there. And I wouldn't be surprised to hear from whoever it is got that thing and needs a little helping hand trying to figure out how to make it go.

[Jason]

Yeah. No gut shots? Lots of photos?

[D]

No, no.

[Skip]

Not even a shot without the lid, I don't think.

[Jason]

Nope.

[Skip]

So you couldn't really tell what was going on in there. But if whoever bought that thing wants to tell us about it, you know what to do? Email or send us a voicemail because we have a few weirdos that would be interested to know what was really going on with that. And if anybody knows Doug Hoffman Hoffman Amps, he was one of the pioneers of making hand built stuff. And then he realized right away, genius time, that the money was in selling fools like us the parts. And for, I don't know, 20 or 30 years, Hoffman amps has sold parts to build your own amps. And it's all real good quality and very informative and he's kind of one of my, one of the few people in the biz that I always thought, wow, that guy is smart and he'd be a fun guy to have on the podcast. So if anybody shops with him a lot, I bought things from him. He has the best wire, hookup wire to, to hand build amps, the solid core Fender style stuff. If anybody knows him, tell him, hey, we'd love to hype his business a little bit and talk to him about what got him into it and, and his genius idea of like forget building these handmade boutique amps that cost a fortune. I'm just going to sell parts and obviously the kind of guy I like, you know. So Doug Hoffman, where are you at brother?

[Jason]

Well, one more. Are you done?

[Skip]

I'm ready.

[Jason]

This will be our last one. Thanks to MLC Guitars, thanks to Grez Guitars and thanks to Amplified Parts where there currently is a great sale going on. Be a part of the show podcastritboardjournal.com follow us on Patreon and here's our last question from listener Sean Skipping.

[G]

Jason, how you doing? It's Sean from West Virginia. I'm on the road in Des Moines. A philosophy question for you, Skip. So I got a 80 deluxe reverb, took it to my amp guy who's up in Damascus, Maryland and you know, it was a late pickup. The amp needed just the standard going over. And he's better than I am by a far stretch. Question from him was, hey, do you want me to remove the bright cap? Do you want a black faced? So my philosophy on it was, hey, just make it the best 1980 deluxe reverb it can be. In all fairness, I have swapped out the speaker with one of the Eminence offerings. So the reason I asked this question is I fly the Airbus for a living and when I fly with folks, you know, my philosophy is, hey, just let it be the best Airbus it can be. It's not a Cessna, it's not a Boeing, just work with it. So skip, should we let it be the best deluxe reverb it could be. Or should we clip the bright cap? Should we blackface it? Thanks for what you guys do and thanks for all the. All the positive vibes over time. Have a good one.

[Jason]

Oh, see a pilot.

[Skip]

That's a commercial airline pilot. Isn't an Airbus a great big gigantic. Like real commercial?

[Jason]

I was going to say you wouldn't want the Airbus to be a Cessna. You got to haul a lot more.

[Skip]

Wow, a commercial pilot.

[Jason]

Sean, we need to hear more.

[Skip]

I know a private jet pilot who spent many years flying rich people around the world, and he hated it. He said all you do is sit in a hotel room and wait for the call. Kind of like the guy who was Katy Perry's keyboard player. No, there's no fun. There's no hanging out. There's no hotel room parties. There's none of that. You just get on a plane and wait and then work and then wait. But that's pretty amazing. That's another crazy occupation for our Tava mob. I hate it when somebody says, oh, skip, just make it the best it can be. What the hell does that mean? I want to make it so that the person that's going to use it loves it. Second 80 deluxe reverb. Think that has the pull boost and isn't exactly like an old one, but black facing that thing. In other words, converting the circuit to the exact style that a deluxe reverb would have had in 1965, 66, when the control panel was painted black. So the bright cap, big Fender amps have a bright switch where you can flip this little switch up and down. And at low volumes, it adds a tremendous amount of highs to the sound. Deluxe reverbs don't have the switch. The bright cap is just soldered onto the pot. So it's. And we've. We've talked about bright caps a lot. It's a little capacitor on the volume control. Lets the highs go by unattenuated by the pot so it makes the amp sound brighter. Most people would prefer a deluxe reverb without the bright cap. And if you're agonizing about it, disconnect one end of it, play the guitar, push it into place with your Sharpie. In other words, turn the bright switch on and off. Right. If you really have a big opinion, then go with that. If you were willing to change some things, you could change the volume pot to one with a push pull switch on it and it could have both. You could have the bright switch on or off if it had. If you Had a switch on the volume control. I wouldn't do that to a super vintage amp, but an 80 deluxe reverb would be fine. The rest of the black facing involves the boost, which uses circuitry from the reverb to increase the gain if you pull the boost switch. Most people aren't really in love with the boost switch, but it sounds fine and the amps sound fine with it. If you don't like the boost, don't pull it. The reverb is a little more muted on those amps that use the boost switch, but that's okay. The reverb is always way too strong on a Fender anyway. You're just going to use a little bit of it. So I'd keep an amp like that pretty stock. I would talk to the person that owned it and probably disconnect the bright switch or let them try it at my shop, which I can do every once in a while. I would say the important thing would be to be on the lookout for some 6v sixes that can hang in that amp because they are pounding them. And back then, Fenders came with. Still came with American made 6V6s. And you've all heard me whining about 6V6s for the last 10 years. The new ones are just really inconsistent. So if you happen to have a pair of the old Sylvanias or ges that came in that thing, don't be retubing that unless you can prove to me that one of them's bad. Stick with the originals because they can handle the high voltages. Might also consider a. Certainly a 5U4, never a GZ34 and maybe even a 5R4. Not a 5AR4, but a 5R4. These are diff. These are rectifiers that can potentially bring that high voltage down a little bit on those amps. A lot of tube amps from 1980, we're counting on tubes being around forever that aren't around now and are just too expensive for us to buy. That's when Fender made 75 watt amps that used two 6L6s. And anyone could say could figure out two 6L6s that puts out 15 watts. They're just coasting. If it puts out 40 watts, that's like a super reverb or something, you know. But if you're going to get 75 watts out of two 6L6s, the only way to do that is to run the tubes harder. And we want to avoid that because we don't have $500 to drop on vintage tubes every six months. Yeah.

[Jason]

Yeah. Love it.

[Skip]

All right. Well, I guess we did it. I don't get to talk about Ishi. We'll save that for next time.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

You grew up in California. You know who Ishi was, right? Ishi was I s h I 19. No sake. I'm always amazed we all had to learn this in the fifth grade, like the missions and stuff in California. So in the teens, the 19 teens, an absolute, totally stone, primitive Native American Indian who'd been living in the hills right by my house, gave up and walked into the town of Oroville, where the famous Oroville Dam is located, and just gave up. And he'd been living by himself alone for quite a while because everybody in his tribe had died. This is the teens, man. Indians were long gone. This is more like the. The guy on the Japanese island who was still there 40 years after the war ended. And it's just an amazing story. And there's a really classic book that was written about it back in the old days. And he. Fortunately, they found some basically anthropologist types who took him in. No one else spoke his language in the world. No one. And he lived for another 10 or 15 years. And he showed the anthropologists. He went back to his home turf, showed him how he made arrowheads and how he caught salmon in the creek. You know, this is right above Chico, you know, right? And this dry, dry, just rattlesnakes and rocks area of Northern California. And, you know, you talk about people having skills. Do you? And me. Well, maybe not you. You find a plant, we'd be dead in a couple of weeks. But somehow this guy had managed to. To live. And he's like the last prehistoric Native American that there was. And he lived right up here. And when we were in grade school, was the kind of thing you always had to read about it. Sort of like a little romanticized story about him. But it really is. It's just amazing. And the book is called Ishi in Two Worlds. And imagine, he loved riding the train. You know, this is a guy that was, like, naked, right, with a spear. And just the transition from being basically a stone age person to go into the modern world of the late teens and twenties. And he was super warm, and he. He really liked people, and he wanted to show people how he did stuff. And it's just. Just amazing. So I guess I did talk about Ishi, but we better get off the fuck. We better get off the phone.

[Jason]

I thought you were talking at first. I thought you meant the. The person who was nature. Boy, the. Yeah, King Cole's song was.

[Skip]

Right.

[Jason]

That's a different person with a.

[Skip]

Now, this is. This is stone. Absolutely true. And it's just. It's just an amazing story. Okay, well, thanks again, everyone. 150. Wow.

[Jason]

We turned 150 today.

[Skip]

That's. That's amazing. And couldn't do it without you. I met you, Jason. Oh, of course.

[Jason]

You and the people.

[Skip]

Yeah. I couldn't do it without all the questions because that's what I need. Otherwise, I don't know what to talk about. You might don't want to talk about Ishi.

[Jason]

Sounds great to me.

[Skip]

Right. Well, thanks again, everyone, and thanks to our sponsors.

[Jason]

Thanks. Skip till next time.

[Skip]

Okay, Bye now.