Ep. 153: "A C in Chemistry"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Truth About Vintage Amps – Ep. 153, "A C in Chemistry"

Date: September 18, 2025
Host: The Fretboard Journal
Guest/Co-host: Skip Simmons
Summary prepared for: Listeners seeking detailed insights, memorable moments, and a natural yet technical recap.

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Episode Overview

In this highly engaging episode, guitar amp expert Skip Simmons and the Fretboard Journal team bring a blend of in-depth technical discussion and entertaining anecdotes. They recount recent events in the vintage guitar community, field listener questions on tube amp repairs, and dive deep into the nuances of circuit design, amp restoration, and even food preservation. The episode lives up to its reputation as both hilariously offbeat and informative, making it essential listening for amp nerds, musicians, and tinkerers alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Fretboard Journal Summit Debrief

• 00:25–06:30
  Discussion opens with reflections on the recent Fretboard Journal Summit, touching on fun community events (Pinewood Derby, amp potluck room), memorable personalities (Chris Benson, Eli from Two Rock), and the spirit of camaraderie in the vintage guitar community.

Quote:
"It was a love fest...everybody was just kind of relaxed and we had a Pinewood Derby. Shout out to Henriksen Amplifiers who put an amp on their Pinewood Derby car." – B (01:47)

2. Losing & Tracking Gear + The Importance of Serial Numbers

• 03:00–05:00
  Skip shares a story exemplifying why tracking serial numbers is crucial in amp repair and collection, referencing a client's panic when he thought his Vibro Verb had been swapped.

Quote:
"I finally sent him home, and he called an hour or two later...He read the serial number...yes, it was his amp." – A (04:29)

3. Sponsors, Shoutouts, and Food Preservation

• 06:30–10:15
  Sponsors are acknowledged, but the standout moment is a tangent on freezing ripe fruit for later use, including food tips best suited for roughing life or gigging on the road.

Pro Tip:
"Cut [papaya] up, put it on a cookie sheet...Now in three months, you can open up one of those bags and just take out a couple chunks..." – A (07:07)

4. Questions from Pros & Amp Industry Anecdotes

• 10:29–14:11
  Skip notes the surprising number of pro techs who ask for advice, illustrating how knowledge gaps persist even in amp companies.

Quote:
"This was like a real amp company that has a website...one of their employees didn't know how to fix their own amps." – B (12:27)

5. Skip’s Repair Log: Rare Gibsons, Valco Amps, and Schematic Talk

• 14:25–23:28
  Discussion on rare amps, including Gibson Maestro reverb units with unusual designs, and comparisons between small amp schematics (Champ with reverb/trem vs. classic Fender).

Technical Insight:

• Small Valco-made amps with features absent from Fender’s lineup offer a playground for modders and DOY techs.
• Introduction to combining oddball tubes and circuits for custom builds.

6. Amp Building with Uncommon Tubes & Salvaged Parts

• 19:47–22:07
  Encouragement for experienced builders to experiment with unique tubes, even those designed for non-musical uses (e.g., underwater cables, TV picture tubes).

Quote:
"A free thinker could make that [strange tube] do something...Just because you found some crazy-ass tube." – A (20:09)

7. Personal History: The “C in Chemistry”

• 25:49–30:15
  A moving personal tale: Skip reflects on how flunking chemistry (and missing choir practice) may have saved his life when a tragic bus crash killed most of his classmates.

Quote:
"At the time, you’re really resilient, and you’re just a kid, and you’re just like, yeah, yeah...But now that I’m older, I just go, whoa." – A (28:42)

8. Musical Recommendations and Choir Geekery

• 29:14–30:42
  Odes to the thrill of choir music and gospel arrangements, especially Edwin and Walter Hawkins.

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Listener Q&A and Technical Deep Dives

Output Transformer Impedance: How and Why

• 42:21–47:25 ([42:21]) Listener Maynard asks about calculating and matching output transformer impedance. Skip demystifies the topic and explains why “there are no hard-and-fast rules,” with practical insights and pitfalls.

Quote:
"You can make up your own kind of basics...Most little single ended amps, about 5K. Bigger amps get down to 2K. But I wouldn’t deliberately mess with the secondary just because I didn’t have the right primary." – A (43:32)

Cleaning Tweed – Do’s and Don’ts

• 48:02–49:46 ([48:02]) Skip dissuades listeners from aggressive cleaning of tweed amps, warning that attempts usually worsen the wear and value.

Quote:
"You can’t clean a tweed amp other than maybe just a little rag with some spit on it...Value wise, no one cares if the tweed’s dirty." – A (48:02)

Magnetone Tremolo Varistors & Listener Detours

• 49:59–56:28 ([49:59]) Responding to Sam’s voice memo about unavailable varistors in a Magnetone tremolo, Skip bluntly concludes that the problem lies elsewhere and shares advice for troubleshooting.

Quote:
"It’s not the varistors. It’s that you don’t know what you’re doing. So don’t replace the varistors. Learn more about how it works." – A (55:49)

Boutique Amps in Vintage Clothing: Buyer Beware

• 56:53–59:47
  Story: someone buys a "Gibson GA20" from Guitar Center, only to find it’s a gutted chassis with a modern circuit inside.

Quote:
"Caveat emptor—at a place like that you’re not going to know…they’re not going to say, this is like a cool boutique amp built in this old cab." – A (58:43)

Attenuators, Power Scaling, and Solid-State Tube Replacements

• 81:20–84:17
  Peter asks about modern solid-state replacements for tubes ("Octal" from Verellen Devices) and how power scaling works in amps like the Benson Monarch Reverb.

Quote:
"What’s the goal? Why do you want a solid-state tube for $150 each?...Don’t believe the hype till all these cool people that are musicians and know a lot love it." – A (82:47, 83:46)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Tangents (with Timestamps)

• On being asked for endless advice:
  “At some point… pretty soon they’re on like the eighth email in the last couple days, and I gotta head that up with like a round turn.” – A (13:21)

• On experimenting with rare parts:
  “You just have to find out what it is, figure out how to heat it up and get it to work. Most every… a lot of strange tubes could do that.” – A (20:05)

• On choir, music, and close shaves with fate:
  “If you hadn’t forgot your keys, that guy would have T-boned you at the intersection and you’d be dead, right?” – A (28:42)

• Classic Skip on DIY culture:
  “Did you grow those tomatoes or did you buy them from a can? …There has to be a difference in components or any fool could build a 5E3 that sounds like a real one and any fool can’t. I can’t.” – A (75:01)

• Community spirit, rustic kegger stories:
  “It was humbling to be heard and supported by strangers—now friends—who share a common interest… a heartfelt thanks to the Rustic Kegger in the Woods group.” – Listener Nick (62:30)

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Fun & Offbeat Segments

• Food tips: Flash-frozen fruit, scratch Hostess pies, and the virtues of Coleman’s Hot Mustard in coleslaw (31:05, 31:30).
• Motorcycle talk: The fate of a classic Honda Scrambler handed down between hosts.
• Antique Whistles and Trap Drummer Novelties: A digression into rare musical effects devices from early 20th-century drum kits (32:01–34:20).
• Local California Color: Skip’s knowledge of NorCal towns (North San Juan, Marysville, Malakoff Diggins); quirky local museums, and what it’s like living in a tight-knit rural community (51:26, 92:45).

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Music and Book Recommendations

• Gospel and Choir Essentials:
  – Edwin Hawkins’s "Oh Happy Day"
  – Walter Hawkins’s "Going Up Yonder" (29:14–30:42)

• Obscure RCA Reading:
  – RC30 Tube Manual, highly recommended for amp builders and learners (88:15–89:53).

• Vintage Swing:
  – Noel Boggs and His Day Sleepers, "Steelin Home"
  – Texas Alexander & Lonnie Johnson’s "Crossroads" (85:10–86:15)

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Community, Projects, and Listener Shoutouts

• Amp Techs Across the World: From Brazil’s Raphael to Michigan and Alaska, evidence of a vibrant global DIY scene.
• Facebook Group “A Rustic Kegger in the Woods” as a resource for peer-to-peer aid, amp pickups, and positivity.

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Time-Stamped Key Segments

• 00:25 – Fretboard Summit Recap
• 05:09 – New Faces and Backline Providers
• 10:29 – Pro Techs Writing In ("Kind of fun")
• 14:25 – What’s On Skip’s Bench: Standel Era, Rare Maestros
• 22:32 – Building With Odd Tubes, Salvaged Parts Philosophy
• 25:49 – "A C in Chemistry" Story
• 42:21 – Output Transformer Impedance Q&A
• 48:02 – On Cleaning Tweed Amps
• 49:59 – Magnetone Varistors Q&A
• 81:20 – Attenuators/Octal Solid-State Tube Discussion
• 85:10–86:15 – Music Recommendations and Local Radio

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Closing Notes & Takeaways

• Keep Projects Fun: Whether rehabbing a barn or resurrecting a 305 Scrambler, pace yourself—Skip endorses letting projects “marinate” (93:20).
• Respect the Oddball: Unique circuits, unconventional parts, and odd tubes can lead to truly distinctive gear.
• DIY With Care: Use what you have, take your time, and appreciate craftsmanship.
• Amp Community Rocks: Don’t underestimate the generosity and resourcefulness of the antlered herd—sometimes, small acts are the most meaningful.

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Final Words

"I never do anything for the podcast except do it… Maybe elevate the tension from like 1 to maybe 2.2." – A (90:15)

This episode is a microcosm of what makes the show special: deep expertise, love for discovery, quirky storytelling, and a reminder that the journey is as important as the destination—whether you’re fixing amps, playing music, or just figuring out how not to screw up a tweed.

Transcript

[A]

Testing, 1, 2, 3.

[B]

How you doing?

[A]

I'm just groovy. Probably the coolest overall summer since I've lived here 12 years.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

My homies in Oregon are sweating it out. But the last few weeks have been 80. It's not. We haven't had that two weeks of 110 which means fire season and we might make it through till fall without any super, super hot. But maybe not. The one we evacuated on was October 8, 2017. So it can, it can definitely happen late in the year. But that was blasting north wind and 80 degrees at midnight. You know it was, it was definitely different weather. You asked.

[B]

No, that's fantastic. I hope you're out of the woods.

[A]

Try to keep me, try to keep me focused. We have to. I think we've been coasting.

[B]

Have we?

[A]

So I'm going to. Oh yes. I'm going to just blow everyone's mind today with live from Loma Rica. It's Friday morning.

[C]

Right.

[A]

I'll be the sort of chirpy one and you can be the really serious one.

[B]

That's great.

[C]

I love that.

[A]

Well, I guess first things first, you have to give us at least a little debriefing on the Bret board journal summit. I hope it was a lot of work. I hope it, hope it was a success and hope you, I hope it didn't cost you a fortune to put it on. Hopefully you've got the business side of it paying for itself.

[B]

We have a good setup. Yeah, no, it was, it was a love fest. It was like everybody. This one, I mean maybe I was just paying attention more. This one felt like everybody was just kind of relaxed and we had a Pinewood. We had a Pinewood Derby. We had all this stuff going on. Shout out to Henriksen Amplifiers who put an amp on their Pinewood Derby car. Oh, one of those little, little smoky amps or whatever.

[A]

Excellent.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't know, ly love it was charming. And he's super nice, right? Super nice.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Dave Hill, the comedian was great. We had thanks to Brian McAllister of Chicago who's on Instagram as vintage tube amplifiers. We had a fully stocked Tava vintage amp room and, and various other is like a potluck. Various other people brought their amps and just kind of let them let him be down there.

[A]

And no hard step, no heart stopping moments. No missing. Where'd that Martin go?

[B]

No one Pinewood Derby car went missing, which is disappointing. But that's odd.

[A]

That's really odd.

[B]

I know. But other than that, no, it was it was good vibes.

[A]

And somebody's gonna call and say, this is what happened to it. One time, this was. This is what drove me to register serial numbers of Fender amps. First, Little Charlie made me get receipts because he wouldn't pay unless he had a repair tag so he could deduct it from his taxes.

[C]

Sure, right.

[A]

Cheapest guy in the world. But then a guy brought me a Fender black Vibro verb, which got really, really famous during the Stevie Ray Von days because he played them. And they're basically just a Pro reverb with a 15, but they're rare. And this guy was super wound up about it. And lo and behold, when he gets to my house at the ranch, out in the yard, there's two more, and. And he's just all, oh. So he comes to pick the thing up and he tells me that's that. That it's not his amp. He says, this isn't my amp. I think you've done some sort of switching. Did you take, like, a bunch of new parts or switch the chassis around, do something? I go, what? He said, no, this isn't it, man. I said it was all dirty. I said, well, I cleaned it up for you. I think There was about 20 minutes, but what could I do, right? I finally sent him home, and he called an hour or two later. Oh. Oh. He read the serial number and he said, that's not my amp. So he called a couple hours later and said he'd found the serial number where he'd written it down at home years ago. And yes, it was his amp.

[B]

Oh, it was. I thought you gave him the wrong amp, too.

[A]

No, no, no, no. I would never do that. Well, I mean, I might have back then.

[B]

You don't look alike.

[A]

I'm really careful about that. I have to be, because there might be, you know, five Princeton reverbs in my. At my house at once.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So I have to be real careful about that.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Keep track of that.

[C]

Wild.

[A]

So somebody's going to call and say, I. I packed that thing in this box that my neighbor took home, and it's in there with our guitar stands or. I don't know. Hopefully it'll turn up. Yeah, yeah. Any new people that you did not know that you enjoyed meeting?

[B]

Oh, wow, that's a good question. I don't know that there was anyone new that I hadn't met before. I mean, there's always a few, you know, luthiers, guitar makers, you know, we hate. But, yeah, everybody I think I knew, and everybody just had A really good time. Barry was there. Chris Benson from Benson Amps provided our backline, along with Eli from two Rock.

[A]

Eli from. How was that? Did you talk to him?

[B]

Yeah. Eli might be the most fascinating guy in the gear space. I'm hoping to interview him next month.

[A]

So he and Barry are dating?

[B]

I've heard unspread rumors.

[A]

The world is just freaking out. No, they're just both so cool and make you feel like not only do you not do enough in life, but you don't. You don't comb your hair either.

[B]

I know.

[A]

Yeah, they do.

[B]

They do Both look very well coiffed.

[A]

Yeah, they do. They do it all. Well, did you just. Did you mention to. Have we ever had Barry actually as a guest?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And if. Okay, good. We should do it again. And how about a guest of. Of Eli? Was there any mention of that?

[B]

I keep asking Eli, and I don't know whether he's just shy, but. Yeah, I want. I want Eli on this show.

[C]

Yeah, man.

[A]

Busy people, too, you know, He's. He's not watching a baseball game today on tv.

[B]

I bet you he's got a lot going on.

[C]

Yes, yes.

[B]

So I'll get to our sponsors. Obviously, the way the show works, everybody, is you send us questions to podcastritboardjournal.com they could be a voice memo that you record on your phone. Those are always fun. Send it to podcastritboardjournal.com or email us. We have sponsors. I think we haven't thanked the papaya guy yet.

[A]

Oh, I had him written down.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yes. That was awesome. And food preservation tip, don't forget, they were close to being over the. Not over the hill, but they needed to be eaten.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

There was like six of them. So my neighbor cuts it up, puts it on a cookie sheet, separates all the pieces on a cookie sheet, puts it in the freezer till they're frozen, then puts them in a plastic bag. So now, in three months, with your oatmeal, you can open up one of those bags and just take out a couple little chunks instead of a giant frozen mash of mango.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

That's a preservationist tip right there from a guy who lived many, many weeks at a time on a boat, a fishing boat, where you have to have. You gotta have a place for everything and everything in its place. And whenever he makes food, he always wants to squirrel away some and put it in the freezer in a little individual wrapped little things. That's Paul. He's. He's. He's good at that. He Makes little fruit pies, like little Hostess fruit pies, but from scratch.

[C]

And.

[A]

Oh, man, that's. That's something in the winter, right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, yeah, for food preservation tips. Thanks for the mangers.

[B]

Yeah, we know who that is.

[A]

Yeah, that's John Graham.

[C]

John Graham.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

John Graham, who works way in the very south tip of California or maybe even in Mexico, and has a place, a position at a big wholesale fruit provider.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

We also want to thank the aforementioned Gray's Guitars for sponsoring the show. Barry had the basics. He had the grand tour. His guitars are just so beautiful, and they were scattered around everywhere at the fretboard Summit, and people were just totally geeking out and loving on them. So please follow Grez Guitars. I have one sitting here five feet away from me. It's an absolute lovely instrument. We are also brought to you by our friends at amplified parts, amplifiedparts.com They've got the limited run of hammered silver enclosures if you need to make a fuzz face at home or whatever you need to do. They also have amp kits and pretty much everything new that we talk about you can find over there. So go check them out, tell them the truth about vintage amps sent you. And then last but not least, our friends in Seattle at Emerald City Guitars sponsoring the show, once again. They got a 64 DE Armand R5T right now. They've got a 59 Fender Champ 5F1. They've got Marshalls. They've got Standells. They have everything. If anybody ever just wants to try every cool vintage amp, conceivably that you can, in one fell swoop, head on over there. Great shop. Trevor Boone and everybody over there is just. They're all sweethearts. So go, go. Let them know how much their support means to you. So those are our sponsors?

[A]

Absolutely. It's all we can do for them is send people their way.

[C]

And.

[A]

You know that we don't. We wouldn't just let anybody do it.

[B]

No.

[A]

If you think you. Yes, you know, I. One of my main jobs is giving advice or a recommendation, and that's not something that I do lightly.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That's why you don't find us recommending every repair person or every. Everything that just because we know them or they listen to the podcast. So support the sponsors.

[B]

Yeah. I'm always surprised by how many professional repair people also submit questions to the podcast. So that's interesting. I try not to out them all, but many pros asking you for advice, which is kind of fun.

[A]

No, that is. That is kind of fun. I had a weird one yesterday. This guy is. He came off like, we make boutique tube amps with not just me, but we like a company. Okay, I want out. I want out. Him either. And we sell them at blah blah, blah. And I could tell that he wasn't the circuit guy. You know, maybe he's the Eli guy compared to the Bill Kernard guy. If we can make our two rock reference. He wasn't the tech dude. Some and his tech dude had retired and he had this monolamp that they were going to do in a tweed this and a voxy something or other. And it doesn't work. Right. There was a problem and he, and he wanted me, he wanted me to figure it out. And it was quite a conversation because, you know, it's so much different than what I do, which is usually fixing something that already worked. But what this guy needs to do is put together something that might work and then when it doesn't, figure out why it doesn't. And I wasn't much help really. I had a couple of okay ideas and I don't know, I thought it was kind of weird that like boogie or somebody is going to call me up and say, you know, this thing on our amp doesn't work. And it was some channel switching goofy thing that I didn't know about anyway. So I'm not surprised. Sometimes I get. I've been getting more and more emails from people who have a little, you know, Joe's Amp shop, whatever.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're asking me questions. In the old days, I would say until, you know, don't charge anybody.

[C]

Right.

[A]

But now I'm mellowing. I try to help people some, but.

[B]

This was like a real amp company that has a website.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And one of their employees didn't know how to fix their own amps.

[A]

No. Yes. Actually this would be like the owner like Eli calling me and saying our latest T rock doesn't work because. Because Kernard retired and no one here knows how to fix it. Something like that.

[C]

Okay. Yeah.

[A]

But it took him a long time to get around it. I thought he wanted me to fix their amps. Like if it broke, they could send somebody to me to have fix. Have me fix it. Which of course I wouldn't have agreed to either because I don't really know what the quality level of the thing really even is. But it's, it's. I've had a few people that thought that. I don't know, do people think that, that we're friends now or something? You know, and Pretty soon they're on like the eighth email in the last couple days, and I got to head that up with like a round turn.

[C]

You know, I. Yeah, I get it.

[B]

I. I know that feeling well, you know that.

[C]

So.

[A]

Not that I'm not willing to help people, of course I am. But at some point, and then we get questions sometimes here that I'm sure I've said, well, basically that's just my amp doesn't work. What's wrong with it? And that can be, you know, tough. And if you made the amp yourself, there's more things that could be wrong with it. And if you made it yourself using a design that is untried now, you're just stuck, like all sorts of things that could go wrong with it. So there you go.

[C]

I love it.

[B]

Well, good luck to whomever that is. I'm assuming it's a brand we've never discussed on this show, so maybe it is.

[C]

I don't know. I don't know. Okay.

[A]

I'm staying out of it.

[B]

Staying out of it. Well, skip every show. I try to start things off by asking you what's on your bench and what is on your bench today?

[A]

And I never remember. It's true. There's so many. So many. I fixed about 60amps in August.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Mostly fenders to a day.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And mowing and watering and all the other stuff. Let's see. Well, the Standel era has basically ended.

[B]

You've fixed all the Standels left in the world. Like curing cancer. You've done it.

[A]

Oh, my goodness. I know. There's these two little Maestro units, little amps made by Gibson. One's called the GA1RT and one's called the GA1RVT. And I thought they were pretty common, but I guess they're not. They've only. They only made them for a couple years, but you see them all the time. The first one, the rt, looks like a little tweed amp with the volume control and it says like, reverb on it, you know, but when you play it by itself, there's no reverb because down in the bottom of the thing is a little spring tank and two wires that come out that had alligator clips on the ends. And what they thought you were going to do was go over to your big Gibson, you know, your GA40 or whatever, clip these two alligator clips to the speaker of that amp. And then when you turn on this little dinky champ size thing, reverb comes out of it. It's speaker driven reverb. Right. We've had this conversation. Yeah. On the podcast a few times. So that little Maestro thing, those things sound good. And there's no reason why a guy can't make his. I have a coffee cup with the schematic on it thanks to that guy. I can't remember his name. It's a very simple circuit and it's fun. And if you ever run into one of those little Maestro units, most of the time people won't even know. They'll think the reverb is broken.

[C]

Right?

[A]

But it won't. It's just a little Champ amp with that reverb tank hooked up so that you can hook it up to another amp. Now the GA1 RVT that has reverb and it's a little tweed looking thing, but it actually is an amp with reverb and tremolo in doesn't have to be hooked up to another amp to make the reverb. And even the Gibson book doesn't even differentiate between those. But if you look at the schematics, you'll see one has reverb. It's a little tiny single ended amp with reverb and tremble. And they sound good. And the other one is basically a champ with the speaker driven reverb setup in front of it, a tank. And if you ever see one, they're pretty interesting. And you use schematic tweakers. I'm getting to some food stuff later. Maybe schematic tweakers. Check out all the little low powered amps. One power tube, five watts or less that use that have reverb and tremolo. Fender never made it.

[C]

Right.

[A]

But Maestro did in these circuits. And if you look in your jackdaw, which you all have, you'll see there's a whole bunch of Valco ones, Supro Airline National, I think. And they use 1 6v6 and they have reverb and tremolo. So if you think you're all snooty with your tweed deluxe copy that you made and you want something a little more complicated, you could see how that would be pretty fun compared to a Princeton reverb or deluxe reverb. Both of those are loud. These are little single ended amps, four or five watts, but with all the tricks.

[B]

So preamp tubes. I'm sorry, this is a dumb question. Does it have more tubes than a champ would have to have? The reboot trim?

[A]

Yes, you got to have a tube for those functions. Yeah. So let's see, five Y3, six V6 and three or four preamp tubes, I think in those little Valco ones. The Maestro versions appear to be extra simple because they use an interesting power tube called A6BM8. And it's like an EL84 or A6V6 with a half a 12ax7 in it inside, you know. So it's a dual tube. So when you look at it you're like, hey, this isn't enough tubes. But there's a half a. There's a half a 12ax7 encased inside the power tube.

[C]

Right.

[A]

There's a quite a few European amps and Hammond organ amps and stuff. Use those. You'll find little power amps that have a rectifier tube, two power tubes and no preamp tubes. Well, how can that be? Because those power tubes have a half a 12ax7 inside of them. ECL82, ECL86. I can't believe I can still remember.

[B]

I know, this is incredible.

[A]

So they're just interesting tubes and the little Leslie and Hammond organ amps that use them are, are out there. I think people know what they are. I don't think they sell for 50 bucks or anything, but they're out there. So there's just some interesting circuits if you're getting cocky to check out. Yeah, if you're really cocky. I've been doing some cleaning in my barn. Why? I am so disappointed that no one has come up here to take home a big arm load of junk.

[B]

I know the weather sounds lovely.

[A]

Oh my God. You bring me, you bring me $50 or a hundred dollars. And you better put some air in the tires, right, Because I'll load you up with all sorts of stuff. I got this huge box of part boards that were from a guy that made his own amps for a long time. You know, the long with all the rivets in them and you can, you know, they're all for Fender style amps. They could be cut up smaller. I mean, I got like a. I got an armload of that stuff anyway. I found some really odd tubes that I brought when I first moved here that I haven't looked at in like 12 years. Right. If you find a really far out looking tube, and believe me, there's some that look like little sputniks and stuff. A free thinker could make that do something. You just have to find out what it is, figure out how to heat it up and get it to, you know, to work. Most every. A lot of strange tubes could do that. If you were really, really weird, you could find some little western Electric tiny little tube that was made to be used in the transatlantic cable under the ocean. And you could fire it up with the right voltages and make some kind of little preamp out of it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And then right into the show and tell us what you did.

[A]

Yes. So I usually say, don't think you can build a Jaguar just because you've got a steering wheel. You know, I've had, I've had people call me. Well, I've got these tubes. So I want to build this amp. Well, okay. But the opposite is also true. If you're, if you're beyond. If you're experienced and you, you know, you know what you're doing and you're looking for something weirder, you absolutely can make stuff. Just because you found some crazy ass tube. I want to make a preamp for guitar that uses like a 30s tube. Like a big tall thing with you know, a cap on top and stuff. And I'm sure it would have some disadvantages, but I bet sonically, just imagine a tube doing the same function but one's an inch tall and one's like three inches tall. Think how much material is in there. An electron flow going on. You know it's going to sound different.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So if you find a strange tube and you can figure out, find it in the tube manual. Build that thing.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And if it's blown, you could make it into a pinewood derby car. Actually, I guess you had to use the wood though. But I could see a big tube with wheels on it.

[B]

Many did not. I think there were some, some non wood materials used in many of the builds. VW bus with little tweed guitar cases in the back.

[A]

Oh, I know.

[B]

I'll send you pictures.

[A]

That's beautiful.

[B]

Going back to the. The champ that also has reverb and trim from these other brands. Is it. If somebody has made a champ and that's like their first amp project, is that a logical next step or is it way too complicated because there's too much going on under the hood?

[A]

I wouldn't say it was the next step.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's something to be gearing up and thinking about. First step is to burn through your jack dar that one section of schematics and, and note how many slightly different or the same one. 6v6 Valco made amps. There's like five of them in there. And if you were just looking for Supro, say you'd never see it because it's an airline. But we know that company made stuff for all these different companies and that Maestro. And those single ended Valcos, those are the smallest amps ever that had reverb and tremolo in them. And so we like small. It's something to ponder, right?

[C]

Sure.

[A]

If we want to go the other way, we could talk about the big TV tubes that are used in those standouts. Two power tubes, they kind of like six L6s but they have a wire that goes to the top of them. But because their way they're run in those amps, even I could tell you turn it on and when you start playing louder and you hit the guitar louder, it just gets louder. There's no compression like we're used to in a lot of old amps. It's almost like the amp sounds like a JBL speaker. It just goes whoa. And it doesn't get distorted. And even I, with you know, my crappy, you know, technique and guitar could say, you know, compared to a TV front pro or something, which would have been the competition at the time, this thing sounds just like bally and like loud. And how do they do it? Tubes that you can buy new old stock, new old stock, RCA brand new right now for 10 or $15 a piece. Some of the finest audio tubes ever made. But because they weren't in tweet amps, no one cares. 6B6, DQ6 is one of them. But there's a whole bunch. They were actually made for tv. And the only trick is you've got to lower the screen voltage on them. Most big powerful amps use the same kind of voltage on the plates and the screens. These tubes need a lower screen. And the way they do it is with a regulator tube, which is a really simple little tube you can stick in an amp, hook it up to the power supply and it lowers and regulates the B plus that you can then supply to the screen grids of the power tubes. And that's how they get the things to sound so clean. High voltage on the plates, like over five, a little over 500 volts. But low voltage on the screens, about 150. And that's one of the secrets of the. Not the secret. That's one of the foundation legs of those standos and why they sound so clean and powerful.

[C]

Love it.

[A]

Whoa, baby. I told you I've been coasting.

[C]

No.

[B]

Look at us. 30 minutes in, you're on fire. We haven't even addressed a single amp question.

[A]

Did I ever tell you how I probably be dead except that I got a C in chemistry?

[B]

No.

[C]

What's going on? What do you mean?

[A]

I don't know we have time for this. When's our commercial break?

[B]

You can't go.

[A]

That. I start. I started by wanting to. You know, I love choir. I love a gospel choir. And I was in one. And that's why when I hear Edwin Hawkins, oh, Happy Day, I can. Edwin and his brother Walter Hawkins, they were from Oakland, you know, and they became really big in the pop gospel world. But basically they were just two guys, and they got a bunch of high school people together. The choir on oh, Happy Day, which was like in the top 10 for a while. And it's just a bunch of kids, and I love it. You know, this stuff is all conducted. You know, there's always a conductor, and I love it. And in those. In these songs, the other one I love is called Going Up Yonder. That's by Walter Hawkins. You can. You can hear the choir simmering. And we're talking high school kids, right? And when the conductor says now, when they tear into it, it's just, wow. And because I've heard it and been there, it. It has an impact. So when I was in high school, yeah, I went to Yuba City High School, and they had a serious choir. My sister got me to get into it where they went all over the place and went to contests and stuff, and they took it very seriously. So I did it. And the next semester, my parents. My dad wouldn't let me take choir because I got a C in chemistry.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I had to take chemistry over. And I was. I was. Needless to say, I was not happy that semester. The choir loaded up a bus on the bus and went down to a big concert in the Bay Area. And the bus flipped off the freeway from like, 80ft up in the air. You've told this story, killed almost everyone. And I would have been there. And I mean, it was front page of every paper in the country, right? Because it was 27 or 28 kids and people a C in chemistry. And at the time, you know, you're really resilient, and you're just a kid, and you're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can move on. But it was pretty hairy. There was like two funerals a day for weeks and weeks. It seemed like in. In the Yuba City area. But now that I'm older, when I think back on it, I just go, whoa. You know, okay, you forgot your keys. Now you're late. But if you hadn't forgot your keys, that guy would have T boned you at the intersection and you'd be dead, Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So just how come you have to get old to appreciate? Like, well, thank God it's a sunny day. My stepdad used to say, well, I'm on the right side of the daisies or something like that, you know? In other words, he wasn't dead, and that's it. Got a C in chemistry, maybe save my life next.

[B]

Bam. Yeah, we have a Patreon, and Skip is going to be singing Acapella. Oh, happy day for anyone at the $10 or above tier.

[A]

I sang based real low, and I. I didn't. And I didn't extrapolate. We're talking about, like, chamber music and, like, all super written, organized, you know, you just did your part. But it did make me appreciate if you're part of it. And there's 30, 40 people in a room and it's all clicking.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like being in a band, you know. It's like, wow. And your little part is part of it. And those Walter and Edwin Hoffman Hawkins songs really capture it. They were just recorded in, like, a church in Oakland, and they just. They both have Hammond and piano, too, which. I love it when there's both a piano player and a Hammond player in the band. And to just hear the. The people kick loose, just like Jimmy Page wailing, you know, on a solo, just to hear that choir, like, unleashed in those songs is always moving.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Learning so much about you. Did you get to see Edwin Hawkins?

[A]

No, I loved it when it was on the radio. But then my wife is a vinyl collector, music freak, and it wasn't long before we started listening to it a lot more, you know, recently, and discovering other ones I didn't know about. Going up yonder. That's just listen to oh, Happy Day. That's not a man, by the way. That's a woman on lead with a really, really deep voice, almost like a tenor singing woman. It's fantastic.

[C]

Okay. All right. Wow.

[B]

Well, should we field some amp questions?

[A]

Probably should.

[B]

You're on a roll, though. I mean, this is. This is way more entertaining than most of the questions. Okay.

[A]

Well, that's some seething.

[B]

You see that you are. Do you have any more? Eve, I know you write notes. Do you have any other, you know, hot takes that we should talk about before we.

[A]

Hot. Yes. Hot. Hot mustard. Coleman's hot mustard. Right. You know it. Yellow. Can accept no substitutes. Has to be Coleman's. Mix it with a little cold water, and that's the hot Chinese mustard that you get at a good Chinese place. And if you put a tiny bit of it in Your coleslaw. I told you I've been making coleslaw. Oh, yeah. Coleman's mustard.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

I told you there'd be at least one food thing.

[B]

Yeah, you're. You're on fire today. You don't even need me. Okay, go ahead.

[A]

No, I. I have more.

[B]

I sprinkle them in. Between all these questions we're going to field, here's the.

[A]

Did I ever tell you about the giant yard sale in Dixon that Keith Carey, Bob Armstrong. I went. The guy was a retired music instructor and the whole house was filled with musical instruments.

[B]

You did talk. You should share this story.

[A]

It'd be have. It'd be fun to have him have all three of us on trip, you know, to talk about that. He had a panel truck, a 50 Chevy panel truck that said Jack McDermott House of Music with like, musical notes and like stuff painted on it that everybody in town wanted. And I found a box of drum drummer stuff that's old. I mean, from like Pre World War II. Like you like trap stuff. Including this. This is the Acme siren, Hudson's patent, made in England. Ready? You just blow on it, right? Yeah. There's bird whistles that go like. There's steam whistles that sound like, you know, it's steamboats are coming kind of thing. And I've. I've kept them all. And I'm gonna start doing more, more novelty stuff now. We need a car chase. And I don't think this is a police whistle like a Bobby would use. No, but it is old and nickel plated. I'd say it's probably from the 20s. And Jack McDermott just had this big wooden box and I opened it up and it was full of just the weirdest, like cowbells and slide whistle. I gave that to Bob Armstrong. So you can go, you know, you move a little and all old. Some of it's even labeled Ludwig and stuff. Right. Like it was specifically made for a drummer's trap. Kid who back in the cartoon music days, as my wife would say, you know, they had to do all sorts of stuff. Like when the guy bent over, there's a little thing that goes, you know, makes that sound like the guy's back is cracking. Just all sorts of comedic effects. Yeah.

[B]

Who are we? Who am I thinking of? Raymond Scott. Who was the guy who had all that stuff? No.

[A]

Yeah. Any of that, you know, the music in those old Betty Boop cartoons, all that Max Fleischer stuff. The music that cheap Suit Serenaders play and stuff where, you know, hokum Right. And the drummer was expected to be able to whip out. I got to do that once we. I played with Bob at the Crocker Art Gallery and I brought a train whistle. And when they did a train song, I got to pull it out at the very end and blow the mournful like, woo. That's pretty cool. All right. I can't, I just can't seem to let you get a question in.

[B]

This is great. It just makes it really easy for me. Okay, Martin in Australia, are T shirts ever going to happen again? Sure, we can do T shirts again.

[A]

That was on my list.

[B]

Was it?

[A]

Okay, well, you know, one of the key. First remember what our. Probably our main business thing is, is we don't do anything. No, I know we're too busy to do anything. But now the T shirt facilitator is back. Oh, really? Chico? Yes, he moved back to Chico and he said he's going to be doing some work with the Silk Shop, Chico, California. And it may be that we can do what we did before, which was just a high tech feast of purchasing where people got to just, yeah, look at the shirts. Pick your size, pick your whatever. And they're not stacked up in boxes at the FJ office. They just go, they just go right to you. So we're, we're keeping the heat on that. In fact, when I saw him, I gave him some money because I said, you know, you can't just ask people to do stuff. You know, I said, hey, let's get this T shirt thing going again. And I just went, wham. Here, here's some seed money. Let's get cracking. So maybe he'll do some new designs. And he also, I guess he must have gotten too busy, but he, I guess he's pretty good with the camera and making the videos. And he spent about 20 minutes looking at the test guitar, my test guitar.

[C]

Oh.

[A]

And letting me yak about it.

[C]

Oh.

[A]

And he says he's going to put together some kind of a little short and offer it to you or to the kers or somebody. So that's been a couple weeks. Hopefully he'll, he'll do it. I talked about why I have it and what it is and how I built it and he took a bunch of pictures of it and, and hopefully he's going to get us going on that T shirt train.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Martin also asks, any update on the Honda Scrambler or did I miss something?

[A]

That's your, that's your bike, isn't it?

[B]

Yeah, that's the one I got from you, no, you just during the height.

[A]

Of COVID Keep it those things. I'll tell you one thing, they've gone through the roof price wise. That's a. A classic black and silver Hondas, isn't it? A3. Oh5.

[B]

305. Yep.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Classic black and silver Hondas like that are just blue chip, baby. I mean, not a hundred thousand dollars or anything, but they're not 500 bucks. And whatever it took at some point, kind of like the wall, that Kevin found the right person, when the right person is ready and goes through it, it's absolutely worthwhile. It's not like fixing up something that's junky. That stuff was really well made about put the Harley out of business. When that stuff started coming over, I.

[B]

I admire it every time I go in my garage. I have no work on it. But I will say this was fun. You know, Lyle Lovett is into vintage motorcycles.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

And we have one mutual friend who has a motorcycle magazine called Racer X. And so I said, hey, I know Scott from Racer X. And he said, are you. Do you ride too? And about three minutes before, Lyle Levitt went on stage and played for 400 people at the Fretboard Summit. I'm showing him pictures of the Scrambler that hasn't left the garage. And that was fun. That was a little fun. Icebreaker.

[A]

So, no, that is beautiful. Danger UXB has a fun story of talking to Billy Zoom out in the parking lot because they had Miatas, you know, Mazda Miatas, walked for four blocks to go to, oh, let's go look at your car. Right? No, that's. That somebody's little side hobby is always something that you can get them going on. Crazy. I'm at the barber shop and the barber shop guy, who's super into antiques, I'd given him an old radio, said, did you notice over the down the street that that store that's filled with hundreds of old radios? I said, what? I mean, this is Marysville, right? I go there all the time. Yeah, man. Let me show you. So after he gets done cutting my hair, we run outside the front door or when we walk a couple blocks up the old main drag of Marysville. And here's this old department store. Must have been from the 40s or 50s, but it's, you know, not anymore. And I peek through the windows, there are hundreds of radios, consoles, jukeboxes. There's. It was a square grand piano and closed, but just packed. And I went, wow. So of course, next time I came to town, I brought a little note that I planned on slipping under the door that said, hey, I. Because I can't give radios away. Hey, man, I got a pre depression Thompson Nutridyne. I'd love to just donate to your collection. But the guy was there and he and his wife. He's from Greece, but he'd lived in California for like 20 years. And he just went wild collecting radios and he wants to start a. A museum. And he seemed funded, you know, it wasn't just like a pile of junk. He had some really far out stuff, really far out stuff in there. Not just American, but Euro stuff. I mean, I. I walked around for just a couple of minutes and basically just said, well, this isn't really my bag, but you know, I can fix amps. And you know, he. He had a lot of technical skills too. And it might be something. Might be something where we could have some footage of somebody. If you just walked around in there with the camera for about five minutes, it'd be pretty entertaining because there's just a lot of stuff in Marysville in my town.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

In the old. In the old downtown of Marysville, once the third largest city in California. Fun fact, huh? Gold rush. It was really happening during the gold rush. And now it's just a hole.

[C]

But.

[A]

But a guy's gonna start an antique radio museum. All right. Did we, did we even finish the first question?

[B]

Yeah, we did. We talked about the motorcycle.

[C]

Okay, next.

[A]

Oh, yeah, the motorcycle odds. Just don't feel bad that you're not doing anything with it. I had the. I had the Rider PA manual for 10 years before I even could even understand it.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

When the time comes or you might meet the guy that's like, I have the specialist. Let's get the engine out of that thing. And as I recall, it won't turn over, right?

[B]

No, it's. It's frozen.

[A]

Yeah, but that could be something as simple as the Kickstarter.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And the right kind of guy might just be able to bring it back to life. As opposed to the other course of action, which appeals to many a bit by bit, long as it takes, restore it perfectly, do everything over quality of those motorcycles. I think that getting it going and driving it around the neighborhood sounds pretty fun to me.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

As opposed to. Okay, now I'm done. Now what? I gotta park it in the garage with a sheet over it, you know, to keep it clean. But I'm glad that worked out. That was fun having the transport truck show up to. To bring you the motorcycle from my house. Was pretty interesting.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, next question.

[B]

Okay. Maynard, who was at Madsen Amps, who was actually at the Fretboard Summit. He said Fretboard Summit was a blast. Can't wait for next year's. We're just gonna go straight into the nerd stuff here right now, folks. My question pertains to output transformer primary impedance. How do you calculate the output impedance of your tubes and match it to the output transformer primary? And what effect does it have on the tone saturation and wattage to go up or down an impedance? For instance, a train wreck style OT will have both 5.2k ohms and 6.6k ohms on the primary side. And a Marshall 50 watt out output transformer will have 3.4 to 4k ohms output transfer primary. That's the question.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

Yeah, I don't think we've ever addressed this.

[A]

And no one's going to like the answer because it's. Because it's not rigid.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

But let's see. I have a cool magazine from back in the 50s that included. Or maybe I think it's a transformer catalog output, output transformer chart where you'd go down the left hand side and you'd find the. The output tubes that you want to use like 1 6v6 or 2 6v6s or 2 6l6s or whatever. And then it would tell you what the primary impedance of that transformer should be. But that was for like radiotech dorks. We have so many schematics available where we can know what it is.

[C]

Okay?

[A]

Like we can. We know what a lot of the Fender ones are as far as their primary. It does affect the way the amp works. Of course, changing an output transformer will change the sound almost always, you know, especially compared to a power transformer, which might not change the sound of it at all as long as the specs are basically the same. But output transformers are pretty hard to measure. You can take an ohmmeter and put it on there, but that's not really everything. You really have to light an output transformer up to see what it does. And just when you think you're starting to get some rules, like you look in the Tube Manual RCA and it says for two 6L 6s you should use a 6K primary. As soon as you start learning that stuff, you look in an old Sam's photo fact or some other schematic where they just blow that up to smithereens. You know, it's twice that much or it's half that much. Then the last thing is inverse feedback. Not all amps have it, but amps that do. The output transformer is key because the feedback is fed back into the amplifier from the output transformer. There's a very famous brand of hand built, beautifully made tweed amps that sounded terrible because they didn't have the right output transformer. The presence control which works in the inverse feedback, barely did anything. But you put the right output transformer on it and nothing else and all of a sudden the feedback is right and the presence control works and amp is a lot happier. So there's no real hard and fast rules. But you can make up your own kind of basic. Roughly most little single ended amps, about 5K. Bigger amps get down to like 2K, like push, pull, parallel four power tube amps, stuff like that. And finally a lot of people have figured out that because the primary and the secondary aren't really connected, you can put a different load on the secondary and that changes the primary impedance. People figured out that they could take two 6L6s out of a four power tube, twin reverb or a Marshall. And then when you do that you could Change the ohms from 8 ohm to 4 ohm or 8 ohm 16. I forget what it is. And that basically makes a reflected impedance on the primary and changes it. Yeah, but why are there so many different kinds of output transformers? I wouldn't deliberately mess with the secondary just because I didn't have the right primary. Let's just say that. And it's. The books on output transformers are miles long, man. You got everything from a crappy little thing in a tweed champ, which sounds awesome, all the way to a beautiful acrosound hi Fi Alpa transformer from the mid-50s. That cost a fortune. That might not sound so good in a guitar amp, right? You got hi Fi, you got guitar instrument amps, really just you want them to make a noise, whereas hi Fi, you want that thing to reproduce a sound. So output transformers dive in.

[C]

I don't know.

[B]

Can you mess it up? You could mess it up.

[A]

You could mess it. Yeah, you could mess it up. I mean you better be monitoring how the amp is working. If you put a transformer in there and all of a sudden everything's like drawing a bunch of more current and getting hot and getting, getting, you know, overheated. And that's not right. No, but you can certainly experiment around. And even two supposedly identical spec transformers can sound quite a bit different. And I just say Clip it in. You know what I do a lot is I have test output transformers with alligator clips on them. And in about 30 seconds, I can unsolder the output transformer in an amp and clip in mine. And when you clip in mine, if it just makes the amp come alive, then you know you got something you got to deal with there, right?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

That's why I save vintage output transformers. Always.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

From all kinds of stuff, because they can make a gigantic difference in the sound of the amp.

[C]

Love it.

[B]

Ready for some more?

[C]

Ready. Okay. We'll.

[B]

We'll go back and forth between super geeky and more approachable. This is.

[A]

I got both.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I was wondering if you can give advice about cleaning tweed or if you have a podcast episode about that issue. I have a 55 Fender Deluxe, and I'm not sure whether trying to clean it will create problems. Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated. Well, you were just talking about cleaning an amp and returning it to the guy, so. And him being confused, so might as well could go.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

The problem with tweed on pretty much all tweed, there's a. There's some Gibson amps that look like tweed that have a heavy polyester finish on the top. Not that that. The problem with the tweed is that it's lacquered or varnished, and everywhere it's worn off, it's just thread. It's cloth. So if you get cloth wet, you know, it just makes it dark and it doesn't. You can't clean a tweed amp other than just maybe, I don't know, maybe just a little rag with some spit on it on your finger. Because the places that are bare wood, what are you going to do there? Don't get that wet. And any place that has the lacquer coating worn off of it, you're just trying to clean like a sheet, you know, it's just going to soak up water and it's not really going to improve it. And value wise, no one cares if the tweed's dirty. I say glue down the edges that are fraying so they don't fray anymore and dust it off maybe a little, literally a rag on your fingertip and try some 409 or some spit or some simple green or something and see if you can get some grime off of here and there. But you're not going to just wash it down with 409 and a brush like you would with a Tolex covered amp. Yeah, I'd leave it alone. The tweed and the way the market is now, even the most thrashed original tweed is still more valuable than even a nice retweet. So you don't like the thrashed look, just sell that amp to somebody else.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Well, we, we do welcome voice memos and I tell everybody to send those and we got a couple. So let's, let's go with listener Sam on this one.

[D]

Hello, Skip and Jason. I am calling about an amplifier called an Americana, I believe, also sold under the name Magnetone that uses variant Aristors in its tremolo circuit, which I think have gone bad. I've kind of ruled out other possibilities in this circuit. So I wonder what Skip would suggest if I wanted to get the tremolo working and the varistor is not obtainable, is that correct? Is there a source for this that I don't know about, hopefully? Or is there some kind of workaround that Skip might recommend? Or. Also, Jason, how about doing a Fretboard Journal article on Ken Babensi? He is a luthier in Northern California that I think is incredible. Just a one man operation and as far as I can tell, I don't think the Fretboard Journal has ever done any articles on him. I'd love to see one. Thank you.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

I don't know that guy.

[B]

He's near you. I had to look.

[A]

There are a ton of great luthiers. Don't think we don't care about you just because we haven't talked to you. And there's a lot. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I got into amps was there's so many guitar repair men that were good that I could respect, you know, but not in the amp world. And I know there's a lot of good builders. So do you know what town he's from?

[B]

Ken Bavinsky grew up or is in the south. He's in the San Luis Obispo area. But now he lives in the forested foothills of North San Juan in Northern California. Have you ever heard of North San Juan?

[C]

Wow, where's that?

[A]

Aren't you glad I'm on the podcast? So North San Juan is up. You know this, of course, it's on. It's on Highway 49 between Grass Valley, Nevada City and Downeyville, which is like going up into the mountains. And North San Juan is one of the oldest areas of the foothills for hippies and freaks to move to, move to. There's been an Ananda commune in North San JUAN since the 60s, you know, 50 years. And you want to talk about a place where you pull up in your truck and you go, I'm an outsider. You try the store. I think it's called Mother Truckers in North San Juan. Of course, there was a huge herb thing in the decades past, but mostly that area is just people that want to live out in the boondocks. People that mine gold. They're still, you know, you know what you're doing. You can still get gold.

[C]

Right.

[A]

It's just hard work. And that's where north San Juan is. It's like, even more hippie and far out than Nevada City is, which is saying something. And that's only about. I don't know. Or San Juan an hour from here.

[B]

Is there a San Juan San Juan, or is there just a north San Juan?

[C]

No, no.

[A]

No, it's east side San Juan. No, there's like 150 people there. Right. It's like a store. I don't even know if there's a gas station.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

The most famous thing there is the Malakoff Diggins, which is a basically preserved site that shows what happened when the miners in the gold rush figured out that they could pipe water down from a lake hundreds of feet higher and they could blast water at the side of the mountain with giant. What are called monitors.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So much water, like. Like forget a fire hose from a fire truck, and it would just completely erode away entire mountains.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And Malakoff Diggins is. Is the site of one of those. And you can see what it looks like now. And that caused one of the very first federal laws about water, because when they were doing that, it wrecked everything downstream. It filled the Sacramento Valley with mud like 2, 3ft thick everywhere. And the Supreme Court caminiti decision, I think it was called, said, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do this anymore. You can't let the. You can't allow water from your mining operation leave your. Your site. Which, of course, if you're dealing it with the giant hydraulic mining, I mean, it just. It just wrecked all the rivers for a really long time. In some places, they're still barely recovered from it. So North San Juan, Malakoff Diggins. Beautiful clear lakes now at the foot of these raw cliffs that were made by blasting them with the monitors full of trout, probably full of arsenic and lead and stuff from all the gold mining, too. But we won't talk about that.

[B]

You are on fire today.

[A]

I got it all.

[B]

You have it all. This is incredible. Do you have any questions?

[A]

We didn't even answer that question. Yeah, first of all, a. You don't know what you're doing love you, but you don't B. Baristors in old magnetones. I've never replaced 1C. They must make them because the great Neil Young's guitar tech, he was on the podcast Larry Cragg, Larry Craig, they make magnetones that have the, the, the baristors in them. So they must be out there. And of course, the ultimate sin of saying tremolo instead of vibrato, the whole key to the magnetone thing is it's really one of the very, very few amps that actually changed the pitch, not the volume. And that's what vibrato is all trying to sound like a ham, like a Leslie. Right. So the reason why your vibrato doesn't work in your Americana labeled magnetone.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Magnetone made lots of different brand names. Mostly accordion companies. Right. Because they were big for accordion. Is not the baristas. It's that you don't know what you're doing. So don't replace the baristors. Learn more about how it works. And you have to start with the oscillator. Even the magnetone circuit, which I don't really understand, starts with the same kind of thing as any tremolo. A tube and some capacitors set up to make something go whoa, whoa, whoa. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Find that part of your magnetone and fix that. And the varistors aren't part of that. They're after that in the circuit.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

So don't know what you're doing. Thanks for the email. There must be varistor somewhere. Yours aren't bad. And check the oscillator.

[C]

Okay. How's that? That's.

[B]

It's always great when you tell a listener just the brutal truth. Do you want me to keep going?

[A]

Unless you want me to detour again.

[B]

Oh, go for it. Detour. You're on fire. We should celebrate all this.

[A]

A really good friend of the show and us who will remain on it went to a guitar center in a town around here.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And they had a. Yeah, not north. There's not a guitar center. And saw a beautiful looking Gibson GA20.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

That's a 50s Gibson amp. That's a lot like a tweed deluxe. And you know they're probably up in the two grand range, right?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

They're getting up there. Especially one that looks really clean. And he played it and he thought it sounded cool, so he bought it. But he didn't know why it was so cheap at like 1200.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

So he brings it down to Me, I take the back panel off, I look inside of has a cabinet real. It has back panels real. It has a Gibson chassis in there. Nothing else. Someone gutted the whole thing and just built like a tweed amp in there.

[B]

Oh, there is a. It is an amp. It's not just a.

[A]

No, there's no. No, it's wooden cabinet, metal chassis, nothing else. Oh, all the pots, all the tube sockets, all the transformers, all that stuff from the GA20 gone. And another amp scratch built in there by some guy fairly recently. So it's like. And they don't, of course, at a guitar center, you're not going to know. I mean, even you could have looked in there and said, even me. Look, this doesn't look quite like an old Gibson amp. Like, what's going on? But he didn't know. He's not technical. And it sounded good.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

So I had to let him down on that. And then I had to do what I could to make it sound good because he's a pal and he owned it.

[C]

Right?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

So we got in there and fixed it up and made it sound pretty good, and it all ended up fine. But caveat emptor, you know, in a place where that's not going to happen at our sponsor, Emerald City, because they were. They're gonna say this is like a cool boutique amp built in this old cab. Thousand bucks, you know, or whatever they're gonna say what it is. And it started out a little. Started out great, then it went south, and then I made it sound great and it all worked out. But watch out for stuff like that. You know, we never saw things like that in the olden days.

[C]

No.

[A]

Only now.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So he didn't even really have a GA20.

[B]

No, nothing.

[A]

No, we only had a metal box.

[B]

And did you try to get it close to the GA27 or you just got it?

[A]

No, no, no, no, no. I just fixed the circuit that was in there. I'm pretty sure it was the ubiquitous. The now ubiquitous 5e3.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Which is the Tweed Deluxe circuit. It was something basically like that. And I got it to sound good, so it worked out. But watch out.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

What else? Oh, maybe everywhere in the country. But it's time for the Sierra Nevada Brewing October Fest. And they did a collaboration thing with someplace in Germany. And it is just like the German stuff, and it's 6%. So two. That third one, you better be home. Right. Because it's pretty strong. But if you get a chance to check out the Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest, that. That's as good as the Munchen. You know, whatever. Polyner from Germany is really good.

[B]

Sierra Nevada is in Nevada City. Where Sierra Nevada.

[A]

Sierra Nevada is in Chico. And they were basically the. The father of real commercial micro brew, maybe even in America. There's a lot of smaller breweries, of course, like Anchor Steam and ones that historically go way back. But. But Sierra Nevada and Shoots and Lost coast, you know, there's a few others.

[C]

But.

[A]

But Sierra Nevada, really, like, they, they're big.

[C]

They.

[A]

And they managed to sell a beer that's extremely high quality, even though it's not really, really, really low production.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

So anyway, go, go grab some of that while you can this month and, and enjoy it. It doesn't even have to be cold. Sit outside and feel like you're at the Oktoberfest.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Nick is in Detroit and he has not a question, but just a fun story. As hopefully you all know, there's a Facebook group for this podcast called A Rustic Kegger in the woods. And he writes, I was inspired to purchase an amp on reverb. The problem was it was listed for local pickup only. The amp was located in la and I'm in metro Detroit. I took to the keggers on Facebook with my problem. Lo and behold, two keggers in the LA area happily volunteered to assist with Boots on the Ground. Their names have been withheld to protect the innocent. After talking to one of them on the phone, I was confident that this transaction would actually work. Deep breath. I purchased the amp and let the seller know a friend would be picking it up. The kegger picked it up, boxed it up, and had it shipped to me for his time and labor. I offered to pay him and he refused. Instead, he recommended that I donate to his favorite charity, Elevate Oakland, which keeps art and music alive in Oakland area schools. My hundred dollars donation paired with my newly purchased Rivera amp has restored my faith and humanity. It was humbling to be heard and supported by strangers now friends who share a common interest. A heartfelt thanks to the rustic Kegger in the woods group on Facebook. Truly a group that will step up when a fellow kegger is in need. That is from Nick in Detroit.

[A]

I bet that's not unique. I bet that has happened before and may happen again.

[B]

That's pretty sweet.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't have to wait for somebody's check to get here before I send them their amp. If it's somebody who lives far away, I know they'll send it. You know, that's beautiful.

[C]

Beautiful. Thanks, Nick.

[B]

Keep Those stories coming. We need more good stories in this world.

[C]

We do.

[B]

Jay also has a story. He's in Anchorage. I think it's a he. I was in McCarthy, Alaska two weekends ago. One of my band stashed our gear and a friend Subaru. While I missed the stashing, I was solo for loading back into the van and discovered several El Poto cans of unknown vintage full of something loud. Screws maybe. I knocked two of them over, but the evidence contents will be forever lost. Been listening for years. Thanks to my banjo player Dan who gave me my first fretboard journal and told me about Tava. Like Skip, I'd rather drive. Still nice to have friends that don't make you stop for a pee break. That's you. Guys. Just want to let you know El Poto is represented at the end of a 58 mile dirt road. Thanks for everything. That's Jay in Anchorage. Yeah, Anchorage.

[A]

Excellent.

[C]

Yeah. Okay.

[A]

You gotta love a photo.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Like please send photos.

[A]

A local blues man. I'm gonna see if I could separate this. But a local blues man here sent who will remain unnamed is is curating a big. How often does this happen now? Once a month. Somebody dies.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Now there's all this stuff. Don't die and leave your family with all your stuff.

[C]

No, do not.

[A]

And there's a big pile of really rare prototype like 1960 Bender stuff. Like really odd stuff including accompanied by a letter from our friend Steve Sost.

[C]

What?

[A]

Yes. So there's these Fender cabinets that were called Tone Ring. They're not just a speaker bolted to a board like every other speaker cabinet. They have the Helmholtz resonator. It's like this little thing that backs the speaker off the baffle and it's ported and it adds bass. And Fender used it in the early 60s. Like a showman cabinet would have had a 15 inch JBL and a tone ring cabinet. How about a 1 off 310 showman cabinet with tone rings construction. A one of a kind, you know, Fender cabinet that somebody with a letter from from Sost about the ex Fender employee that he bought it from. Thing about Steve was he was down there in the 60s and 70s and stuff when some of those people still had stuff and remembered what was cooking. And I'm just. Just beyond the valley of. Of rare.

[B]

So all this stuff is about to hit the market or.

[A]

Oh yeah, that's as I'm saying to keep it on the dice. It's probably about 30 or 40amps. There's like a lot of Reverb units. I believe I saw what appeared to be a Brown concert from, like 1960, but white tolex, Remember last year someone brought me a Brown super that was. That was covered in white tolex. That was factory. And most people would say, eh, so what? But Fender was so consistent. We've seen so much stuff that when we see. Great. I feel lucky in some ways that I see so many amps, because I see the weirdest stuff ever. And I got one more. Should I say it now?

[C]

Yeah, go for it.

[A]

The guy brought in a brown 62 super amp. Two tens, 1962 brown white knobs, right?

[C]

Mm.

[A]

And factory original. The power transformer was not the one that I've seen. I don't know. I've probably seen 50 brown supers. It's not the one in the schematic. You look it up, and this power transformer came from a TV front super, which is the very earliest style Tweed amps from like 1950, right? 10 years before, right? Basically, yeah. It seems apparent that one day they ran out of power transformers for the brown supers that they were making. And apparently back in the back were still a bunch of new, old stock power transformers from the early tweed days. This is all right. This isn't too out in the weeds. 8516. That's the part number of the power transformer that's in this thing factory. And if you look at the schematic, you'll see it's a completely different number. I forget. 125. A something or other. So they were so thrifty that they just didn't get rid of anything. And if they had to, they'd use some old ancient thing to get through this run of amps. So, tech geeks, what are the two gigantic differences between the transformer that they put in this thing and the transformer they would normally put in it? Number one, the normal transformer has a bias tap for the negative voltage, a special wire that comes off the power transformer to supply the negative voltage for the amp. The old power transformer doesn't have that. The other thing the new power transformer has is it has a grounded center tap for the heater filaments, which all amps, big amps, have. The old power transformer doesn't have a grounded center tap for the filaments. It doesn't have a center tap at all. And these guys, they figured out two workarounds so that this power transformer would work in a 62 Brown Super. First, they changed the bias Supply to the type used in a Princeton where there's no extra wire off the power transformer. Then, because there is no center tap on the filaments, they put resistors from each filament wire to ground to create an artificial center tap. This is exactly what Fender did in the late 60s and early 70s. You'll see the 200 ohm resistors that are soldered from the pilot light, which runs on the filament voltage to ground. But they didn't do it in 1962. But there it is, just big as can be. Obviously factory. They put resistors in right at the 6L6 sockets. They soldered two resistors to ground right on each side, which they never do that. And then the final kicker is I consult my printed authorities. I keep notes on rare stuff. I've seen another super like that. It belongs to my friend Matt Baxter, who has Baxter Ranch Studio up in Auburn, California. And I looked and I go there, there's another one. It's like 60 serial numbers off. And it had the same thing done to it. And that's fun for me because so many days and days and days I slogged through 60s and 70s fenders that are all exactly the same, which is great because they should be. And you see something like that, you go, wow. And then I'm hoping our tech freaks will realize that there are workarounds. That power transformer wasn't really suited for this thing. It just. That's what they had. And they knew enough about how things work to add the things they needed to do to that one to make it work in the modern. In the. In the ten Years later amp.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

My goodness. I can't believe.

[B]

Different.

[A]

No, I wouldn't think so. It supplies the right voltages. It's just that didn't have that bias tap and they had to create an artificial center tap years before they ever actually did it commercially. They knew about it. But I've seen a Brown deluxe like that too once. Those 60, 61, 62 years. Vendor did some wild stuff. That's where you see the most unique. Like this doesn't match any schematic.

[C]

Right?

[A]

You see that? And that's the period of that 310 inch JBL showman cabinet with tone rings. They were just experimenting like crazy.

[C]

Yeah, I love it.

[B]

All right, I'm going to tap into your energy with a few more questions. Everybody please be a part of the show [e-mail] share the podcast with your friends. Please tell Emerald City Guitars and Grez Guitars and amplified parts. How much you love them for sponsoring this show. This next one. Well, let's do this. It says. I think I've maybe listened to. I don't know that I screened this one, but it's about a Falcon. So let's listen to Carl's voice memo.

[E]

Hey, Skip and Jason. This is Carl from Philadelphia. I have a Falcon chassis that I'm going to build a headshell for. That's how I got it. Just an empty chassis. So my question for Skip is, in construction, what should I look out for, aside from making sure there's enough room for everything? Do I have to make sure there's a certain amount of distance between the reverb tank and the transformers? Is that something to look out for? Would that cause some sort of interference or anything else like that that I should be cautious of? Definitely want to put a little spot for the foot switch and all that too. But yeah, that's my question.

[C]

Thanks.

[A]

That's. That's pretty cool. He found a Falcon chassis.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I've never had the reverb tank for a Falcon right up next to the amp. Because it's in a head cabinet.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm not certain. Fender Showman reverbs. Dual Showman Reverbs. Bandmaster reverbs. Those are head versions where the reverb tank is close and it doesn't cause them any problems. I would say it'd probably be okay. A little extra height might not be a bad idea. If you didn't get the tank with this thing. I'd use a short tank.

[C]

Right.

[A]

The smaller size tank. These Falcon reverbs are so noisy and crazy sounding anyway. They could be tamed. So a short tank would be a good idea. And as I recall, the tubes kind of sit in there sort of sideways. Just make sure there's a lot of air above them, you know, so that a tube isn't too close to anything wood. And then I don't think you'll have any problems. Although you may have some problems getting that falcon fixed. And then you may have some problems getting it to sound good. But one step at a time.

[C]

Yeah, great.

[B]

Thanks, Carl, for your question. We have a couple more. Raphael. Hey, Jason and Skip. Hope you're good. I've been listening to your podcast lately. Thanks for sharing Skip's knowledge. As I live in Brazil, it's almost impossible to get a vintage amp like a Deluxe or Champ. If you manage to find one, the price will be extremely high. Not for my pockets. So I'm considering building a clone of a Deluxe 5E3 for my personal use, I already built two little amps with circuits close to what a Fender 5F 2A is, but with cheap unusual tubes that I could find around. This circles back to what you were saying.

[A]

Beautiful.

[B]

Now I want to do something with a little more power and I don't want it to be a kit. It doesn't have to be an exact copy. So if you have some cool movies mod to share. I have a pair of RCA 6v6 GTs made in Brazil that I got for a good price at a local TV repair shop. They are working well. I also have some old Tesla ECC 83s and I can still find an old 5Y3 from RCA for a fair price on the Internet down here. But regarding components such as resistors and capacitors, I'd like your experience on what would make the amp sound like the vintage ones. As you probably previously mentioned on the podcast, Mallory 150s for Coupling and ceramic discs for small Pico Farad values. Anything different than that. Can you recommend a brand, series or reliable electrolytics for filter and bypass capacitors for resistors, what would you choose? Carbon comp or carbon film? Or maybe that type doesn't matter at all. Skip mentioned that black panel amps tend to sound better because of lower B voltages. Keeping the B voltage lower should help. Question mark. And then Raphael included a few pictures of the build so far, so.

[A]

Or the Brazil first stamp he called too.

[B]

Really? From Brazil?

[C]

Wow.

[A]

And there's a company down there that makes transformers like for tweet deluxes that are dirt cheap.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

There's 100% tariff on anything that goes there. 100%.

[B]

100%.

[A]

So if he went to our. Yeah, so if he went to Amplified Parks and bought an output transformer for 80 bucks, it'd be 160 bucks.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Plus whatever the crazy shipping would be and the customs and the stuff like that. Right. So that's a, that's a, that's a rough one. I have a good friend Glen, Glen Sousa, who's Brazilian great harp player, runs the Blues Jam in San Jose, which is a hotbed of, of blues. And he goes and visits his parents and grandparents like a couple times a year. And he always tries to squirrel away like a cool American made tube thing in his suitcase.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Because he can take it there and, and sell it. But this question is basically I want to make an amp. What's the best parts to use? Yeah. But what I would tell people here. Well, I'll answer It as though you weren't in Brazil. You can get it to work and sound fine with stuff from our sponsor or wherever, right? Mallory 150s. They sound very similar to the old parts, right? They sell carbon comp resistors that sound similar to the old parts. You can, you can buy pretty much anything and, and come up with a decent sounding thing with just parts that anyone could have. But as we've said before, did you grow those tomatoes or did you buy them from a can? And there has to be a difference in components or any fool could build a 5e3 that sounds like a real one and any fool can't. I can't. So if you think you can, right? So if you weren't in Brazil, I would say, well, come and look around in my barn. See this 3 foot tall looking thing that came out of an organ from the 50s. Look, there's most of the resistors and all these little capacitors and a bunch of old shit that you could use. The more old parts you put in the thing, the more old the thing is going to sound. In general, none of it matters. And yet all of it matters. I think that's a Kernard line. You know, if you changed one little thing, you wouldn't hear the difference. But there's got to be a difference because we all have the recipe, but we don't all come out with the same thing, the same stew. So if you're in Brazil, I tried to tell them there's got to be some affordable junk down there because everything was tubed down there too. But he says you don't really see much in the way of old TV sets and consoles and crazy junk like that. So for him I say, don't worry about the parts, build it. We like F and T electrolytics because they're high quality and the price finally went down. We like the classic Sprague atom electrolytics. Sometimes they're too physically large to fit in our amps and they cost a lot. And Illinois capacitor is still a perfectly fine, you know, electrolytic capacitor that I've used jillions of over the years. Even the Zycons and Panasonics that you could get from like Mauser or someplace like that. As long as the values and the voltages are fine, they're going to be fine. I'm more into good tube sockets. I don't like those ones with the ceramic that are just made offshore. They break. I like good jacks, good potentiometers, you know, CTs new stuff that you can get. So build the thing and then say, all right, now I gathered up some vintage parts. I'm going to put two or three of these things in and see if I can hear the difference. Okay, Just build it first. Because it would be easy to spend an awful lot of time gathering up all this stuff when you really could be spending your time doing a really nice, careful job. I saw his picture, looked like he was doing a nice neat job. Take your time to enjoy your work. Don't put it together like you're trying to get it done in the middle of the night. That's what all those standals look like. It looked like it was 11 at night and the guy was coming at 5 in the morning to pick it up and he just had to finish it. You know, it's like no effort at the beauty of the workmanship inside at all. And if you want to build your own amp, it's a lot more fun if you can appreciate the construction, the quality of the workmanship. Not just that. Oh, I'm going to build this kit for 399 and then I'm going to have a two thousand dollar tweed champ because you won't get into the process. You know, nothing more fun than working on a typewriter or digging. I've been cleaning the barn, so I find, you know, I've all these cardboard boxes full of stuff that I just crammed stuff in like 14 years ago. So you get a cardboard box and you pull it out, you go, oh, look, you know, there's a mower 12ax7 and you go, oh, look, here's some old capacitors I'll never use. And you throw them away. And that is relaxing. It's like building a puzzle. So if you can get that way with your workmanship and actually enjoy each solder joint and go, yeah, I did that.

[C]

Great.

[A]

Then you're going to have a lot of fun. You know, more fun than somebody who's just trying to get it done.

[C]

Sure.

[B]

All right, good luck, Raphael. Let us know. I'm going to sense or post some photos on our Instagram of Raphael's earlier amp project. What do we have here? Okay, Peter, we're down to the last two for today. Peter says, as I'm sure you know, Verellon Devices has been developing, testing a solid state replacement to traditional vacuum tubes. They have named it the Octal. I just received an update with the option to pre order the devices. A pair of tubes is 300 bucks. Maybe too early to weigh in, but at some point it'd be interesting to hear what Skip thinks. Has this sort of thing been attempted before? How does this effort differ from straight up solid state designs? Question 2. I have several attenuators and other forms of output power transfer, power control, the ua aux, Weber, mass, et cetera. And I think that the way these devices function is pretty straightforward. I have also been running a Benson Amps Monarch Reverb plus which has some sort of tube based power attenuation scheme. The power scaling works very well. But how does it work? Is the Benson design unique or has this been done in earlier circuits? We could get Chris Benson on the phone to field this one at some later date. But maybe, you know, I don't know.

[A]

Specifically because I haven't looked at a Benson. Yeah, but attenuators go between the amplifier output transformer and the speaker. It's basically a volume control that you stick between the amp and the speaker. The Benson thing is a whole different dealio. I'm sure they're controlling the actual volume voltage. In other words, the big boys can set up a circuit where here's your 50 watt 460 volt 2E34 Marshall Head. But because of their sophisticated transformer and or circuitry, they can do something where, whoa, let's lower it down to 300 volts on the plates. Now you've got like a 20 watt amp and in a way that actually is doing that. Most of the early attempts at a switch that went from full power down to 1 watt or whatever, those things all sound terrible because you can't just turn an amp into a lower powered amp. You're going to make it not sound as good. But the big boys, they've figured out ways that really, truly reduce the power of the amp in a normal kind of way. Mostly through really expensive power transformers and circuitry that homeboys like us can't afford.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

What do you think about this, Verrall? And have you seen these?

[A]

No, but you see, what do you think my first question is going to be? You should know. What's the goal? What are we trying to do here? Why? I could see why you'd want an electric car, but why do you want a solid state tube for $150 each? Yeah, you get some pretty good from the, I mean I, I just say what's the point? Not that there isn't one, just I don't know what it is. And then of course, kind of like the news these days. Don't believe that. Call me in a couple years. And say all these cool people that are musicians and know a lot, love it. At that point, I'm interested. Until then, it's interesting only as, you know, something out in the sonic fringe. What was that guy with the guitar, the speaker that I forget. It was an all acoustic amp.

[C]

Right.

[A]

That didn't use electricity, but some.

[C]

We.

[A]

We talked about it. I mean, I love the far out stuff. I don't do that much of it myself, but I'm glad it's there. And I don't really know anything about the Solid State Tubes, but I still say to cut to the chase. Why? What's the point? Oh, well, they sound better. Okay. Or. Well, they'll never break and they'll last forever. And I'll say, well, okay, you know, pair of tongues. All 6550s last forever too.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Sure. Won't work on a champ or single ended amps. There's. I'm just looking at the page right now.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Ben Verelin is like a mile or two from where I'm sitting, so maybe interesting. Somebody from there will chime in. They're in Seattle too.

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Now let's see.

[B]

Yeah, go ahead.

[C]

All right.

[A]

Gotta have some music.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

And. And we have to have. I'm lucky to have two radio stations, actually three. The Nevada City one. KVMR is kind of nationally famous for being an independent radio station. And there's a great one in Chico, California called kzfr, the Zephyr. The other day I turned it on. It was Texas Alexander's birthday and he was.

[B]

Who was that?

[A]

Texas Alexander with Lonnie Johnson doing a song called Crossroads. Not that song. This is 20s ultra cutting edge guitar and piano. Texas Alexander with Lonnie Johnson. Crossroads. Then KZFR segued right into your man Julian Losh with Bill Frizzell. This is the kind of stuff you don't get from a regular radio station or even some of the streaming stuff because you don't have to pick. Put on, Find, Stream a cool radio station and just let it roll for a couple hours. And I was knocked out. I was just petrified with the Julian and Bill Frizzell. I just went, what the hell? That's just. And of course it was right after early 30s, really good quality blues men that you might not ever hear. If you never heard Lonnie Johnson. You just don't even call me like that guy was so hot. Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson. Those guys were so hot in like the late 20s. Could play so clean and so fast that Just gotta hear it.

[C]

I love it.

[A]

And Final Standel, perhaps notor Western Swing. Noel Box, famous steel player in the. In Bob Wills and a bunch of other bands, but he had his own band called the Day Sleepers. You gotta love that. Noel Boggs and his Day Sleepers. And he wrote a really famous song that's been covered a million times called Steel and Home because it features the steel guitar, but the Noel Boggs and his Day Sleeper's version of Stealing Home. If you don't like. If you can't get into that, then I just don't know what to tell you. It just stomps like Charlie Christian. It's just like that. If you wonder why people like Western swing, you just put that thing on there. Imagine yourself at a dance because the. It's orchestrated. It's not just a string band like hillbilly style. And it, it builds. It's like, it's like. It's like Duke Ellington with cowboy hats. So check out Steel and Home. And then lastly, I have let everyone down for many, many years because I never told them this. The RC30 tube manual, which has been reprinted by our sponsors. You can buy it. You should have it. Anyway, in the back there's some actual schematics of things to build. You know, like a ham radio thing and a 10 watt amp and a whatever. Well, there's descriptions of how each thing works. And there's an 8 watt PA amp in that section. And there's about three paragraphs that describes how this thing works. I almost read it because it's exactly what so many people call me and want to know. Get your RC30, read those paragraphs. It's like a paragraph of Dickens. If it takes you a half an hour, whatever. Because it starts with the AC voltage, goes into the power transformer. The high voltage is rectified by the 5Y3, the power supply filter. It describes in beautiful technical, but not overly technical detail how the thing works. And it's not very long. It's not like listening to Mark Sampson try to tell you how something works. It just. It's boiled down, but not oversimplified. It's more like Jack Dar is telling you this is how a little amp works from the beginning to the end. And if you have any interest in learning or any interest in building, stop the presses, get your RCA RC30 and read through that thing because it's all there. It's pretty amazing. And I, I of course have worn out copies of that book. And I knew it was in there. I've Even looked at that schematic for some ideas of things to try. There's some regulator tube circuits in there too, by the way, but I never really read the description and thought about our crowd and how that thing could be on a T shirt. It's a little too long for that, really, but it's one of the most concise little descriptions about how a tweed champ works that I've ever seen.

[B]

Read it to your kids when they need to go to bed.

[A]

Daddy, would you read us from the tube manual?

[C]

No, that, that, that, that.

[A]

That's important. I'm not kidding. That thing is. It'll help the person that wants to start thinking about building or just learning how it actually works a lot. I mean, and I, I already knew that, but having it put down in just this super easy to understand format. Fantastic.

[C]

Great. Yeah.

[B]

If you have submitted a question and we didn't field it today, we'll do it in a couple of weeks. PodcastBoardJournal.com is how you can submit your questions or voice memos. As always, thanks, Skip, for fielding everyone's questions. You were on fire today. I was impressed and I didn't have to do anything, so that was fun.

[C]

Well.

[A]

I never do anything for the podcast except do it. I got to get it together with some more guests and I took more extensive notes this time and we wanted to really, you know, give them, maybe elevate. Elevate them. Elevate the tension from like 1 to maybe 2.2.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Well, and, and now we know to go to North San Juan, California.

[A]

Yes. Especially if you want somebody to look at you like, what are you doing here?

[B]

Do you think they. Do you think they're kind of aggressive or do you think they're like.

[A]

No, I just think it's, it's, it's the mountains. You don't go there unless you're going there. You know, I live on a dead end street. I do the same thing to people. Where are you going?

[C]

Right.

[A]

And they've been that way for a really long time. We're talking, you know, Nevada City and North San Juan. The, the college professors and the art people and the true, real hippies. Not the, you know, not the ones with Range rovers, but the, not the ones that at Burning man, but the real hippies. Yeah, they still, they still live up there, you know, and they just. You drive up a dirt road up there, somebody's gonna go, what are you doing here? Of course, there was the herb thing for so long, and pro. That's not a thing anymore. I don't think, but there's still probably a little bit of that. Like this is. This is where we live. This is our fence. But it's just a really, really tight knit little small community and quite a few people lived there for a really long time. And it's just hard to imagine in California, our international following. Lots of California is just rustic, baby, you know, and not anywhere near town. Just trees. And that place is like that.

[B]

So there's. There's a Sebastopol near there. That's not the other Sebastopol in California.

[A]

Yes, there is.

[B]

How are there two towns named the same?

[A]

That's a town in Russia. Oh, I don't know why they. I don't know.

[B]

Gotta be confusing.

[A]

It's probably another. There's. I know there's some. Some Marysvilles around and a Maryville and. Yeah, but that other Sebastopol I've never even been to, I think. I'm not sure it even has a population. It's just like a historic, you know, it's a dot on. On an old map, I believe.

[C]

All right.

[A]

You get up into that gold rush country. The terrain is so steep. And then of course we have the elimination of logging, which we could talk about again someday because that's turning around and there's just nothing going on up there. There's beautiful big paved roads that go to towns that might have a gas station or a cafe and that's it. But used to have hotels and restaurants and bars and sawmill and all of that stuff. So there you go.

[B]

Yeah, I'm learning so much. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Thanks to our sponsors and of course, thank you, Skip.

[A]

Keep looking at that Honda every once in a while and don't feel bad that you're not doing anything. It's just marinating to perfection.

[C]

Right?

[A]

You've done the important thing. You've got it somewhere dry.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Now you can just stare at it once in a while, sit on it and go, you know, like, pretend you're driving it.

[B]

Yeah, that's the whole idea.

[A]

Thanks everyone for patience in getting amps out and thanks for all the questions and thanks to all our sponsors.

[C]

Bye now.