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- [00:13]
A
Did I do it?
- [00:14]
B
You did it.
- [00:16]
A
Well, my IT team wasn't here this morning, so I'm always a little. Just that if something goes wrong, I don't know what to do about it, you know, I don't know what button to push. Bye, Jason.
- [00:28]
B
Hi, how are you?
- [00:30]
A
I am groovy.
- [00:32]
B
Yeah. Yeah, it's the latest in California.
- [00:35]
A
We had an inch of rain about a week ago.
- [00:37]
B
Oh, that's good though, right?
- [00:39]
A
Absolutely. Ended the fire season. I got to mow my great big, giant dry field with the tractor, which I usually can't do until it rains because you don't want to start a fire because that dry grass burns. But so, yeah, we had some rain and definitely fall. Ish. And most Importantly, it was October 8th that we had a fire here that I had to run for my life. But it was north wind and hot in the middle of the night, and just the patterns are different. So that is good. And I got to drive the Ferguson. Completely obsolete technology that just has such a charm. Like, I spent three hours on that tractor. This is an early 50s Ferguson T. What's it called? Something 35 to 35. And it has big wheels in the back and little ones in the front. And it's big, kind of like a car, you know? But when. When you light it up, that engine just goes. And it goes real slow, but it gets the job done with this big mower. And then after that, I jumped on my new mower, the one I had to go to Oregon to get, and it's just like, wow, this is the whole different thing, you know, a tiny little engine howling away, but basically does the same thing. When you drive it over some grass, you look back and it's lower, right?
- [02:07]
B
Yeah.
- [02:08]
A
But two different. Completely different technologies. And that old Ferguson thing, even with a bunch of things wrong with it, it would just keep on going. You could just see why people used them for years and years and years. I'm sure it's never been taken apart or anything. Now, I don't have the knowledge really, to fix stuff on it, but the guy I got it from who lives across the street, he helped me, and we got some of the final little things figured out on it. It's just. It's just fun to drive. Of course, it would kill you in so many ways, right? There's no beer drinking on that thing because everywhere you look, there's, like, a place. Think about, well, I better tuck my shirt in, right? Because there's these giant things turning and big rods pinching and, like, down by your feet. Well, if you fell off of that thing, it would drive over you. Then the mower I have would chop you into little pieces and then it would just keep on going and through your neighbor's house until, you know. So people, you have to be on your toes for that old stuff. And of course, life. Right. We used to do such dangerous things. Are you old enough to remember taking off in an old beat up car that you got for $500 with no cell phone? Because there was. Of course, we did stuff like that all the time. Yikes. So we're babies.
- [03:31]
B
So welcome everybody. The truth about vintage tractors is the Ferguson, when I look at an old tractor, whether it's a John Deere or that or is Case is a tractor too, right?
- [03:43]
A
It did, absolutely.
- [03:44]
B
Did you buy this one because of the reputation of that particular tractor brand or are all old tractors kind of created equal?
- [03:54]
A
A. I. It was complete opportunity. Okay. Right. Basically, the whole thing started because a cool guy who lives across the street, his name is Roy Clark, by the way, I heard something on the radio. Did I mention this last podcast? It was Roy Clark and Joe Pass. Oh, yes. Yeah, the Hee Haw guy who everybody knows is a fierce guitar player and Joe Pass. And they were playing a Hank Williams song. So I've got to dig into that. Anyway, Roy Clark across the street is a. Grew up around tractors and there's like a bunch of old broken down ones in his yard and ones that work. And he said, hey, you know, there's this tractor and I know this guy who's been mowing this big field behind this church out in the country. You know, that's all he's ever done with it for years and years. And then the guy died and they decided to do something else with that land. And here's this tractor. So he got me the tractor for free and brought it home. And then I think I gave him, I don't know, $500 or something. It needed a. Believe you could get on Amazon and buy a carburetor for that thing.
- [05:05]
B
Wow, that's great.
- [05:06]
A
Yes, yes. In the, in the other. In all over the world, old tractors like that are everywhere. In fact, that carburetor was made in China. So they're replicating parts from 1950s tractors still today. Right. There's probably a lot more similarity, but you know, this. Probably not as brand specific as you might think, but we bought some parts for it and I had to take the tank apart and get all the funk out of the gas tank. The gas tank sits above the engine. And the only thing that makes gas go into the engine is gravity. So, of course, there's no fuel pump or anything like that. Right. You just open up a little valve like a faucet and dink. Ding, ding, ding, ding. And by the way, that thing uses less gas than the lawnmower in the same amount of time. The lawnmower uses more gas. And the old Ferguson just goes. It's weight and torque. You know, once the engine gets going, it has so much power at slow speeds because it's just so heavy and balanced and just. It was fun. Daydream a little bit.
- [06:10]
B
Yeah.
- [06:11]
A
Think about making junk and, you know, stuff.
- [06:18]
B
It's a good life.
- [06:20]
A
Well, for a few hours, but. And it's also tiring. You know, it's. You think you're just sitting there riding lawnmowers, too. You spend a few hours on one of those, it's hard to keep your posture good, and you end up feeling kind of hunched over and bent up for a day or two, at least. I do my age, sure. But the place looks awesome now. It's all smooth and mowed, and the deathly stench of heat and fire is pretty much gone. And looking forward to easing into a little fall action. Right? Making a pot roast or something. Cornbread. More recipes. Yeah, road trip would be fun. I'd really like to go up to Lava Beds National Monument again if we. If we get the chance. But we'll see how it goes. All right.
- [07:05]
B
What's on the amp bench?
- [07:07]
A
I'm prepared. Plexi super base.
- [07:11]
B
What?
- [07:12]
A
On your bench? That's 100 watt Marshall from pre 1970 or so. And yeah, there's two young guys. They live in Reno and they're brothers. And one guy looks like Barry from Grez Guitars and plays steel guitar, is always impeccable. And the other guy looks like a young Jimmy Page who has the long, crazy hair. And they. They play music and they're into old amps. The guy has a Bigsby. And. Yes. And they live at home. And they must have really groovy parents who indulge that they go to. They're still in school. I think they're maybe 21 and 22.
- [07:53]
B
What? Bigsby?
- [07:56]
A
Yes. So they go to college and they're vintage ant freaks. And they. It just shows you that there are. It's not only guys in Birkenstocks with their little ponytail at the guitar show talking about Strats they got in 1980. There are some guys that were, like, born in, you know, 2,000 who are into this stuff. And they brought that, and it had a few goofy mods done to it. Master volume, basically. Pretty stock. And I'll say again, I don't know why people don't know this, but there's really only a couple of Marshalls. And all the little differences are just the subtlest little things that they did between a super lead and a super bass. It's all about the brights. The bright caps. We've talked about that before on vendors. They put bright caps on those amps, but there's no switch, so you can't turn it off. And that makes one channel. As soon as you turn it up, just go. That's why jillions of people will never play a Marshall. They had put a bright switch on those things, there'd be millions more people that use Marshalls because, you know, they don't have to sound like that. So the super bass one, of course, is desirable because it sounds mellower. But very few people seem to understand why. And it's all just simplest little thing. I think it's like speaker reconing. These Marshall dudes think they've got some sort of, like, mystic knowledge. Rosicrucians or something. But just look at the schematics of that stuff. It's. It's pretty simple.
- [09:29]
B
And we often talk about Fenders, and we often talk about old American PA heads on this show. Do you need to look at the schematic when you see a Marshall like that to double check where mods have been made? Or you can kind of tell right away.
- [09:45]
A
Way less fluent than I am on other stuff. Also, they drive on the wrong side of the road there. You know, they do. And all the color codes are all weird. And if you did a million of them, you'd get handy with it. But there's a lot of little stuff that they do differently where you just have to go, what the heck? Schematically, they're very similar to the American amps, but just the way they're laid out. Do you know why the Siamese twins moved to England?
- [10:14]
B
Is this a joke?
- [10:15]
A
Because the other one wanted to drive, right? I guess it was a little wrong time of year for a dad joke. I think I might have pulled that one out on our last dad joke thing from a couple years ago. I apologize.
- [10:32]
B
No, it's all good.
- [10:33]
A
No more guilty plea. Well, maybe one more. I like the Pet Shop Boys. Shh. Don't tell anyone. They're so cool. They're a disco cover of you Were Always on My Mind. Willie Nelson is Just such a crazy rework of the thing. And Jill is showing me that they have a new video and the guy's at like 70 years old now. Right. But it's still, it's still really cool and they just are very dry and Yeah, I think it's called A New Bohemia. All you Pet Shop Boys fans will know what I'm talking about. But you know, it isn't just Sun House. Yeah, Robert. Robert Johnson listener Ike sent me a video about a documentary finding, Searching for Robert Johnson. Okay, I'm looking forward to viewing it, but I haven't yet. I know it has John Hammond and hopefully it doesn't have some doofus. I hate it when they get some guy like, I don't know, Garth Brooks to talk about, to talk about Robert Johnson. But that's fine. I'll look forward to that.
- [11:41]
B
Okay, well, we have some sponsors for this show. Emerald City Guitars being one of them. I'm headed over there in about two hours right now. I mean, they have so many vintage Fenders, it's kind of embarrassment of riches. I'm looking at a 57 champion 5v1 61 fender deluxe, 6g3 fan master head and cabinet. They've got our buddy Chris Benson's amps from Benson Ampson, Oregon, on and on. They probably have a dumble that's not even on their website that somebody could go play through head on. Come on up to Seattle, go to Emerald City Guitars. They got a D Armond, they got a R5T Dearman right now. So those are three grand.
- [12:28]
A
Well, they actually have come down a tad, but I was involved in that a little bit. The great Louis Garcia guitar pig. He was the first one to buy one of these things and he brought it to me and I just went, what the heck? This is like a tweed Princeton but with a gigantic output transformer on it. And of course they sound unbelievable. And then there were articles and then the prices went up. And then some people paid a ton for some and they've like everything. I think there's a post pandemic kind of, you know, downturn. But there's a. There's a tweed Princeton and there's a Tweed Deluxe and there's a Tweed Super. So that's 2, 10. And those are all three de Armand models that they made and they're all really great. So if you ever happen to run across one of those. Don't, don't be. Yeah, don't be any. Don't let it go. Speaking of the little baby one. One thing I've been meaning to mention and in your spare time I know you're just awash with it. Take the chassis out of that Silver Face Champ that I sent you.
- [13:33]
B
Okay.
- [13:34]
A
Take the tubes out, leave them in the back of the amp and send it to me because you know, development is ongoing and I've got. Wow. I've got some Skunk works tricks I want to do to that thing.
- [13:46]
B
Wow, this is breaking news. Okay, sure.
- [13:49]
A
And yes. I wasn't sure if I asked. How should I do this? Well, I wanted to have this. I kind of want to have a Baffler.
- [13:57]
B
Somebody sent us a baffler too. So go ahead.
- [13:59]
A
Well, this baffler, I think. I think I want the Baffler. The Baffle E. The person who knows should email me because I'm not really sure I want to throw this out to the world quite yet. So Fender amps, your champ. They have the number one input and the number two input. The number one input is the one everyone uses. The number two input is the one no one ever uses. Well, occasionally because it's quieter and less trebly. Right. It's rolled off in a way that most people don't really find. Most people would rather be in the loud channel and just adjust accordingly. Well, what did I do to a champ? I built recently where I changed those two jacks to be truly like a high gain and a low gain, not just a resistor that rolls things off and makes it sound like you turned your guitar down. In other words, I've made the two inputs both very useful.
- [14:58]
B
Two amps in one.
- [14:59]
A
Basically it changes the characteristic of the amp quite a bit and I think it would expand. I think if Julian not from Trailer Park Boys, but Lodge, I think he dig the low one if he was sitting there. Oh, the. The way I've been making them all these years, it can be hard to get a clean sound out of them sometimes with a loud guitar especially, you know in the olden days they had the guitars always turned down, which not everybody does anymore. So anyway, I did it. I made a Champs, you know, four and a half watts. Well, I made an eight watt one. Double it, double the power. And I did that same input jack setup on it and it worked great. Wow. And thanks to the sour sound transformer.
- [15:48]
B
Dude Brian sour as a couple of.
- [15:51]
A
Years ago when after he was on he sent me for free. Gotta love that. A big ass. An output transformer for a single ended amp. That's just gigantic. Like the a 30 watt looking thing, right? So I put that thing on this Champ. And I made appropriate revisions to the power supply and added a choke and blah, blah, blah. So now I have this champ that's twice as loud, you know, or twice as powerful sounding. Let's just say there's a noticeable difference. So then the last gen, I thought, smart move was I put a regular little El Nico that like they come with in it. And then on the back I put a jack that's my answering machine is going off. I put a jack on the back. When you plug in, it disconnects the little speaker inside. So it's basically like a head with a little practice speaker in it. Pretty smart because you could never hear what the amp could really do through that little tiny box with a little tiny eight. They sound so much better through a bigger cabinet or a 112 or something or other like that. Right. So normally you'd have to unplug the little eight and plug in your cabinet. Well, I just made this switching thing, so when you plug in, it just disconnects the. The eight completely. And when you get home, when you get done with your jam, you unplug the cabinet and you're just right back to the little 8 inch speaker so you can play it in your, you know, bedroom.
- [17:13]
B
Wow, cool.
- [17:15]
A
I'm gonna sell it too. I don't. I'm not gonna ship it, but I'm gonna sell it. Yeah, I've been. Well, I've probably fixed 75amps in the last six to eight weeks. For sure. A lot.
- [17:29]
B
So the baffler is. What have you done to the channel?
- [17:31]
A
What did I do?
- [17:33]
B
Okay.
- [17:33]
A
Yes. What did I do to create a better high and low input setup? And I told, and I mentioned it before, I told people as I just, I saw it somewhere and I said, you know, this is a good idea.
- [17:45]
B
So now I have referenced various old books and catalogs and told us to look at things. And I'm guessing, guessing those are breadcrumbs.
- [17:55]
A
Yeah. And I'm always torn between wanting to share a good idea and going, wait a minute is better. Hang on to that for a little while longer.
- [18:08]
B
So you also. Not that he needs our business or publicity because I think he's sold out, but you, you tend to be a little skeptical around new products when this sour sound transformer, did it live up to the hype?
- [18:22]
A
I don't have anything to compare it to.
- [18:24]
B
Okay.
- [18:26]
A
All I can say is several people have had his deluxe ones and liked them. I've put a couple of them in amps and they sounded great. I put this big old beast. I looked on his. On his website. I wanted to see how much it cost, right? Because I could. I could do this again. I'd actually like to kind of make a scratch built little head that had the same type of circuit because those silver face champs, they're so expensive. Yeah. I only did it to this one because somebody had already. He had a repair tag and he had a business card and stuck inside from me like 30 years ago. But then when I got the amp, I could see he'd listened to the podcast because he gutted it out and built the tweed Princeton circuit in it. But he didn't do a very nice job. And so I just said, well. And then I saw that big transformer sitting on the shelf and I said, I think I better go for this.
- [19:24]
B
Make it.
- [19:24]
A
Make it cool. Wasn't. Didn't I tell you about the place with all the coral?
- [19:30]
B
Yeah. Yes, you did.
- [19:32]
A
Yeah, that was. That came from there. I'm looking. Filled with salt water tanks with lights and bubbling bubbles and billions of colors of living coral.
- [19:42]
B
And where was this again?
- [19:44]
A
Was where the amps were. I went somewhere to help someone whose dad died. Remember, don't leave your family with all your.
- [19:52]
B
Or tropical fish. That sounds even worse than amps. They're. They're. Yeah.
- [19:58]
A
No fish, just coral. There was a couple, yes. But still the heat. No, you can't. The whole back of this building was covered with big commercial filtration systems. You know, like you'd have like swimming pool equipment or something. You. You gotta really be careful. Saltwater aquarium. There's all this stuff that has to be just perfect and you have to create it all. You can't. It's not like putting a goldfish in a bowl or something, you know, or some bluegills that. They live almost anywhere, but that stuff. No, no, no, no, no. Anyway, yeah, we didn't finish the sponsors.
- [20:33]
B
We didn't finish the sponsors. And he's not a sponsor. But Sour Sound. I'm looking at their website. They don't have a Transformer for under a hundred dollars. But they don't have a Transformer that costs more than $200. They're most. They're closer to $200. I guess.
- [20:48]
A
He convinced me of his. Yeah, he was convinced me of his efforts, of his commitment. He was convincing anyone who's willing to.
- [20:57]
B
Wind a transformer in 2025.
- [21:00]
A
God. Yeah.
- [21:02]
B
That's like the ultimate friendship bracelet. Yeah.
- [21:08]
A
Okay.
- [21:09]
B
Grez Guitars sponsoring the show again for our friend Barry at Grez in Petaluma. California. The grand tour. I was just playing it. Such a cool guitar. Everything he does is so amazing and perfectly done and not over the top. You know, Ken Parker just died. I don't know if you knew that. Of the Parker fly fame.
- [21:31]
C
And.
- [21:31]
B
And Ken Parker for years just made these, like, arch chops that were. No, not. I mean, they had a lot going on, but they were just. No, nonsense. He never threw paint on them. They were all natural. Barry's kind of like that. Little more Flash. But Barry's just all about the esthetic and looking timeless and. And making a playable guitar with no. No frivolities.
- [21:54]
A
Also.
- [21:55]
B
Yeah.
- [21:58]
A
What you make stuff out of. Super important. And I can guarantee you that any Grez guitar with no amp just sitting there in a quiet room, you'll go, whoa, Wilbur, that's some. That's some tone and sustain. That's not generated by the amp or the pickups. It's just the wood.
- [22:18]
B
Yeah. Thanks, B. Yeah, thanks, Barry. And then last but definitely not least, our friends At Amplified Parts, AmplifiedParts.com have pretty much every new part that we talked about. They've even got tubes. They've got the hammered silver enclosures if you want to build your first pedal. They've got pedal kits, they've got amp kits. There's a gazillion tech articles. Amplifiedparts.com Tell them the truth about vintage amp sent you.
- [22:44]
A
My procurement team just spent probably three hours looking all over the place trying to find something that I use a lot of.
- [22:58]
B
Okay.
- [22:59]
A
And. Oh, over there.
- [23:01]
B
Your procurement team at Amplified Parts?
- [23:03]
A
No, my procurement team here at the vast world domination Skip Simmons headquarters.
- [23:09]
B
Oh, okay.
- [23:10]
A
Yep. In other words, my wife was trying to find a better deal on Jax. Oh, impossible. Forget it. I mean, their prices. Good luck beating it on anything. Speakers, tubes, parts, capacitors, stuff like that. Just saying that. That's another thing we can say about them. Besides, they. They have, like, the gigantic selection. But man, oh, man, you'd think I could find a, you know, maybe a better deal, but I didn't.
- [23:45]
B
Okay.
- [23:47]
A
And I buy stuff by the hundreds of sometimes. Totally. Yeah. I just bought 200 more power cords. Power cords. That's just amps that needed power.
- [23:57]
B
Heavy box.
- [23:58]
A
I bet that that would be probably two or three boxes. Yeah, they were. That's about £40 for. You know, they're pretty heavy. Yes. Yesterday I put one on an amp, and I went to plug it in. The ones I buy have the plug on one end, and then the other end has that IEC connector because they're Way cheaper than ones that just have pigtails on the end. So I always have to cut the IEC off and strip it down and prep it, you know, but it's worth it. Except the only thing is, I cut the plug off and I went to plug the amp in and I had the IEC end in my hand.
- [24:33]
B
Oh.
- [24:36]
A
So I ruined it. Had to take it off, put another one on, slap myself upside the head. Right.
- [24:42]
B
Incredible.
- [24:43]
A
Oh, yes. Glad you still do a lot of stuff. If you do a lot of stuff, you kind of make some mistakes every so often, I guess.
- [24:50]
B
Better there than on the tractor.
- [24:52]
A
Yeah. You had to keep your wits about you there and achieve a nirvana. Slow. The thing goes, like, slower than you'd walk, and you just looking way down there and you're going, well, what you do is you look at your watch and you just go, okay, I'm just going to do this for another hour, you know, as opposed to a lot of times when you're working, you're going, am I done? Am I getting close to being done? No, you can't do that on the tractor. You just have to just get into the Zen state and, you know, and just realize you're going to be doing it for a certain amount of time. Yeah. Zen state.
- [25:29]
B
Zen state. We. We take questions on this podcast from people around the world who are trying to work on amps themselves or maybe have just a family recipe they want to share to the world. Podcast@fretboardjournal.com is how you can be a part of the show.
- [25:45]
A
Hold on just a sec.
- [25:46]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [25:56]
A
All right, there we go. Oh, man. That was the great Kevin from Ohio. All right, I'm back.
- [26:04]
B
Sorry, I was. I was chatting with Steve Sost, who wants to be on the show again.
- [26:08]
A
So he'd be a fab guest.
- [26:11]
B
All right, so next week we'll do an episode with him, and everybody should send questions as quickly as possible for Steve, if they are ones that Skip can't answer.
- [26:20]
A
Yeah. Remember he had that picture of me when I was about 30?
- [26:24]
B
Yeah.
- [26:24]
A
We have no idea where it was or why he had it or what. The reverb units, I think maybe a brown deluxe, like the one up at Emerald City or something cool like that.
- [26:34]
C
Yeah.
- [26:35]
A
Yeah. Whoa. That was before I went to the DMV and they put gray as my hair color. I was like, before the day I went to Gym Boys Tacos, and I looked at the price tag because it seems so expensive. And then I realized that they had given me a senior citizens discount.
- [26:52]
B
Oof.
- [26:53]
A
Without Asking.
- [26:55]
B
That's. Yeah, it's all right.
- [26:58]
A
I'm still. I'm still.
- [27:00]
B
I. I walk by the. I'm. The neighborhood I'm in, in Seattle is Ballard. And the Ballard Senior center has a little sandwich board saying that they have like discounted lunches for. For seniors in the neighborhood. And it starts at age 50. And that's. That's a little too young for me to.
- [27:16]
A
Come on.
- [27:17]
B
No, I know.
- [27:18]
A
Yeah, there's a. And. But the size, there's a difference that they give it to you as compared to somebody who's asking for it.
- [27:24]
B
That's true, that's true.
- [27:26]
A
But the time may come when I go.
- [27:28]
B
We.
- [27:30]
A
We hadn't gone to eat breakfast someplace in probably a year or two, but it was 40 bucks, right. For just some little, you know, bacon and eggs in some little, you know, small place. So maybe one of these days we'll start cashing in on the early bird, you know, seniors before 5 o' clock with the biscuits and gravy or something like that. Right? I don't know.
- [27:54]
B
Okay.
- [27:55]
A
It's making me feel too old.
- [27:56]
B
We're gonna, we're gonna field some questions now before the clock is ticking. We're not getting any younger.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah, I gotta focus.
- [28:02]
B
Okay. You can be on Patreon too. We have a Patreon for the show and that gets you to the front of the line. And John in Wimberley, Texas is one of the people on Patreon. John writes, I have a 1954 Tweed Twin 5C8 Low Power Twin, which sounds amazing. Question is, I had an old, or should I say experienced amp tech tell me in his experience, the low power twins sound better than the high powered twins. He felt that the high powered twins needed by bands before PA systems were prevalent, sacrifice tone for volume. Since the high powered twins are still used and venerated today. I wonder if that's true, though, of course, the whole topic is subjective. I know. And he says this guy was experienced enough to be in Boston when the new Yardbirds played the one, so that a few months later changed their name to Led Zeppelin. That's from John in Texas. So what do we think about the low power versus high powered twins?
- [29:02]
A
That one is just stupefying. I'm not quite sure where to start. Oh, let's see. Old time repair guy says, yeah, I like me those old twins even better than those later 50s twins. Whatever. Through the 50s, the amps just got louder and cleaner and more powerful, you know, more tone controls, just more of everything. On the other hand, the amp say that got me into PA heads is Tweed Pro TV front 5C5. You know, one of the very simplest circuits. This guy's tweed twin is a little bit more sophisticated than that, but not a whole lot more. It just has more channels and stuff. So I just say I would just. I wish there was like good kale and then really great kale and then that kind of kale. It's all fantastic. You know, if you, if, if you're looking. Yeah. If you're looking for an excuse to like something, if it's something that is really great. Like any tweed amp. How about this? There are little champs called champion six hundreds from about 48 to 52 somewhere in there.
- [30:14]
B
Yeah.
- [30:15]
A
They use a different circuit than the later champs and they're way quieter. They don't just instantly start grinding when you just barely turn the volume up. So for many years people went, eh. Even I was like, eh. And they didn't sell for as much. But today I build clones of that little thing for pedal platform amps for people who live in apartments. And that head room and stuff is the bomb. It makes it sound way bigger and cleaner and sound cooler. So if you can't get a good tone off of a low power tweed twin and you're yearning for a high power tweed twin, you need to check yourself, go make a sandwich. Because it's all, it's all fantastic. They just get louder. You know, the old ones have a big fat middle because they use that single tone knob that we're all into on stuff that we like the Silver Face Champs use when you modify them. But the later ones with separate treble and bass and stuff, there's some more variety and tone available there.
- [31:18]
B
Love it.
- [31:20]
A
But I say fantastic amp. Keep. Take good care of it. Get a Variac for 75 bucks on Amazon and run it at 110 and use the Variac to slow start it every time you turn it on. Why not? Yeah, just go give it about 10 seconds from 0 to 110. You'll never blow a filter cap or blow a rectifier tube or anything like that. It looks very good. That's very good for your old amp.
- [31:47]
C
Great.
- [31:48]
A
Next.
- [31:49]
B
Next. This is more of a Instagram link which I will share in the show Notes. I think he emailed you as well. Matthew or Matt says subject line ECL82. Skip mentioned the ECL82 on the last podcast. Here's a video I made with a little Lafayette PA I converted that had ECL 82s. It's a 1955 Les Paul Jr. Straight into the. With a little reverb. Kind of a voxish vibe.
- [32:17]
A
Sounds pretty cool.
- [32:17]
B
That's Instagram. Yeah.
- [32:19]
A
That's a power tube like an EL84 or 6BQ5. But inside the tube is another tube. A half. Like a half a 12AX7. And they were pretty common for a long time, but Fenders never used anything like that really. And so they're still pretty dang cheap. And we brought it up. The Boss Maestro outboard reverb thingy uses that. There were some Leslie amps that were used to make reverb that use them and they're just neat. You can look at a little amp that looks like it just has two power tubes, but it's the whole thing because there's two triodes also inside those power tubes. So you could make a little amp that just looks like it has two tubes, but it really has enough tubes to be a complete amplifier of it. Very cool. Yeah. And. And something that we can still get for pretty affordable. And I think there's even new ones. But the older ones are still pretty affordable. There's mullards and amperexes out there and stuff. And they're not going to be anywhere as expensive as, you know, 12AX7 are the stuff everybody wants. Great. All right.
- [33:34]
B
We've got one from a relatively new listener. And I'm ashamed to say I'm probably going to botch your name, but the subject line is 60s airline amp. And the listener's name is Ravinder, I believe. Hey guys. I started listening to the podcast a few months ago. I've learned so much already. Thank you for all that you do. I've never had a tube guitar amp before, but an interesting one popped up on the marketplace. An airline 6290 21A. A 60s point to point champ stylish amp. 112AX7 and 150L6. It seems like it's in great condition, but has the two prong cord. The Internet makes it seem like it's too dangerous to even play that. I need to install a one to one isolation transformer and a grounded cord to even play it. I understand this amp is running straight online and it is more dangerous, quote unquote, widowmaker than any other amps. But if it's being. If it's been used for decades, how dangerous is it really? I'm comfortable soldering for repaired pedals. However, I'm not so good at understanding the technical terms and how the circuitry really works. Is this project worth $200. That is from rvinder.
- [34:44]
A
I know someone named Ravinder. Oh, he's, he's.
- [34:47]
B
So I said it, right?
- [34:48]
A
India, East Indian. Okay. Pakistan. No, he's from. He's Indian. Anyway, did you already buy it?
- [34:59]
B
Well, unclear. This was from a week ago.
- [35:02]
A
If you haven't already bought it, that's a reasonable deal. If you have bought it, you're throwing down some good truth about vintage amps. Would Montgomery Wards and Sears, some of the hugest retailers in the world for decades, sell somebody's stuff that you were going to die when you used it? I mean, think about it, right? So the bottom line is, and even Jack Dark could tell you this, those amps are just for playing by yourself. And don't play them barefoot on a concrete floor because that grounds your body real good. And then you won't have any problems. And you can't usually put a grounded cord on because the chassis kind of floats. So just make sure it has a good two prong cord. Flip the plug back and forth in the socket both ways and don't put your lips on a microphone that's plugged into something else and you'll be fine. And replace all the capacitors, probably. Oh, another thing. We don't know if it's Supro Balco, you know, made it, or if it's Dan Electro. It says airline. It has aluminum chassis, it's made by Dan Electro. If it's got a chrome chassis, it's made by Valco. If it's Dan Electro. You got to be on the lookout for resistors that have gone way out of spec. Most resistors and fenders never go bad, but Dan Electrobots was into buying some bulk. So you're looking for 1 meg resistors that read 5 mag or 100k resistors that read a million ohms, stuff like that. So poke around, especially in there for those, and replace the electrolytics. They're going to be low voltage, 150v because those amps run on a lower voltage. But replace them and pay attention to polarity. And then of course, when you get done, hook it up to the speaker that you know works if you can even something in a brand new junkie amp because we really don't know if the old speaker in that airline sounds as good as it could. How's that?
- [37:07]
B
That was great. Keep us posted, Revender. Let us know how it goes if you end up going down that rabbit.
- [37:12]
A
Hole or if it's already too late.
- [37:14]
B
It's probably already too late. He's. He's. He's electrocuted himself. No, no. We hope you have it. We need all of our listeners.
- [37:24]
A
That tractor is a lot more dangerous than one of those widowmaker amps, I'll tell you that.
- [37:29]
B
Yeah, no, I can believe that machinery, Brendan. I don't know where Brendan lives. Oh, upstate New York. It says here right in the first line of this email. I'm in the process of building a repair business and was hoping for some more insight. We've heard a lot about Skip's worth work ethic, but it'd be great to hear him touch on accountability. Do you have any suggestions regarding general liability insurance? What happens when you make a catastrophic mistake? Have you had any catastrophic mistakes? How did. Or how would you go about making it right? We've all eaten the cost on something, but there's a limit to everything. Thanks in advance for any insight. Keep mainlining that. El Pado T A V A Brendan.
- [38:16]
A
Upstate New York.
- [38:17]
B
Yeah.
- [38:19]
A
Beautiful. I went there to Cornell. Was my. One of my kids went to Cornell.
- [38:24]
B
Beautiful this time of year, but it's all autumnal.
- [38:28]
A
Yeah. I've been to Saranac Lake during the Olympics. When I was a kid, I hitchhiked out there to visit to hang out with some friends who went out there just to get temporary jobs at the Winter Olympics. I was introduced to the boilermaker.
- [38:41]
B
This is the Lake Placid Olympics. Is that what we're talking about?
- [38:44]
A
Okay. Yeah, like Placid olympics.
- [38:46]
B
Was that 80 or 84?
- [38:49]
A
Would have been 80. No. I don't know. I could drink in a bar, unfortunately.
- [38:55]
B
Miracle on ice, right? No.
- [38:57]
A
Oh, my. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But we were just stupid kids and. Okay, yeah. Molson with. With like Wild Turkey in it or some. Oh, God.
- [39:09]
B
Yeah.
- [39:09]
A
Can't believe I even survived that. Let's see. Catastrophic mistakes. When I fixed guitars, I picked up the case of a nice old single cut Junior and it tumbled out of the case onto the ground. Put a little ding in the body. I had to take it to Keith Carey to get it fixed. I. Not. My catastrophic mistake would be. Can't figure it out. Or I ship somebody something and it immediately blows up or something like that. That's about worse it gets. And all I do is give them all their money. Or I just start with that, you know, I'm not into animosity. I would just say, look, I did my best, you know, I know what I'm doing. I screwed up or something. Didn't work. Let me just start with refunding you every Cent you have involved shipping, paying me, whatever, all of it. And so that way you're at zero again. You know, you got an app that doesn't work, but you haven't spent any money. Right. And then let's just see what we can do from there. That's the way. That's the way I would normally. One time this young kid brought me a plexi. And I forget what I had to do to it, but I fixed it. And then a couple months later, he calls me because he had gone to some Marshall guru in la. And the Marshall guru convinced this young kid that I had screwed up the power transformer. I believe the quote was that I had compromised the windings. Oh, you never want to do that. Never compromised your wings.
- [40:47]
B
No.
- [40:48]
A
But anyway, I went, well, that's crazy. And he's wrong. And then I. And. But he wanted money. I just gave it to him. He later left me a. Some sort of like a review that says, you know, Skip handled a difficult situation in calm and professional manner. But I was pissed because of course I know. I knew I didn't do anything to it. And I think he wanted, you know, three or $400, but it's a long time ago and. Is that the question? Is that the question? Are there.
- [41:20]
B
I think Brendan was wondering if he had. Like. Like, have you bothered with liability insurance?
- [41:26]
A
I just have. I just have. I have insurance on stuff that's here. I forget what it's called, you know, but I don't. I don't worry that someone's going to slip on the driveway and kill themselves. I don't have a handicap bathroom or anything like that.
- [41:41]
B
Yeah.
- [41:42]
A
You know, despite.
- [41:43]
B
People have to find you.
- [41:45]
A
Yes. And despite being. I mean, to us it seems like, whoa, that guy. You know, but still, it's just like a tiny. Just. I don't. I'm sure there's lots of shops in the country that do way more amps than me because they got a bunch of people doing it all at once. But I'm still very small. Yeah. And I. I don't have to worry about people not paying me. Like, if I feel like shipping out an amp and the guy's check hasn't arrived, I know they're going to do it.
- [42:13]
B
Sure.
- [42:14]
A
So. So I don't really have to worry about that too much. But there are people. The Northern California guy who's been fixing amps for longer than me that I tried to use for a few years a year when I first got popular. Remember? He wouldn't. He may. I Finally had him fix something for me. It was a carving. Just the chassis. Amp was only worth like two or three hundred dollars. And I took it to the music store where he picked stuff up and he fixed it. But he made me take the cabinet to the music store so that he could install the amp chassis in it because of liability. I mean, there's a line, you know. Right. I mean, if you can't tell not to stick your hand in the fan when the motor's going, you know, maybe better not be messing around with stuff like that. I think. I think most people would find that customers are pretty reasonable about things like that.
- [43:20]
B
Sure.
- [43:21]
A
Yeah. Don't be an idiot.
- [43:23]
B
Don't be idiot.
- [43:24]
A
There's shops that won't work on the amp unless they put a grounded cord in it and take the death cap out. Well, that's the shop you don't want to go to.
- [43:32]
B
Yeah. And don't compromise the windings and never compromise your wins.
- [43:37]
A
And if you think it's easy, here's a good one. I had a cus. I had a customer. He was, like, representing a company that owned 10 or 12 killer classic amps and wanted them all serviced. And he's from San Francisco, and he drove up here with all this stuff, and I fixed all these. He said he had a JTM 45, which is a very rare early Marshall. Real valuable. Well, when he got here, it turned out to be a reissue JTM 45, I think, from 1990 or so. One of the very first marshals that they tried to reissue an older one.
- [44:15]
B
Sure.
- [44:16]
A
And somebody had messed with it. Normally, I would have said, I'm not touching this thing. But since he brought all these other good amps, I said, take a look at it. So somebody had messed with it. The printed circuit board was kind of discombobulated and disconnected from the amp. And I spent a bunch of time trying to put it all back together. And when I got done, it worked great and sounded good, but it went. And I spent a long time trying to figure it out, Just as a challenge and also because if I couldn't fix it, I couldn't charge them. You know, if I could have fixed it, I could have easily said, hey, this amp was pretty hard, 200 bucks, whatever. The guy would have said, great. So I tried and tried and tried and tried to fix it, and I couldn't. I couldn't figure out why I was doing it. And the guy came and got all the amps. I gave it to him for free, and I told him about my Guru in Sacramento, Patrick. And I said, this guy could probably figure it out. So I didn't hear from him for about a month, and then he called me a couple weeks back. I should also say, this guy was, like, paid to do this for a company, and he was very savvy, you know, and he was getting into tube amps, and he was a musician, and he had the classic thing where he kind of oversimplified stuff a little bit. You know, he was a little bit cocky, let's just say. Okay, so he calls me. I took that thing to Patrick, and he couldn't figure it out either. And I went, whoa. Because that guy, I mean, I can't carry his volt meter. I've sent that a million times. So then he says, you know, I've been looking on the Internet, and I think I may have figured it out.
- [45:59]
B
Okay?
- [46:00]
A
And I'm getting ready with my lecture of, like, dude, really? 60 years combined expertise, looked at this thing and couldn't figure it out. And you looked on the Internet and you did figure it out. But the thing is, he did figure it out.
- [46:18]
B
Oh.
- [46:19]
A
He stared at pictures of this exact amp long enough to where he finally said, hey, there's a little wire from this point that goes over to this point, and it's not on my amp. And he ran the little wire and it fixed it. And he didn't even really know what it was. I know what it was. It was the center tap of the filaments on the power transformer had been disconnected by whoever had been fucking with this thing. And neither Patrick nor I had noticed it. And if we had just put an ohmmeter in the right spot before we even turned the amp on, we could have said, hey, man, there's no ground reference on this filament lead here. And we could have fixed it. You know how humbling that is. And then, of course, I had the guy that it's said, dude, you got so lucky. Don't go buy a gigantic hat because your head is so big. That is so lucky. And it just shows you that even a couple guys that know what they're doing can overlook something that's pretty obvious. I called Patrick and left him a message and said, no filament, center tap connection. That was the problem. And that kind of thing, you know, keeps you humble.
- [47:30]
B
It's great.
- [47:31]
A
No, it wasn't a happy ending. No. And the guy thinks he's probably going to start building his own brand of amps now. He's gonna think he's so sharp.
- [47:39]
B
Well, And I'm. I was just thinking, with AI, people will just be able to be like, what's different between this photo and this schematic?
- [47:46]
A
Yeah. And the bot. The real problem is that he was right.
- [47:50]
B
Yeah, that's the real problem.
- [47:51]
A
Better than me dad Gummett. Anyway, and I didn't charge. And. And it shows you that if you're tenacious, you know, you had a pretty alpha personality. And so I don't know how long he spent staring at the Internet, but don't assume you know anything, but even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while.
- [48:12]
B
It's true.
- [48:13]
A
That's nothing, Nothing wrong with just going out there and trying. But I was. I. I had to laugh. It was. I had to laugh. It was like Tim from Sacramento who goes to my thrift store after coming to my house and scores a ton of rare R B45s that were. Just happened to be there when he went at my thrift store right down the street from my house. And he lives in Sacramento. And then he calls me up and goes, hey, I stopped by that thrift store on my way home from your house. Guess what I found. You're going, oh, no. Oh, well, awesome. I better go drive the tractor and calm down. Yeah, yeah. I didn't even tell Mrs. Simmons about that one because she would have gone ballistic. She loves her records, you know, Gotta start telling people.
- [48:57]
B
All right, next, keep. Yep, keep the Questions coming, everybody. Podcastritboardjournal.com this one is from someone named Johnny Seven.
- [49:07]
C
Hey, Skip and Jason, this is Johnny Seven calling you from Seattle. I'm a longtime vintage tube amp nut, and now due to this podcast, I'm a weirdo that sits around in bed looking at schematics, trying to make sense of it all. Anyway, I really enjoy the show. It's hours of entertainment, I've learned a ton, and my tinkering skills have improved a hundredfold. And I love the sense of humor you guys have, particularly when you're talking about the mystical dark arts of the speaker recall in our world. So I thought I'd share my little encounter with one of these characters and make it a baffler.
- [49:42]
A
So here we go.
- [49:45]
C
Many years ago at an auction, I came across a small Supro amp. A cool looking little thing like a vintage suitcase with two speakers built into it and a beautiful sounding distortion almost straight out of the gates. And I used it for years like that whenever I needed that kind of sound. One day, one of the speakers started vibrating and sounding broken and messed up and I didn't know what to do, but a friend of mine had had some speaker work done in town. He said, oh, yeah, there's a guy up north that can fix this stuff for. So off I went, and I found the shop. As I walked in the doorway, speaker in hand, I was greeted with no. I stopped in my tracks. Are they open? Is this the right place? What is this? The speaker? Nazi way. In the back of the room, there was a small cloaked fig. No, he wasn't cloaked. Way in the back of the room, there was a little man looking up from his desk over his magnifiers at me. Nope, he repeated, I can't fix your speaker. So here you go. The bathroom. Question number one, how could utility couldn't fix my speaker from all the way across the room? He hadn't even inspected it yet. And number two, why couldn't he fix it?
- [50:56]
A
All right.
- [50:57]
C
Cheers. From Seattle.
- [50:59]
A
Wow. I bet he wrote that down.
- [51:01]
B
He must have written that down. And there is an answer. But we'll play that next time around, I guess.
- [51:08]
A
Well, I could give you my answer.
- [51:10]
B
Okay. What do you think it was?
- [51:12]
A
He didn't want to fix it. Oh, didn't matter what it was. He didn't want to fix that thing. He could tell it wasn't something he was into. And maybe he's getting retired and he's just tired of stuff like that or something like that. But if there really is an answer, I'm assuming that this guy said, hey, Pops, why can't you fix this speaker? And then. But I'll look forward to hearing that answer.
- [51:37]
B
All right, thanks. Johnny Seven.
- [51:39]
A
Yes. And a Johnny Seven was a toy gun from about 1967. 68, that all the boys wanted right before. Right before Hot Wheels. And it. It had, like, it shot like a soft foam thing, and then it had, like, a cap gun in it. I forget. There's seven little things that it would do. And I had one. So when I saw this guy's email handle that I think is Johnny seven, I had to point out that I had a Johnny seven. Now he may not even know what the hell I'm talking about because his Johnny 7 may be derived from a different source, but maybe not so Johnny7 knowledge. Yeah.
- [52:23]
B
Okay, we've got more questions, few of them. This one is from longtime listener Josh. Josh from Brooklyn here. I picked up a night PA head a couple of weeks back from Jose. A warm and wonderfully friendly retired gentleman is in Ozone Park, Queens. He sold it to me in working condition along with a Homemade cabinet containing an old 12 inch speaker. When I arrived in my car, Jose was sitting on his porch absolutely cranking Dark side of the Moon from his ipod through the amp and speaker to let me know everything was working. Be careful, he said. I just got a little shock from plugging this stuff in. But hey, all this for $100. What a great Tava find. From what I gather, the model number is the Knight 93 350. It's got a 5Y3 rectifier tube, a 6L6 power tube, and a 6L7 preamp tube. The speaker in the cab is a Utah from the 60s according to the EIA code. I'm not in the Tava constituency that has knowledge. I'm in the constituency that admires these folks and pays make things happen. The mic input on it features a screw in connector. And the speaker's connector has seven pins. Other than the obvious conversion to quarter inch input and outputs there, and of course servicing. Is there anything special that needs to happen to this cool little amp before it's ready for use? We'll stop there. It keeps going.
- [53:49]
A
First savvy listeners will have noticed. 5y3, 6l6.
- [53:56]
B
Yep.
- [53:57]
A
6Sl7, not a 6l7.
- [54:00]
B
Okay.
- [54:01]
A
And 6sl7 is a classic dual triode. Basically like a 12 at 7. And that night is one of the killers. That is one of the nights that sounds really good, just restored especially for harp. But it'd be pretty unlikely for an amp from the late 40s, early 50s to have every single capacitor still in good shape. Jacks are no big deal. That screw on thing, you can buy an adapter or you can take it off and put a quarter inch jack in the same. In the same hole. No big deal. Seven pin speaker connector thing, that's something that was real common in the PA days. But again, somewhere on there there ought to be room enough for a quarter inch jack to substitute for that seven pin thing to get your speaker hooked up. And I've done a million of these things. Well, not a million, but quite a few. And I would just suggest electrolytics generally gonna have to go coupling caps if they're old waxy ones. You never know. This guy might have put some parts in it and if it sounds good and it has the right size fuse in it, then you know, you could just jerry rig it, so to speak, or jury rig it. And it's pretty cool that he was cranking Pink Floyd out of it when he pulled up. That reminds me that PA heads sound great with music going into them. If you fiddle around a little bit with your input source, really great. Like better than a lot of people's stereos do just because the tube amps have such a cool big warm sound. So if you're not going to do any, take that thing apart, look in it and call me or maybe send me a picture of the guts and I'll say run it or I'll say no, take it somewhere or send it to me. Something like that is pretty easy to ship if I had one of those. They usually need a can asset or from our friends at CE Distribution, antique electronic supplies. Fairly expensive part, like 40 bucks. You could spend 2 to 2:50 having me do a real bang up job on something like that. So. Okay, ponder, but that's a cool score right there. Dude. I would want three or four hundred dollars for an unrestored one if I was selling it, which I wouldn't because I'd fix it up instead. Yeah, speaking of PA heads, you sent me a picture just before the podcast started of the Canadian Northern Electric.
- [56:33]
B
We're going to get to that, but we got to finish Josh's first.
- [56:35]
A
Oh, okay.
- [56:36]
B
Yeah, so then the ps. This is fun for me. Anyways, my friend Rob in Catskill, New York is running the second iteration of the Catskills Comedy Festival up there and Dave Hill is the opening night headliner. On October 17, Dave Hill, who was just at our fretboard summit, Dave requests a mid sized tube amp as part of his backline. So Rob, unused to such requests, asked me about sourcing one. I gladly stepped in and said, hey, it'd be so cool to bring up the 65 Gibson Falcon, which Skip had kindly offered a few words of advice to me for and my amp tech back in 2019. Skip had helped my tech get rid of the infamous tone sucking circuit, and I sent him a bottle of single malt as a thank you. The amp sounds amazing. And now Dave Hill will play some tasty licks through the Falcon on stage in just a few short days. How exciting for my nerdy self and perpetual inner child. Perhaps in return, Dave would be willing to offer a psychoanalytic hot take on my pedal board. Since I was unable to make the summit. Like any good therapist, Dave might confront me with some uncomfortable truths about any psychic detritus, he observes. But I believe I can sit in with the discomfort in the service of personal growth. Thanks for all you do. That's from Josh.
- [57:48]
A
That's a pretty flashy writing right there.
- [57:50]
B
Yeah, nice work, Josh.
- [57:52]
A
That's pretty good well, falcons. That's something I don't tell people how to do themselves because it's very tricky. But it sounds like in this case I gave somebody some advice and it worked out.
- [58:03]
B
Yeah, okay, you brought it up. The Northern Electric PA20. This is from again, longtime Tava contributor Marcus and I'll post these eventually on the Tava Instagram as well as our Facebook group, Rustic Kegger in the Woods. But Marcus writes, here are some pictures of the PA head I mentioned on the phone. It has six preamp sockets, so I'll probably attempt to build either a 6G or 6G 4A circuit in there, which is a brown super with harmonic tremolo vibrato.
- [58:39]
A
Yep.
- [58:39]
B
Might be a fool's errand, but that's okay with me. Maybe you can shed some light on the differences or history of these two circuits on the podcast.
- [58:48]
A
If it wasn't Marcus, who has done a lot of good work. He's the guy that was in on the purchasing of a vacuum tube that cost a million dollars for some underground. I forget. Some kind of crazy lab he works at.
- [59:03]
B
Okay.
- [59:04]
A
Anyway, I would say no, hell no, don't do that. That's going to be really hard. And why no, don't do that. Northern Electric was one of the big PA companies in Canada. Stromberg Carlson was big there. Northern Electric and then of course Soundmaster and the pictures that he sent. I've never seen a Northern Electric quite like this. It's very late. Yeah, it's very, very late from maybe the early 60s as opposed to something from the 40s or 50s. Most of the Northern Electric stuff you see is all black crinkle paint. Ancient looking like real wartime looking stuff. Right?
- [59:44]
B
Like mid century modern.
- [59:46]
A
Yeah, this is very optimistic. Newer, flashier, beautifully laid out and made. You know, there's some pictures of the guts where you can see that it's just very nicely done and there'd be something. There's something to be said about fixing it. Something like that, by the way, might not need a bunch of parts. It could be in an amp like that that every single capacitor in there is fine and that if it was serviced and brought back to life, it would work. And of course, if you plug a guitar in where it says microphone and turn the knob, it's going to make the guitar louder and there's going to be tone controls and it's probably going to sound pretty cool, at least in some ways. Right. That thing has three microphone channels, which is hard to justify for a lot of people. I've only ever done a few PAs where I restored them like that. So a group could all sing into a bunch of different microphones at once, just like they would have, you know, back in the Carter family days. But otherwise you just got a bunch of extra preamps. And so Marcus is at work, supposed to be doing something else, but he's looking and thinking, wow, the tube lineup on this. I could make this really complicated. What was it at Brown Super?
- [61:03]
B
He wanted to do a 6G 4. 6G 4A. And he wanted you to talk about the differences. Yeah, Brown Super.
- [61:09]
A
I don't know. I'm not sure. I think that's the. That's the fancy harmonic vibrato that uses a bunch of tubes and a bunch of parts. And they do sound good, but man, you gotta really. That's like buying the thousand piece puzzle that's all one solid color, you know, you gotta want to sit there and stare because, man, that's. That's complicated. I would suggest something with bias modulating tremolo as being a lot simpler. But Marcus, he's capable. He's done some. He's done some big jobs. I think the difference between the A and the non A covers most of those big brown amps. Some of them have five preamp tubes and some of them have six. And it has to do with that harmonic tremolo. Some of them use an extra half a tube compared to the other ones. I of course would be going with the simpler one if I had to do it. But you got to understand that harmonic vibrato has more parts in it than like two champs, maybe even two deluxes. There's a lot of parts in there, so tip of the hat to Marcus, but better think about that and. And why not fix it up first and then do that other thing just to hear what it sounds like. Yeah, I've got an EL84PA head here that's a precision made Grom's Precision from the early 60s and it kills. It sounds loud. I'm going to sell it to a guy in a band to use as the amp to have if somebody's amp breaks, you know, a backup amp in the van because it's just a little metal box, super sturdy. No problem playing any kind of a gig with it. It's loud, it's got good tone control. So I'd like to know how the northern electric sounds before I went ahead and basically gutted it, which is what you'd be doing with.
- [63:00]
B
It's so cool looking. Yeah, I mean, normally I'm all for this. But this thing is so neat.
- [63:05]
A
I know.
- [63:06]
B
Speech filter dial. It's got a phono speech filter.
- [63:10]
A
What's that do?
- [63:11]
B
I don't know. There's three settings. Flat 1 and 2.
- [63:14]
A
Hate it filters out. Hate speech. Oh, there's just different types you can select.
- [63:20]
B
Yeah.
- [63:20]
A
No, no, no. Voice filters cut out bass because when you're at a big building and somebody's talking into a microphone and it's really, really loud and you still can't understand them, that's because there's too much bass. Speech filters cut the frequency range down to a much more narrow band, which makes the vocal range clearer. That's why they had trumpet speakers, you know, in mash. Right. Because that. That you need just. You need upper mids and you don't need a bunch of bass. And those. That's what those filters do. So it would also eliminate or help eliminate feedback from a microphone. That lowend kind bow that gets going. So you'd hit that speech filter and that input that you selected would usually. They pick a really small value capacitor to make the sound go through at some point, which makes the bass, you know, cuts the base out of it. So that's what that does.
- [64:20]
B
Okay.
- [64:21]
A
Yeah.
- [64:22]
B
Well, keep us posted on what you end up doing with this thing. Marcus. It is beautiful. Yeah. This next one is from Mike is just. I always screw up this guy's name. I'm so sorry. Mike Aja. Mike Aja. I know. It is a tough one for me to read. And I even said, how do I pronounce your name? And then I screwed it up. So I'm quite the host here. Subject line wiring a Dan electro DS100 speaker output for use with other cabs. Just one of those subject lines where you can answer it without having me read it. Probably not. I've restored a Dan Electro DS100amp head and had a question about wiring the dual output transformers. I've got it all working, including the funky reverb and the trim. The amp schematic is almost identical to a Silvertone 1485. Not sure which came first in date of build. I suspect the DS100 and then the Silvertone. This question was originally covered back in the December 2019 podcast. Though at the time, Skip was not very familiar with the DS100. Both the DS100 and the Silvertone drive a 6 by 10 speaker cab with two output transformers. Each transformer is wired to three 8 ohm speakers wired in parallel, totaling 2.6 ohms. The Silvertone 1485 originally had a three wire cable hardwired from the head to the cab. But the Dan Electro uses an octal plug and jack. These transformers are the same that are used in the Silvertone 1485amps with 2.6, 7 ohms and 4 ohm taps. My question is the DS100 I'm working on did not come with the 6 by 10 speaker cab and I'm looking at ways to connect other speaker cabs to it. I currently have installed and wired the 4 ohm taps to a stereo output jack. I have the 2.4 ohm tap wired to the original octal plug in case I ever find an original cab. The stereo jack I installed can be split to 2 outputs and feed 2 separate 4 ohm cabs. I currently have a 4 by 10ampeg stereo cab with dual 4 ohm inputs that I can use. But it's not always the best solution for gigging. Is there a way to bridge the output of the two transformers to create one output? And if possible, what would be the correct speaker impedance the amp would like to see? I assume the polarity of 1 of the output transformer outputs would have to be reversed to keep it in phase. I think that Silvertone 1485 owners would also like to hear your answer and give them options on using other cabs. He submitted a schematic as well for the DS100 and the Silvertone 1485. And that is the question from our friend Mike Asia.
- [67:13]
A
That was exhausting.
- [67:14]
B
It was exhausting for me as well. Did any of that make sense?
- [67:19]
A
No, I got it all. And the important thing. Well, Dan Electro, second time today. The reason why, one reason why they were so cheap compared to other stuff that sounded similar was the materials used, right? Literally particle board for cabinets and stuff like that. Whereas Fender would always have, you know, solid wood or plywood or something. So the big Dan Electro made amps, including Silvertones or this thing, which is really rare. The Silvertone branded ones are far more common. Instead of investing in a big old output transformer that could handle 40 or 50 watts, they just took two of the same crappy output transformers that they use on the small amps. So they really kind of have a, in a way a stereo output. Each speaker or bank of speakers has its own pair of power tubes and its own output transformer. So you can't jump those together on those amps. Oh, the way you do it or the way I've always done it is you need two standard quarter inch jacks drilled into the chassis. Hopefully Somewhere and each one is wired to one of those output transformers. There's a common ground. But the, but the hots have to be separate. They each have to go to their own jack. And you can't turn that amp on unless you have two speakers. In other words each output jack has to have a speaker plugged into it. Now as far as the ohms go, that's no big deal. That thing will run 4ohm8ohm whatever. But the I would lose that. I, I, I'd put some holes in it. Normally don't like to drink and drill. But if it had 2 quarter inch jacks one for each output transformer and you could just jump her over to those jacks from the eight pin connector. You could leave that all intact. Just add little jumpers from the hot lead and, and a common ground which is going to be connected to the chassis anyway which will be made when you tighten that jack up on the chassis. You'll be creating that ground. So then if you ever did find a cabinet with a goofy octal plug and that thing would come with 6 Jensen C10RS or C10QS which are pretty valuable. That's why you don't see those cabinets very often. Then you could plug into the octal thing and be all original. But by far the easiest way to do it would be two jacks. And the important thing to remember is both output transformers have got to be connected to a speaker or you're going to blow it up. That's why I see so many blown up output transformers in those four power tube. Dan ELECTROS because people don't understand how it works. From the factory they were hardwired so that you couldn't separate the head from the cabinet. And that way no one could screw it up. But nobody wants that anymore. And if you don't have the cabinet you want to be able to use it. Two jacks. Then you could run it with two separate tens or two separate 12s or two separate whatever that was in the 4 to 8 ohm impedance range and then it'll rock.
- [70:28]
B
Okay.
- [70:29]
A
Yeah. How's that?
- [70:31]
B
That was great. We have one more but maybe you have some music or book recommendations.
- [70:36]
A
One more thing. There are amps like a Dynaco stereo 70 is a tube stereo classic hi Fi power amp. Those things. There was a way you could hit a switch and it would parallel the things and basically give you one 70 watt amp instead of two 35 watt amps. Right. But you can't do that on that. DAN ELECTRO I've tried it. And there's something going on with the phase or the feedback or something that just makes the thing go crazy. Now, what was that? Book recommendations.
- [71:05]
B
I was wondering if you had any. Before we field our last question of.
- [71:09]
A
The day, someone sent me the Story of Loud.
- [71:15]
B
The Birth of Loud.
- [71:16]
A
Birth of Loud. Fender and Les Paul and I. And I loaned it to a friend, like, the day I got it, and he finally sent it back to me. So I'm looking forward to going through that. It looks. It looks fun. Short chapters. And if you don't think Les Paul or Leo Fender would have been fun neighbors to have, you'd be wrong. They sound like some crazy cool cats. Right?
- [71:36]
B
Sure.
- [71:36]
A
I'm looking forward to reading that. And did I mention that there's an old English cop show called the Sweeney? Yes, the Sweeney, which was a nickname for Scotland Yard. And it's in the 70s, so it's all full of all these crazy cool cars, man, all the little Anglias, all the little tiny trucks and stuff. And everybody has great big ties and they smoke and drink whiskey, you know, from dawn to dusk. You know, it's a cop show, but it's a really. It's a really gritty 70s one. And the other really gritty one that's back on again is called Taggart. T A G G A R T. And he's Scotch or Irish Scotch. And it's the same thing. This is. If you like the English cop shows now, you'll dig some of those older ones because it's kind of like Rockford Files or something, you know? No, everybody's like pulling over and going to a phone booth to call someone instead of whipping out their cell phone. And all the neat cars. Oh my goodness. All the neat cars and stuff in those older shows. So let's see, what else do I have? Oh, here's a good one. Princeton Reverb, old customer, High gnome. He was Glenn Kwan's next door neighbor. That's how I met him and blew up a choke in his Princeton Reverb. Pretty unusual. I think he replaced the filter capacitors because they're involved in the choke. Bought another choke, put it in there, Burned that one up too. Brought me the amp and I'm going, what the heck? Why is this thing running so much current? You know, there's. You could tell that the choke, which is in the power supply was. Was being asked to deliver a lot more current than it's supposed to be. I have never seen this in. Before in my life. It had a shorted reverb transformer on the primary side. So that means the reverb transformers hooked up to the power supply. And since it was a dead short, all this current was pulling through the. The choke and burning it up. So on your list of might want to check if you got a huge current situation that never seen before, a shorted primary on a reverb transformer. So I put another one in there and then worked perfect. But that, that, that's. That's unusual. That's very unusual. But the unusual can happen. Yeah. There you go.
- [74:13]
B
Okay. Over on YouTube, there is an incredible movie called Listers, which is like a couple of pothead friends decide to become birdwatchers and have a big year and everybody should go check this out. It's like a. It's like a two hour long actual. I mean, it feels like when you're watching like Waiting for Guffman or best in show, but it's real. And they kind of immerse themselves in bird watching culture and everybody like detectorists. Some parallels between the, the guitar world and the bird world.
- [74:49]
A
For sure. Yes. I've known people that were. That had lists, you know, that had their book in the glove box and binoculars everywhere and went, oh, that's a right Scarlet tanager. Totally. I don't have that one on my list. That's excellent.
- [75:05]
B
You got to follow the migration patterns.
- [75:07]
A
It's.
- [75:08]
B
It's actually really riveting and I think most people listening to this show would appreciate it.
- [75:13]
A
I think we'll have to definitely check that out.
- [75:15]
B
Yeah. And it's free. It's on YouTube. Franklin is a Patreon subscriber and listener to this podcast. He's got the last question of the day before we get to his voice memo. He attached a picture of his favorite hot sauce, which he claims is great on seafood cocktails. And that hot sauce I don't think has been mentioned on the show before is the guacamia authentic hot sauce. It has a yellow label with a parrot on it. And so I don't know where that is from, if that's from Mexico or somewhere else. But guacamaya.
- [75:47]
A
Yeah, it's got a parrot that's on Perico's. Those are those little flat corn shells that are so good that are, you know, for tostadas and stuff that has the parrot.
- [75:56]
B
Okay.
- [75:57]
A
Have you ever had ceviche?
- [75:59]
B
Yeah, back in the day. Yeah.
- [76:01]
A
The FedEx guy was here a while ago and we were always talking about food. He goes, you want to, want to try some of this? I go, yeah. So he pulls out this cooler, this little plastic thing. He has an avocado and a little plastic knife. And before I knew it, he'd spread avocado on one of those flat, crispy shells and put this stuff in it. That was shrimp, celery and onions and tons of lime juice. Right. The shrimp is cooked in lime, not cooked, but the only cooking it gets is being in the acid of the lime juice. It was killer. I've never made it before.
- [76:40]
B
This seems even more dangerous than you driving that tractor. You're just taking ceviche from delivery drivers.
- [76:46]
A
FedEx man. Oh, yeah, and the UPS guy drove up at the same time, so of course we had to. Oh, it was a feed. It's fantastic. Delivery guys out in the country are different. They get to know your dogs and, you know, okay, I. I've been known to go out there with like, popsicles in the summer or, you know, I just made some carnitas tacos and they're just like, oh, yeah, thanks, rr Gotta know your. Gotta know your delivery guys. It's helpful, you know, they. They can call me. I could call my FedEx guy on the weekend and say, hey, you're gonna be working Monday, or whatever. It's fantastic. Oh, and a quick shout out to Dylan Vaughn. He can't. He's a good customer. He came up, he bought a B15 and flip top that had been sitting here for like three years and a little hi Fi amp and sent me a little video of him playing his little groans little jewel that I fixed up for him. A little mono hi Fi amp. And one more person just going, dude, this sounds so good. So hard to go back. You just don't even. You can't even hear that other guitar, you know, in your car stereo, say, for instance, and you put it on some little dinky ass tube amp and you go, wow, listen to that. There it is. Fantastic. So. And Dylan brought so much good liquor and Trumer Pilsner from Berkeley. One of a really good Pilsner, like something from Germany. Fantastic. I got good and drunk after he was here. Brought all sorts of good booze. All right, that's. Yeah, that Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest. Whoa, that's a good one this year. Two's my limit.
- [78:23]
B
Okay, we're going to field this last voice memo from Franklin, the aforementioned hot sauce guy, and everybody out there, please be a part of the show, especially those of you who've never submitted any questions or thoughts or anything. Podcastreportjournal.com it could be A voice memo like the one Franklin's about to do. Or it could be just an email that you make me read and I'll probably botch your name, which is an added bonus. This is from Franklin.
- [78:46]
C
Hello, Skip and Jason.
- [78:48]
A
This is Franklin from Kirkland, Washington.
- [78:50]
C
My question for Skip is about how.
- [78:53]
A
He uses his capacitor wizard ESR meter. In particular, what values? He identifies a capacitor as bad when measuring typical cathode bypass and filter capacitors in Fender amps. I hope Skip doesn't go into food talk mode when he hears the question. There is so much contradictory from this on the Internet that I love to hear his beyond this. Thanks and keep up the great work. Nice guy, Franklin. Kurt. Yeah, I just fixed. He bought an ab box. Okay. And he bought a Princeton reverb, I think off of some big place. And it's just clean and untouched. He got a good deal on it. So he wants to know about the ESR check for capacitors, right?
- [79:39]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [79:40]
A
A, test equipment is not infallible. It'll lie to you all the time. B, the most important thing to do with any piece of test equipment is start testing some stuff that you know already. You want to measure Ohms, get a 500ohm resistor and put your ohmmeter on there, see if it reads 500 ohms. Right? The, the capacitor wizard and the ESR testers are kind of the same thing. In fact, the instructions for mine said, hey, start with a known good capacitor, right? Like see what it does with a brand new 25 microfarad capacitor. What you're looking for with that thing is the needle barely moves or it doesn't move at all. And if that's the case, that thing's gotta go. But if it tests okay on the ESR checker, that just means it might still be good. Or it could still be good. It's not completely infallible. And the really good electrolytic capacitor testers are big and expensive, like $1,000 or $2,000 or something like that. So a lot of times it's. It's helpful to just go completely. Jack Dar, right. Our. Our old time guru Electric Guitar Amplifier Handbook. If you substitute. If you take alligator clips and you clip in another electrolytic capacitor in parallel with a one with one that you're questioning, if it doesn't change the sound at all, that capacitor is probably good. But if you clip in another one and the volume goes up, well, the one that's in there probably isn't doing its thing like it should. So always test known parts first and know that those things can kind of vary. Some brands of electrolytics will test higher on the esr, some will test lower. But it's not a black and white thing. It's just a. It's just a guide what I use it for. And I don't really think there's that many people in the world who use it like I do. I'm trying not to change any parts if I can. If it's a tweed amp or something really valuable, I'm going to run, run through it with that ESR tester and say, you know, these all could. This. This amp has the potential to work great and not have any parts change or all these parts last. Little consultation with the owner, find out if it's part of some collection of a homeboy or if it's going out in the Econo Lane Econoline van for a year on some tour. I mean you do things differently for different people. But I usually use it to try to maintain as many old parts as I can in an amp. And if they won't pass that test, gotta bust out the soldering iron. Actually change some things in general. How's that?
- [82:27]
B
That was great. Franklin let us know if there were more aspects to that question that you.
- [82:33]
A
Yes, you'll be getting. You'll be getting your amp and your a B box. He was very patient. Took me about four months to get together a little batch and they're all gone. So don't ask for any more.
- [82:43]
B
Kirkland, Washington, not far from me. I drive through it nearly every day.
- [82:47]
A
No, absolutely.
- [82:49]
B
Skip. Exciting news on my champ. I can't wait to send it to you now. Yeah, thanks as always.
- [82:56]
A
Oh, I don't even. And of course I don't even really remember how I did it.
- [83:00]
B
Oh, you know you did it. The one I have now. Like I have no.
- [83:04]
A
I have no idea how I did it. But now I thinking about it, I think I could probably do some groovy stuff to it. And of course all free. And that doesn't.
- [83:17]
B
Amazing.
- [83:17]
A
That doesn't just mean you. If I fixed up a champ for you, no matter who you were, if you send it back to me, I'd do some little tweak or two for it.
- [83:26]
B
Should I buy one of those sour sound transformers, send that to you?
- [83:33]
A
I could do that amp like that for you if you want. I mean I would charge probably about. It would probably cost me only on an amp. I Already did myself. It probably only cost about eighty to a hundred dollars. But you'd have to buy. But you'd have to buy that output transformer. I would. And there's a. And there's a choke involved which isn't very expensive. I have those and some changes to the power supply. And then we'd want to do that jack because if you're just going to have a little dinky eight in there. What speaker is in your amp? You know, I think I put a.
- [84:10]
B
A warehouse speaker. Something that's.
- [84:13]
A
That's, that's good headroom for an eight. But have you ever heard that thing plugged into a 12 inch cabinet?
- [84:19]
B
I have not done that, but I have a 12 inch cabinet right by my feet. I should do that. I'll do that after this.
- [84:24]
A
If I. Well, or if you do it after I send this ant back. You won't have to unplug the eight. There'll be a jack on the back of that thing and you just stick your extension cabinet into it and the eight will disappear and you'll be in the cab just like that. You don't have to unplug and plug stuff in. That's something I could do to your amp.
- [84:44]
B
All right. I'm looking at Sour Sound website right now.
- [84:47]
A
You're gonna have to call them. I think that's a like special order thing. I didn't see it. I didn't even see a mention of it on there. But we, we got the connection. I think I have his mail or phone number or something.
- [84:59]
B
Yeah, maybe he listens to this show still.
- [85:01]
A
So what it would do to that amp is just make it sound more powerful even though it's still in the small box. Yeah. And somebody who's playing a big old jazz guitar, a big full sound, it doesn't want to just have it just distort. Is going to get a cooler like jazz sound out of it.
- [85:18]
B
Yeah, that sounds great. Well, thanks to our sponsors, Emerald City Guitars, Amplified Parts and of course Grez Guitars for sponsoring the show once again we've got Steve Sost coming on the show soon. So everybody send in your regular amp questions or questions for Steve. Anything from the. The front lines of guitar collect, collecting guitar safaris or just skips youth. We'll take all those questions.
- [85:44]
A
The 310 tone ring cabinet. Didn't I send you a picture of that?
- [85:48]
B
I think you did.
- [85:49]
A
Oh man. We could ask him about that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Don't be afraid to come over with $50 or even $10 and buy some junk. I got so many parts to build your own crap with. You know, I buy big. Lots of stuff from guys who got out of the biz. You know, I got tons of part boards, and it's all sorts of stuff. There's always cool junk here. And PA Heads are still a great project for people who are getting into it, still fairly affordable. And I've been making some preamps lately. A guy asked me for a stereo preamp, and I made it. It sounded great. It would work great for hi fi. It would great for microphones. But I remember reading the instructions from that alembic preamp I got to do a long time ago. You take the output of one preamp and put it into the input of the other one, and you've got volume and tone on both. It's the craziest buzz I've ever heard. And I made. I was so knocked out with it that I made another one. And not cheap, but something that I ship. So don't be. Don't be scared to ask for some crazy preamp thing or. Because I do like making those.
- [87:00]
B
All right. I love it. And it's a beautiful time of the year to go visit you.
- [87:05]
A
It's not bad. It's. Yeah, it's not bad. We're gonna have. We'll be having waterfowl here real quick.
- [87:12]
B
See, it all goes back to that movie Listers.
- [87:14]
A
There you go, then. Well, you'll be seeing Caspian Turns, egrets, lesser egrets, herons, so many kinds of geese and swans. And ducks. And you'll come up to my house about 20 minutes away. There's, like, all these flooded rice fields, and you'll see literally, you know, 100,000 swans right alongside the road. And that lasts up into around early January.
- [87:43]
B
Sounds great.
- [87:43]
A
Pretty cool.
- [87:44]
B
Yeah.
- [87:45]
A
Listers.
- [87:46]
B
Listers. Yeah. Go watch that. All right.
- [87:48]
A
Watch it.
- [87:49]
B
Thanks, Skip.
- [87:50]
A
Thanks for all you do, Jason. Wouldn't do it without you. Would never have done it without you. And I wouldn't know what to talk about if it wasn't for people asking questions. So.
- [88:00]
B
Yeah, keep those questions coming, everybody.
- [88:02]
A
Thanks for that. Otherwise, I just could go off on any sort of rant, which, you know, might not be entertaining. So gotta have you to keep me in line. All right. Until the next time. Thanks again.
- [88:14]
B
Thank you, Skip.
- [88:15]
A
Bye.