Ep. 155: "Realistic Carnival"

Summary

The Truth About Vintage Amps Podcast Episode 155: "Realistic Carnival"

Date: November 1, 2025
Host: Jason Verlinde (The Fretboard Journal)
Guest: Skip Simmons (vintage amp guru)

Episode Overview

In this characteristically offbeat and informative episode, Skip and Jason field a wide range of listener questions about vintage guitar amplifiers, tube choices, rare barn finds, hands-on repair advice, amp modification tips, and family recipes. The duo’s banter veers from technical amp talk and practical repair hacks to musical discoveries, family stories, and lighthearted philosophical musings. Notable high points include discussions of a rare barn-find Fender "Woody" Princeton and lap steel, uncommon low-voltage amp builds, the “Realistic Carnival” amp project, and the role music plays in bridging generations.

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Key Discussion Points & Highlights

Vintage Instruments & Instruments as Bargains

• Banjo Finds and Values

  • Skip describes a recent acquisition: a no-name, pre-Gibson-era 5-string banjo, likely from 1900–1920 ([02:08]).
  • Banjo market compared to guitars: "You drop a thousand dollars, you could get a really cool banjo. But you can't barely get a silver face champ, you know." -- Skip [02:36]
  • Old banjos as excellent value for people appreciating craftsmanship, even if less popular than guitars.

• Old Accordions and Music Recommendations

  • Skip shouts out Ned Boynton and the Nomads’ album Cocktails for the Brokenhearted, featuring jazz guitar, Hammond organ, and accordion ([05:16]).

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Amp Repair, Restoration & Technical Q&A

1. Low B+ Tube Amps: The “Realistic Carnival” Project

• Skip details two recent amp builds using unusually low plate voltages for unique tone and affordability ([18:13]):
  • Bogan GA5 (rare tweed-style guitar amp, super low B+).
  • Radio Shack Realistic amp, gutted and rebuilt as a Masko C6S clone with a 6AQ5 tube.
• Takeaway: Using tubes like 6AQ5 instead of expensive 6V6, and lowering B+ for distinct small-amp tone.
  • "Tinkerers: lower that B plus, use tubes that we can get instead of whining about tubes we can't." -- Skip [22:03]

2. Baffler Segment – Oval Speaker Cones

• Listener: Johnny Seven shares the mystery of a Supro amp with an unfixable oval speaker ([22:53]).
• Skip explains cone replacements for oval speakers are no longer manufactured; modern solutions are rare or the wrong size.
  • "If you have a national Supro Valco amp that has oval speakers, lay off the stranglehold. Because you're going to blow those things up and then you'll... be doomed." -- Skip [25:01]

3. Input Jack Tech: High vs. Low Gain on Champs

• Skip describes an elegant mod where a stereo input jack switches a cathode bypass capacitor in and out for clean/dirty sounds ([28:26]).
  • Listener Jack’s correct guess: “...using a TRS or a switching jack...to connect the cathode bypass cap...” ([26:44]).
  • Skip: "I've done it a lot of times with little switches...the two jacks is really kind of elegant for something real small and discreet." [28:26]

4. Marshalls: JCM800 High/Low Inputs

• Listener Kyle asks what happens when you use the low input ([34:52]).
  • Skip: "The high gain goes through a triode...but the low gain comes in after that tube. So...the high gain input goes through an extra triode compared to the low gain" [35:33].
  • Bonus Maintenance Tip: Clean those switching jacks for proper tone!

5. Dropping B+ in Big Fenders (with DIY 'Tube Rectification')

• Listener Greg details (and Skip praises) converting a 1970s Twin Reverb to dual 6AX5 tube rectifiers for lower B+, taming volume and gaining crunch ([75:58]).
  • "I think we've converted a logging truck into a tow truck. Still big and heavy, but a little more manageable. And now you get some crunch at a band-level volume." – Greg [77:01]
  • Skip: “Sherlock Holmes has an even smarter brother...I dream up stupid things to do to a twin, and then other people do it for me...” [79:57]

6. Amp Cosmetic Restoration: To Paint or Not?

• Listener Dane with a rare, rusty Sound Master PA ([55:23]).
  • Skip: “If it was what I'd consider to be a valuable amp...I wouldn't paint it. But...do what you want, it's your amp!” [57:44]

7. Music Man & Capacitor Tech

• Listener Lorenz with a smoke-damaged HD130 ([63:23]).
  • Advice on inspecting tubes (often fine after heat), cleaning, and paying special attention to transistor sockets ([65:26]).
  • "Tubes run hot. They don't care about being close to a fire." -- Skip [66:09]

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Musical Discoveries & Recommendations

• Ned Boynton & The Nomads – Cocktails for the Brokenhearted ([05:16])
• Choir! Choir! Choir! with Colin Hay – "Overkill" ([51:35])
• Joe Pass-style Jazz Guitar: Evan Crafts (Instagram: @ercrafts) ([77:01])
• Kids' Book Recommendation: The One About the Blackbird by Matt James ([81:19])

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Notable Quotes

• "Play the banjo, go to jail, it's the law." -- Skip, [04:53]
• "Dude, let's talk about Strats, right? Pre-war Martin something or other." -- Skip [07:42]
• "If you wanted a cool old car, step one, have you got a great big garage?" -- Skip [14:24]
• "I think we've converted a logging truck into a tow truck. Still big, but a little more manageable." -- Greg [77:01]
• "Tinkerers: lower that B plus, use tubes that we can get instead of whining about tubes we can't." -- Skip [22:03]

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Barn Find of the Episode: 1946 'Woody' Fender Princeton & Lap Steel

[94:53–104:14]
A remarkable tale where Skip encounters a pristine barn-find set: an ultra-rare Fender “Woody” Princeton amp and matching lap steel, untouched since the 1940s — a true piece of Leo Fender history.

• "I didn't even want to touch the guitar. I was just like—I didn't even want to turn a screw, you know..." -- Skip [98:25]

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Family, Philosophy & Life Balance

• Parenting/work-life balance advice for new parents running a business ([84:31]):
  • Skip: “Put yourself last. You're not first, you're last, really. And I don't think there's really anything wrong with that.” [87:55]
  • Jason: “You have a few years to figure your...out. You can really phone it in until they are old enough to remember things...” [87:43]

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Southwest Recipe Roundup

Listener food tips were a recurring motif this episode!

• Cactus Salad – Franklin ([45:49])

  • Buy cactus (jar or fresh), rinse, dice with onion/tomato/cilantro, add queso fresco, salt & pepper.
  • “Taste great with tortillas, tostadas or tortilla chips.”

• New Mexico Cooking Tip: Put green chili on everything ([35:25])

• Mai Ploy Curry Paste – Mikey ([88:54])

  • Thai curry paste “keeps forever...You need three things: curry paste, coconut milk, and rice. Everything else is up to you.”

• Prawn/Bacon BBQ – Andy in Australia ([70:15])

  • Bacon-wrapped shrimp, seared in garlic butter, ideal for hot summers with cold beer.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Banjo & Accordion Discussion: [02:07]–[07:37]
• Ned Boynton/Album Recommendation: [05:16]–[07:05]
• Sponsors/Amp Parts Sources: [07:52]–[17:21]
• Low Voltage Amp Builds & “Realistic Carnival”: [18:13]–[22:19]
• Bafflers (Oval Speakers): [22:45]–[26:19]
• Input Jack Mod (Champ Bypass Cap): [26:44]–[31:57]
• Marshall JCM800 High/Low Inputs: [34:51]–[38:40]
• Barn Find Segment (Fender Woody): [91:12]–[104:14]
• Food Tips (Cactus Salad, Curries, etc.): [45:49], [88:54], [70:15]
• Parental/Work-Life Balance Discussion: [84:31]–[88:22]

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Memorable Moments

• Listeners convert a Twin Reverb into “a tow truck” using DIY tube rectification. ([77:01])
• Barn-find tale of the Princeton Woody and matching steel — ultimate treasure! ([94:53])
• Jason’s heartfelt tribute to how music connects generations (The One About the Blackbird). ([81:19])
• Skip: “Don’t leave people with your junk.” — Family history lessons on gear inheritance ([99:54])

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Closing

Skip and Jason wrap the episode after nearly two hours of laughter, sage advice, and inspired stories. As always, they encourage listeners to send in amp questions, audio notes, family recipes, and continue fostering the quirky, passionate “TAVA” community.

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Contact the show & send your questions/recipes:
[e-mail]

Sponsors:

• Amplified Parts
• Emerald City Guitars
• Grez Guitars

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Suggested Listening/Links:

• Ned Boynton & The Nomads
• Choir! Choir! Choir! with Colin Hay – "Overkill"
• Evan Crafts, Jazz Guitarist (Instagram @ercrafts)
• Matt James – The One About the Blackbird

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“As long as people keep rattling our cage, we'll keep doing it.” – Skip [104:34]

Transcript

[Skip]

Good morning.

[Jason]

Good morning. How are you?

[Skip]

Better now. Well, I'm always glad to hear that. I got. Got the technology to work for me.

[Jason]

I thought you just wanted to hear my voice.

[Skip]

Well. Well, yeah, that's true. That too. I look forward to it in a way. I still get kind of nervous, but I do look forward to it. And it seems like there's never a shortage of goofy stuff to talk about.

[Jason]

No. Happy Halloween.

[Skip]

Happy Halloween to you. Not a big deal for an old timer like me much anymore, but I'm just GLAD it's not 100 degrees on Halloween. I can remember doing that a time or two.

[Jason]

Yeah. Somebody who also lives out in the country where there are no trick or treaters. It does. It's a different kind of holiday.

[Skip]

I shoot. I shoot people that come to the house at night.

[Jason]

Of course. As you should.

[Skip]

How about you? I saw. I got a new issue of Fretboard Journal. I barely cracked it, but I got it a few days ago. So obviously you did something.

[Jason]

I've been up to something. Yes. It's been an eventful month and I don't know where to begin. Yeah.

[Skip]

Did you write anything in this issue?

[Jason]

Let me think about that. I think I always write at least one thing in every issue and I'm now working on future stories. So I can't remember what I actually paid for that.

[Skip]

I flipped through it. It looked flat toppy.

[Jason]

Yeah, that's. That's.

[Skip]

That's okay.

[Jason]

Yeah. This is my dancer nickname.

[Skip]

Yeah. I'd like to see some banjo content. Really? That went over like kaboo. Why? Because my better half, you know, I don't have a collection of instruments. I don't have old fenders and stuff that I've kept or amps or anything. But I'm a chump for something at an auction or a yard sale.

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip]

So. So she. She got this old five string banjo. And I've had banjos before, especially tenors. You know, there's people don't. Even beautiful old fancy ones from the olden days don't go for that much because people just don't play those things. So if you like workmanship and you're that kind of person, I could definitely say that an old banjo is one of the. I mean, just such a fantastic value. Compared to what? Something more desirable, you know, might be. You drop a thousand dollars, you could get a really cool banjo. But you can't barely get. Barely get a silver face, champ. You know. So this thing is no name. Keith Carey, repairman says might be as early as 1900. I was going to say maybe 1920. The thing is, it has about 40 of those hooks on around the head, like every inch. There's one of those things, right? It's open back. And the pot, is that what, the round part? Yeah, the pot is wood, but then it has metal around on the outside and it's really lightweight. And no name. Of course, if it doesn't have a name on it, that means it's, you know, super budget, which it kind of is. But it has an intact vintage skin head on it and the neck angle's goofy and it needs some work. But you can tell it's, it's cool. It has a great tone. This is like some serious, you know, Appalachian style on the front porch. You know, like real, a real old time banjo. Like normal people would have, you know, people at this time you could have bought a Gibson but it would have cost as much as a car. Right. But this is just, this is something that normal people would have had. And it's pretty, it's pretty cool. And I'm looking forward to fixing up. He says it should have nylon strings. Probably had gut strings, but judging by the nut that piers original, it had skinny little metal strings. But he says they work really good when they're set up with nylon strings like from a classical guitar. And I forget 25 pound test fishing line. And, and I'm looking forward to fixing that up. And I, he. I think there's a little cult of people that are into 20s string band type of music. Yeah, they have flat tops, but they also are into old mandolins and banjos like this.

[Jason]

We have had banjo coverage many times.

[Skip]

You were, you were looking it up, you were googling yourself.

[Jason]

I've had many a banjo conversation and I love doing that. And often it's crickets. Both from the banjo community as well as the guitarists who are probably like really banjos.

[Skip]

So I guess that's all we're gonna say about it then. Play the banjo, go to jail, it's the law. Or wait, that's accordions.

[Jason]

Something.

[Skip]

I left one in my car. Someone broke in, put another one in there. Right. Speaking of accordions. Were we speaking of accordions? I got a great, great music reference that a great new record someone sent me that has cool accordion.

[Jason]

Go for it. What is it?

[Skip]

In the Bay Area, there's a guy named Ned Boynton B o y N t o n and he's a serious jazz player and has been playing for a really long time. He had a CD probably 15, 20 years ago called the North Beach Sound. And he had Mundell Low on that thing, right? Like it's like straight ahead he can play Johnny Smith, you know, like one of those famous ones that he did by himself. He can play stuff like that like crazy. Well, he has this new. He also played regularly at a famous coffee shop in north beach where with accordion players playing Italian type. Cafe Trieste. Is that it? I think it's pretty well known, like north beach place. And he lives down there somehow. Probably doesn't even have a car. You know, carries walk, you know, walks down there with his guitar. So the new band that he sent me the CD of is called the Nomads. And the first few songs I played were just absolutely timeless. Straight up organ trio. Like he's. He's playing a Gibson guitar through a Brown Deluxe, by the way, that I fixed up with a Hammond player. Wow. And it's. It's just. It's just bad. And then they do stuff like. Second song is the theme from Manix. Are you old enough to remember Manix? No, it was like kind of like Rockford Files, but so. And then later on, the guy that plays the B3 also is a serious accordion player. So you can hear Wichita Lineman done on accordion and guitar. And it's just beautiful. And the guy's great player. And that record's called Cocktails for the Brokenhearted.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip]

Yes. Nomads. I see he's got a little. Oh, yeah, he's got nomads. Band.com. nomad's band. And if you like, if you can dig some classic old cool jazz with the Hammond, you'll absolutely love some of the stuff on the first. This is great. And this guy's doing it today. You know, you could go see him play for. For free. But the other stuff with the accordion is really unique too, and super groovy.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip]

There you go. Banjo and accordion. Last time they will ever be mentioned.

[Jason]

We've lost all our listeners and we're seven minutes in.

[Skip]

Dude, let's talk about Strats, right? Pre war Martin something or other. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's talk about our sponsors, actually.

[Jason]

What a great segue. Okay, the holidays are coming up and our friends at Amplified Parts have pretty much everything you would ever want to see under your Christmas tree. If you're trying to build an amp, work on an amp, maybe make a pedal. And guess what? They have gift certificates. So if your spouse or your friends are going, what the hell do you want this holiday season? Just ask for some amplified Parts, gift certificates. And then you can buy what you actually want.

[Skip]

Yes. Then you don't get the tool that isn't quite what you want, you know? Right.

[Jason]

Yeah, nobody, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that feeling. Nobody wants to look at their loved ones going like, you came close, but this was the wrong soldering iron. You don't want that feeling.

[Skip]

So just thanks a lot, hon, as you put it in the drawer and never look at it again.

[Jason]

Never look at it again. Some Harbor Freight soldering iron that she meant well. He meant well, whomever.

[Skip]

The great Tim Hartigan. When I was in a band with 40 something years ago, when we first got going, he asked his parents for a microphone and they got him a Mr. Microphone. It had like a little brother. You could like talk into it and it would come out of the AM radio if you turned it to the right. And it's just, oh no, mom, that wasn't quite what I wanted. Should have got him a gift certificate.

[Jason]

That might be the only piece of vintage audio gear that nobody waxes about poetically. Or I have yet to hear anyone say, like, you know, if you put the Mr. Microphone through FM station 90.2, you really get the tone. Nobody's done that. People are using preamps from four tracks and all sorts of other stuff, but Nobody's done the Mr. Microphone Renaissance.

[Skip]

Ah, it's just waiting.

[Jason]

It is waiting. Of course we also are sponsored by our friends at Emerald City Guitars. And I'm just gonna say I don't know what, what Trevor has worked out with his family, but Trevor Boone over at Emerald City Guitars is on the road all the time. So if anybody wants to get in on what he reaps from these guitar safaris he's constantly going on, follow them on Instagram, follow them on Facebook and. And almost every week he's post cool thing that's not even on their website yet. It could be an amp, could be a vintage guitar. If anyone's in Seattle, go see them. They have the coolest little shop over in Pioneer Square and all the guys, Tyler, Liz, everybody there does incredible repair work too. So Emerald City Guitars sponsoring the show and then last but not least, our friend Barry Gres Guitars. I saw, I saw Barry two weeks ago. I went to guitars headquarters.

[Skip]

What?

[Jason]

I know, wow. I went to put some miles on.

[Skip]

The, on the Land Cruiser there. Dude.

[Jason]

No, I flew to Santa Rosa. I went to a retreat. I went to an off the grid retreat. If I have a new extra little pep in my voice, if I sound better, I mean, I'm actually getting over a cold, so I'm not going to sound better, but I went to a crazy retreat, which we can talk about if we must, or maybe it's a Patreon episode. But I got to see Barry and I got to see Grez Guitars headquarters before I checked out of the world for seven days. And Barry's shop, like, his guitars is just, like, so impeccable and so cool and timeless. And Barry, of course, has two very cool cars. One that he's had since, like, high school. And then he's got another car that may not be worth as much as, like, used Tesla, but it's super cool. And I got to see all the R.C. allen stuff. He's got all the alt molds and he's got this just cool little workshop where he's building his guitars one at a time. He's doing all sorts of fun experiments. He's put the little three bender thing on one of them. And I got to see the giant slabs of redwood that he's working with. I posted some pictures on the vintage amps podcast. Instagram. And the guitars are just so cool. And he's got a bunch of your stuff, too. He had like a. All I remember is like a tube and a transformer. Was that a preamp that you built for him, like on a hunk of wood?

[Skip]

That's his test amp. That's his test amp.

[Jason]

That's his test amp. Okay.

[Skip]

That's how you can tell what your guitar sounds like. Yeah, exactly like what I do, only I have a test guitar. He needed a test amp and he came to the guitar show one time and I said, you need a test amp like this. Something that just like. I think it's volume only.

[Jason]

Yeah. It was simple.

[Skip]

Yeah. Something that just like completely neutral, uncolored, so. And of course he said, you're right. And I said, here, take this. I believe that was a clone of the very earliest champ called a champion 600.

[Jason]

I talked about it.

[Skip]

Yeah. That uses an even simpler circuit for all you potential builders out there. And they were less expensive forever because they don't howl. They're cleaner sounding, but they're cool as hell. Yeah. And you know, so. But a. I didn't know Barry had old cars.

[Jason]

No, very specific British.

[Skip]

You're not going to tell us what the cars are.

[Jason]

I'm going to screw it up. The. The older one that he's had since high school. Apologies, Barry, if I'm getting this totally wrong.

[Skip]

I think is you have a friend, you have a. You have a land Cruiser. I mean, that's kind of, you know, like that's an enthusiast. And you're looking at two old English cars and you don't even know if they're Triumphs or Austin Healeys.

[Jason]

I think the one. I think the convertible is an Austin Healey. I don't know if it's a Sprite or not.

[Skip]

Tiny. Was it so tiny?

[Jason]

Tiny is tiny.

[Skip]

Yeah. That could have been a Sprite.

[Jason]

And then he's, you know, because he's Barry, he's got this like, I don't know, 90s Jaguar.

[Skip]

Oh, yeah.

[Jason]

It's like, probably not worth much and it probably breaks down every block, but it. It's so stylish.

[Skip]

It's beautiful. Yeah. Those are neat. That figures. I can see Barry's Jaguar guy. Yeah, you can. For the price of a used Camry, you know, you can buy an old car like that from.

[Jason]

You buy a Rolls Royce.

[Skip]

Yeah. If you're. If you're so inclined.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Which I have to admit, I can be swayed that way once in a while. That's whether or not you. It's. It's like goats, you know? Do you just want a goat? That's not it. They come with all this stuff. Like, if you. If you wanted a cool old car, step one, have you got a great big garage you can park it in? No. Well, get a hold of yourself. Right. If you enjoy the process. An old car is the coolest thing ever. But if you just want to drive around in some boss looking old car that's a little bit different, like, you should rent it. Right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And Barry, the big slabs of redwood from the tunnel, the railroad tunnel or something like that.

[Jason]

I mean, these were huge. I don't think they were from a tunnel. I think they were from God building what they were. Yeah, they're huge. You can make like a dining room table out of them.

[Skip]

Wow.

[Jason]

Yeah. Well, so I got to check out with him and he's got a beautiful little showroom. If anyone ever finds themselves in Petaluma, California, message him. And he wants people to come visit him.

[Skip]

Wow. I wouldn't, because then I wouldn't get any work done. Well, yeah, well, fantastic. I'm glad he had his little test amp out there.

[Jason]

Yeah, no, it was. It was front and center and just. He's just the coolest. And so thank you, Grez, for sponsoring the show. Thank you for the ride to the retreat where I was sobbing like a little baby. If anyone, I'll extend this offer. With the holidays coming up, I think Barry will Oblige. If anyone buys a Grizz worth $2,500 or more and is going to a off the grid retreat for seven days near Petaluma. Barry will drive you to the retreat. No extra cost. He did that for me.

[Skip]

That's a serious perk right there.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And we'll see about the retreat right away. It seems like something that should just be parodied, like really wouldn't believe it.

[Jason]

If I told you what happened, but no drugs were taken. My clothes are on the whole time. It was. It was very transformative.

[Skip]

Well, that's what it's all about, right? It makes you feel something different. Or get you out of your Jerry Garcia on why he still occasionally took lsd, you know? Right. Just. Yeah, you're not going to think about those problems you've been thinking about forever, at least for a little while. And if you had seven days where you were kind of like, you know, I can imagine your brain, geez, I wouldn't want to be in there. It's crowded.

[Jason]

I've seen some.

[Skip]

Yeah, well, I just mean even. Even me, I'm pretty laid back, as you know, but even me, you know, regular people that have to work, they're always going full blast mentally. And if you can get yourself into a state where you're not, especially without any harmful. Harmful or illegal things involved, you know, then all the better, man. That's great.

[Jason]

It was great.

[Skip]

People can do that at church. That's. I think that's really cool too. So. Yeah, we'll see. We'll talk about that between ourselves and then. Then I'll make fun of you.

[Jason]

Okay. If anyone has any questions, you can. You can read. You know how to get a hold of me. And if anyone has any questions for skip podcast, fretboardjournal.com is how we actually get to the amp banter. And you can send us your family recipes. The holidays are coming up. We love sharing those. You can send us the conundrums your feeling with your amp collection. Whether something's not working or you're trying to make a decision on your next amp. You can send us a voice memo and we'll play that. And then I don't botch your name and I don't have to read it. Whatever you want.

[Skip]

Well, it's 15 minutes and we better do something for the other half.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

You ready?

[Jason]

That's true. Yeah.

[Skip]

So two recent amps that I. That I fixed up that were both really excellent sounding. And for you tech dorks, the b. The high voltage 250, 260. Really low. Way lower than you'd think. Even a regular little tiny Champ. The first one was a Bogan, which is a PA company. I've built lots and lots of their old PAs and they made hi Fi and all sorts of stuff. But they made a rare guitar amp that's like a little tweed Champ or a tweed Princeton. It's called a bogan GA5. And I've only ever seen two. And someone brought me this one. Oh, that was Jeff Chicatano. He of the long messages we're working on him getting. He needs an editor. But the B on that thing was super low and it sounded great and it was like a champion 600 type thing. Like one octal preamp tube, 6v6. Probably a 6 volt rectifier 6x5 instead of the 5y3. And the other one was a little tiny made in Japan amp by Realistic. That's Radio Shack, right?

[Jason]

Yep.

[Skip]

Little tiny thing, smaller than a lunchbox. And Isaac, Isaac had bought it thinking, oh, this is cool. But when he got it and sent it to me, oh my God. Like someone had no idea what they were doing. Built another amp in it in 45 minutes.

[Jason]

Wait, repeat that. What was that?

[Skip]

Somebody. It was gutted. And somebody had basically built a different circuit in this little thing. Or maybe not, but it was so terribly done. Like I said, it looked like they rebuilt the whole amp in 45 minutes. Like just twist the wires together and solder it. Like, I don't know. It would be fine on. If you were trying to make a radio to broadcast that you were hidden in a bunker in World War II, you could twist some wires together, right? But it was just horrible. So when I told him that it was going to cost. What am I going to do? I got to build another amp in that thing, tear all that stuff out and do it over or nothing. I said I'd buy it from you. And I had it for a month or two. And then one day I was looking at it and I just went, I know what to do. So there's a little. There's a little baby masko. The cheapest, smallest ones. They're called C6s. They also have the hyper low B plus. So I built that circuit in that thing and it's just awesome. And it has a 6 AQ5 instead of a 6 V6, which hepcats like August from Otis amps. Others have been using for a long time now because you can buy vintage great 6 AQ5s for cheap vintage grade 6 V6s are absolutely not cheap. So it's a cool tube to use anyway. And I just used the little Masko circuit, except with the 6 AQ5, and put a tone circuit in it and all that stuff, and it sounded great, fantastic. And it looks cool, and it looks cool and. Well, the name of this thing is the Realistic Carnival. Of course, my new Prague, you know, band is called Realistic Carnival. Think about it, right? I mean, is that a name or what? So, but for tech dorks, it's the low B plus. Those things sound fantastic, and, yeah, they're 4 watts or something, but you. That little realistic carnival thing gets loud through a 112 cabinet. So think about it. Tinkerers lower that B plus, use tubes that we can get instead of whining about tubes we can't. That's a quote from the late, great Steve Malka Sethian. Hey, fools, instead of complaining about how much telefunk and 12ax7s cost, why don't you check out these military tubes that I have brand new for $3. You know, make something with those. So there's a lot to be said for that in the. In the tube amp world. There's some good stuff out there that's still really affordable. Like an old Jaguar from the 80s or 90s.

[Jason]

Exactly.

[Skip]

You know, it's so cool. All right, what else we got?

[Jason]

Well, we have so much. We have so many amp questions. We also, it was a little confusing when I revisited the Tava Mail vault. We had two Bafflers last time around. We had one that you submitted, and then we had one from Johnny seven. Shall we field Johnny seven's baffler submission and then his answer to it first?

[Skip]

Sure.

[Jason]

Okay. This is from Johnny seven, and we played this last week, but now we'll play the entire voice memo.

[Johnny Seven]

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 Reco inner world. So I thought I'd share my little encounter with one of these characters and make it a Baffler. So here we go. 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 you. 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? All right, cheers from Seattle. And here's the answer. By the way, he could tell from across the room because I was holding an oval shaped speaker. It was an old Supro, right? And they use those a lot. And he went on to tell me that the factory that had made those speaker cones had burned down. Hmm.

[Skip]

All right. I wish I could have sounded smart because I knew that. But she said the answer before I said across the room. Oval speakers, they're really hard to get the cones for those. Nobody manufactures them anymore. Except there were some vintage 47amps which I'll put a plug in for. They're real nice. They were made in California, I think they still are nice combination of hand wiring and decent price and old school Valco looking amps. That guy uses vintage preamp tubes that he got for a dollar a piece, you know, that are old octals. I think he uses 6sq7s, which is a real popular tube in the 40s Valco amps. So that's how I knew is that oval speakers are pretty tough. Vintage 47 did make some amps with oval speakers and they do have a certain cone available, but it's only one size and it's not the size that that those old Valcos came with. So if you have a national Supro Valco amp that has oval speakers, lay off the stranglehold. Because you're going to blow those things up and then you'll. Then you'll be doomed. I've seen quite a few of those amps that have had those taken out. Put a new baffle in to hold a 10 or a 12 because the ovals are just a pain. Okay, but pretty good. What was the other? Oh, I know the other Baffler.

[Jason]

The other Baffler related to the high, low gain inputs. Do you want me to play someone's voice memo?

[Skip]

I got two phone calls.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

One was wrong and one was right.

[Jason]

Okay. Do you want me to play one of them for you? This is from listener Jack. Everybody be a part of the show. [e-mail] what are you waiting for?

[Skip]

Send in your recipes.

[Jack]

Hey, Skip and Jason, this is Jack, formerly from Point Richmond, now right across the bridge in San Rafael. Just listened to the newest podcast episode and wanted to shoot my shot at the Baffler. Well, not the listener's baffler about the speaker. I have no clue about that one, but Skip's Baffler about the high and low gain inputs on the Champ. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Skip is using a TRS or a switching jack or something like that on the number one input to connect the cathode bypass cap in one of the preamp stages. And then the number two input would not connect this bypass cap. So it would be different than stock at that point and be a little cleaner, lower gain, better than the resistor situation that's normally on the 1 and 2 inputs. I think that would work. I did bring Skip a few amps over the summer, and he did something similar on my Supro Spectator. Just like a little 4 or 5 watt Valco thing with a 6 SL7. It would get really distorted and grindy when I turned it up before, which is still a cool sound. But now I have a much more useful, clean input, if you will. And I think he did something along those lines. So that's my guess. Let me know if I'm right. Anyway, love the podcast. Looking forward to the next one. Please keep at it.

[Jason]

Don't stop.

[Jack]

Love you guys.

[Skip]

Ding. I needed a little bell to ring.

[Jason]

Ding. You have the sound effects. Thanks to that one guy's garage sale.

[Skip]

Oh, yeah, I should have brought some of that in. I could have done the train whistle or the thing. Yeah, slide whistle. I'll. I'll remember to bring those up next.

[Johnny Seven]

Okay.

[Skip]

Correct.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Preamps in these simple little amps have a Cathode resistor. The cathode resistor has a bypass capacitor in parallel with it. If a preamp tube doesn't have a bypass capacitor across it, which they often don't, that stage doesn't develop as much gain signal increase as it could. So if you were sitting here, had your tweed Champ, and you were able to connect and disconnect the bypass capacitor on the first preamp tube. When the bypass capacitor is connected, the gain goes up and when it's disconnected, it goes down. A lot of the amps. I'm realizing a lot of this. That's why I want to see the fretboard journal Champ, a lot of those champs. Because the B plus is so dang high on the silver face amps, they get really distorted, right? And the number two input jack on Fenders, I have to admit, is genius. But hardly anyone ever uses it. Very rarely do I find somebody who does something on the number two jack. The idea was it would be lower gain. You could put a microphone in there and it wouldn't feed back or something like that. But in reality for guitar, it not only reduces the gain, but it rolls off the highs, which, you know, most people maybe don't want. So I've been experimenting with ways of getting a cleaner sound out of this first stage. And connecting and disconnecting the bypass cap is co to do it, by the way. Modern kind of piece of junk, Classic. The Blues Junior. Fender Blues Junior. It has a fat switch. Look at the schematic. That's what it does, connect. You know, somebody at Fender knew was hip enough years ago to to figure out how to do that, right? So, so a couple years back, I'm looking at the schematic of a voice of music. Little weird, amped it, long story. And I'm looking at the schematic, I'm going, why is this capacitor hooked up to this jack? And I finally realized that what they had done was they had taken a tip ring sleeve, that's what we basically call a stereo quarter inch jack, and they soldered the ground connection, the ground end of that, of that little bypass cap to the ring of the jack. Now if you plug a regular mono quarter inch plug into a tip ring sleeve jack, you're connecting that ring to ground because it touches the body of the jack. It's just mechanically you're connecting it. So when you plug into that one, you're connecting that bypass cap. And if you plug into the other jack, that bypass cap is not connected to ground and you get the cleaner sound just like that. Well, that's super cool. I mean, I've done it a lot of times with little switches. You could put a foot switch on it that you could switch back and forth. But the two jacks is really kind of elegant for something real small and. And discreet. So when I made the Mega Champ. Thank you. To Sour Sound for the huge output transformer, I did it that way. And I. I think it's. I think people would. I think it would get a lot more use than the normal number two jack would on a Champ. So it's just something fun that we can do to give us a little bit more variety of sound in an organic way so that guy wins. I don't know. Shiner Bach.

[Jason]

Nice. Wow. Too bad.

[Skip]

I had someone who called me. I had someone who called me a guest as well.

[Jason]

And. And also. Let's just pause to reflect on. You already brought up the. I forget the other amp that had the whimsical title, but the Supro Spectator. Why don't amp companies make fun amp models anymore? The naming convention, bro.

[Skip]

Spectator. I know. I was there. I saw, I saw. I was a spectator. Now it's realistic carnival.

[Jason]

Yeah. Realistic carnival. Everybody make an amp line that's just based off rides at Knott's Berry Farm. Yes, that's what I want. That's what I want in 2026.

[Skip]

Oh, good knowledge. That's. Well, they could be a little less serious at times.

[Jason]

Yeah, exactly.

[Skip]

I think. I think a lot of the Otis amps are named after flying saucers or something really tricky like that. So.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Gotta love that.

[Jason]

Okay. Your friend Marcus, frequent podcast contributor, purchaser.

[Skip]

Of A Million Dollar Tube.

[Jason]

The Million Dollar Tube guy wants you to know, or at least he did 18 days ago, that the remakes of the Accutronics tanks are from a company called Revisit amp Repair Parts.com is where you can buy them. And I'll include a link in the show notes.

[Skip]

So this is a potentially better tank. I've used tons of the new tanks that they sell, you know, that aren't very expensive, that are made. I don't know where. But these are some people who are trying to make a reverb spring tank. We're just talking about the tank here, not electronics like a reverb unit, but just the springs. They're trying to make those more like the actual old ones. And we'd look forward to hearing somebody who rolled the dice and tried it and knows what the hell they're talking about if we could get an educated opinion on it, that'd be great. I personally haven't tried one.

[Jason]

Not. You haven't tried one. But they're $47. We're not talking about now.

[Skip]

Let the good times roll and give it a whirlwind. Yeah.

[Jason]

He also says, I hope my Stromberg Carlson AV38 is making its way to the top of your pile. I think that message is meant for you, not me.

[Skip]

So that's the big Stromberg Carlson mixer from the 40s with a big meter on it and stuff, and he needs it like a hole in the head. It's been here since he lived here, which is probably four or five years, but, yeah, it's resting comfortably with its friends. Mm.

[Jason]

All right. Somehow we got in the weeds pretty quickly on this show, which I know most of you like out there.

[Skip]

Which weeds?

[Jason]

The amplifier weeds.

[Skip]

No, it took 15 minutes before anybody would even have known we were gonna say anything.

[Jason]

On my vision quest before that, I.

[Skip]

Had a. I could have told a dog story.

[Jason]

Well, let's do this. One question from listener Kyle, and then I want to hear your dog story.

[Skip]

Or not.

[Jason]

Subject line, Basic Marshall question corner. Normally, I do the beginner level questions at the beginning of the. No, it doesn't matter. Okay. My question involves an Early Marshall JCM 800. The high input obviously gives us the classic Marshall thing. And when plugging into the low input, I've managed to get away with playing this amp in all sorts of lower volume situations. What's that low input doing in regards to the signal path? Thanks. P.S. new Mexican cooking tip. Put green chili on everything.

[Skip]

That guy goes right to the. That's a tip that I can live with. That's beautiful. And short. Concise.

[Jason]

Yeah. You know, checked all the boxes.

[Skip]

Call. Yeah, good call. Excellent. And a great question. I think it was the last podcast or two that I said. Again, Marshalls are so nobody knows how the hell those things work. And I don't. It's so simple. The differences between the lead and the base and all this stuff, it's just. It's all so simple. Just little capacitors. Like I said, the main thing about Marshalls is they have a bright cap, a bright switch, like twin reverbs have a bright switch, but theirs is on all the time. And the value of the capacitor that that is on the volume control is so high of a value. That's why when you just barely turn up the volume, those things are insanely loud and insanely bright. Because that bypass cap Is letting the highs go through unattenuated by the volume control. The JCM 8 hundreds with the two inputs, high and low, by the way, don't buy one where the jacks are side by side because that's the printed Circuit Board Junkie 1. Buy them where the jacks are one on top of the other. Those have all the tube sockets still mounted to the chassis, all the pots still mounted to the chassis, and only the small parts are on a printed circuit board, which is the way Marshall's been doing it since I think about 74. But anyway, through a switching jack. Not the same jack as we were talking about just a few minutes ago, but it. But the type of jack like fenders use on the input where there's a mechanical switch that is made that disconnects when you plug into it and connects when you take the plug out. Well through that. The high. The high gain input goes through a triode, a tube, but the low gain comes in after that tube. So if you look at the schematic, you'll see it's a little hard to get a highlighter pen. The high gain goes through an extra triode compared to the low gain. So service tip, your actual sound, if you're playing the Marshall, goes from the high gain input to the two to the tube, Is that right? Yes. Then it goes back to the low gain jack and through those little points and then back into the rest of the circuit. When you plug into the number two, it breaks that right there and your signal is going in after that first tube. So the point is you got to have a little tiny tool and keep those little points clean because your sound when you're using this thing on the high gain input is actually going through those little tiny spring loaded points in the jacks. And I'm not a fan of English jacks. Just make sure those things are clean and tight because you can imagine if they're not, your sound's going to be crappy because you don't have a solid connection. Really should just be a wire. And people who are never going to use that low gain feature will eliminate some noise and funkification if they just get rid of that so that it doesn't go through those little points but just hardwired. So that's how it works. Not that hard really. And cool.

[Jason]

Easy. Yeah, yeah, pretty cool.

[Skip]

Then you've got those amps have a volume preamp volume and a master volume. And I've always thought that the distortion that they do is pretty cool. You don't have to have A distortion pedal if you have one of those, because they get pretty distorted and pretty wild sounding even at a low volume. Yeah.

[Jason]

All right, well. Well, we'll keep it Southwest themed. This voice memo is not. It's regarding a 1979 baseman 10. But then there's a recipe that fits in well with the green chili motif. So first off, Franklin, let's hear your voice memo.

[Franklin]

Hello, Skip and Jason. This is Franklin from Kirkland. And today I have a question about a Fender Basement 10 from 1979. I recently got a chassis. So it's a project amp? No, no cabinet. I wanted to lower the B. So I've been thinking about punching up a hole, installing a tube rectifier and a small 5 volt filament transformer to run it. Skip, what do you think of that? Is that a good option to lower the.

[Skip]

The B?

[Franklin]

What rectifier will you use on one of these? And also this one has the ultralinear transformers. So can you talk a little about ultralinear transformers and whether it's a good idea to either put the screen connection to the. To the transformer primaries on a switch, maybe to take it off the circuit and on and off, or something like that? So thank you very much, Keep up the great work and I'll be waiting to hear your answer.

[Skip]

Franklin, he's a new customer who's persistent. He got an AB box out of me. I forget what else I fixed for him. I think he. I think he went to Guitar center and bought a Princeton Reverb.

[Jason]

Franklin should know. Bob. Bob is also in Kirkland, Washington. A town I drive through at least three times times a week and a week.

[Skip]

Yeah, it's right in your hood.

[Jason]

Yeah, I mean, I drive through it.

[Skip]

Yeah, yeah, he's. He's. He's dedicated and fun. Well, my point is he went into Guitar center, bought a 65i6 6 Princeton Reverb. They didn't know anything about it. It was X whatever they cost. Well, he got it. It's just stone mint, like untouched. Right. And the difference between that and one that's had a bunch of terrible work or a changed output transformer or whatever, you know, it was big. So again, some music stores, not our sponsor, some music stores, they just don't know anything.

[Jason]

No.

[Skip]

And everything. You might score, but you might not. Don't forget our friend who bought a GA20 from that same chain of stores and brought it to me. And it had been gutted, absolutely gutted. Like there was no parts in it even remotely like the thing Was supposed to be. He didn't know. So anyway. All right. Gigantic Fender amps from the 70s that are cheap because no one wants them. That's what this is. The baseman 10 is two 6L6s. I know with the 10, I think it seems like it has tens. Might be this weird thing that has a sealed cabinet with tens. I forget. So B is too high. A recurring theme today. You could just get your variac and not turn it up so high. Right. That'd be a start. Late 70s Fender could use six L6s that we can't buy anymore. Except for $100 apiece. And they ran them really hot with really high voltages. And taking an amp like that and adding a filament transformer, which you would need to fire up a tube rectifier. And then disconnecting the solid state rectifier that the amp already has. It's a thought you'd have to put in a hole and have to get a tube. And it would use a 5U4 or maybe a 5R4. And it would lower the B plus because the tube draws wax that down, you know, a bit or even quite a bit. I don't exactly know how much it would go down, but I bet that amp might be factory running almost 500 volts on the plates. And it'd be nice to get it down to like four something. And that would be a way to do it. So ultra linear. The other half they're getting. The other half is getting their stuff today. Right. It isn't all just dog stories. Right. So the output stage of an amp, the power tubes, the output transformer drives the speaker. There's lots of ways they did it. Single ended amps with one power tube. Right. Push pull amps and cathode biased and blah blah, blah. Well, one of the ways they did it in the hi fi world, starting in the late 50s, they made a special output transformer that had extra primary leads that would power the screens of the power tubes. Normally the screens are fed by the B power supply of the amp in a different way. This requires an ultralinear transformer. Herb Caros, I can't believe I can remember that. Founded Dynaco and Dynaco stereo stuff back in the 50s was the budget way to get high fidelity. And those guys were the founder basically of the ultralinear output transformer. The company was called Acrosound that made these things. And vintage acrosound transformers are still used in the hi fi world a lot. Now question is, are there any cool amps ever that were ultralinear for guitar? Oh, no, I don't know, man. I think Bill Kernard would say ultralinear amps don't sound good for guitar. The Fenders that use that, all those late 70s fenders used ultralinear output transformers and they're not exactly what you'd call hotly. People don't necessarily want them. If you wanted the most possible clean power out of that amp, then I'd say leave it. But if you wanted to change it around and set it up so that it ran like a normal Fender amp, that would mean disconnecting the taps that are the screen voltage taps on the transformer, just leaving them disconnected and hooking it up the way a normal Fender amp would be. That certainly would be viable. And I'm sure it wouldn't sound any worse. Maybe you take it in baby steps, listen to the ultralinear circuit for a while and then change it. Then you can report back and tell us what you found out. But basically we're dealing with big old dinosaur amps that are still cheap and we need to be able to experiment with those. The music master bass amps. Right. Those are little, small ones. And we've talked about how putting a tone control, changing the tone control can make those things sound great. And they're still around for pretty cheap.

[Jason]

Yeah. All right. Franklin also included a recipe so you can really this Thanksgiving, between the green chilies on everything and what Franklin's about to offer, you could really have a Southwest themed meal. This is a family recipe for cactus salad that is easy and quite tasty. One, buy some cactus Nepalis or Napolitos from your local Mexican store.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Jason]

If you buy them in a jar, empty the jar into a strainer and rinse them thoroughly. If you buy them fresh, you can just cut them into squares and boil them in water with a bit of salt. And once they are done, rinse them well in cold water till they lose all the slimy stuff. That's the hard part of this recipe. Two, dice some onions and some tomatoes and mix them with the cactus in a bowl. Three, add some chopped cilantro. Four, cut some Mexican cheese queso fresco in small squares and add it to the bowl. Five, add some salt and pepper to taste. Mix and enjoy. These taste great with tortillas, tostadas or tortilla chips. That's from Franklin.

[Skip]

Ooh, and no meat, Mr. Kale.

[Jason]

No meat.

[Skip]

And.

[Jason]

And technically really no dressing.

[Skip]

Yeah, just like the cheese is the only. No vinegar. No, none of that.

[Jason]

Just salt and pepper. And whatever the tomato brings to the table.

[Skip]

Well, I'm not proud to admit I haven't had the cactus salad. Have you?

[Jason]

Not yet.

[Skip]

I know they sell it. They sell that in every grocery store.

[Jason]

No, I haven't around here. The cactus has always intimidated me. I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid.

[Skip]

Yeah. Do you eat seafood?

[Jason]

No. Well, I've had smoked salmon in the last year.

[Skip]

The. You. The FedEx driver brought ceviche. He's.

[Jason]

Wait, it was. It wasn't a UPS driver last week.

[Skip]

Oh, that's right. I already told that story.

[Jason]

Oh, you got every delivery guy bringing you some sort of raw fish salad.

[Skip]

Yeah, this.

[Jason]

That.

[Skip]

This isn't cooked. What do you. What do you. Wait a minute. I'll ask him about that. Yeah, the cactus. No, I think that's good. We should definitely. You should definitely post that. He did say salt and pepper, right?

[Jason]

Yeah, there was salt and pepper in there.

[Skip]

Well, that white cheese, I bet it sort of starts to break down and get a little crumbly and kind of goes throughout it. Right. If you cut it up pretty small. Yeah. I'll be expecting you to try this and give us a.

[Jason]

Give us a. I mean, it's almost vegan. Yeah. Yeah.

[Skip]

Well, you're completely vegan. No cheese.

[Jason]

I sometimes cave. All right. With the people who've waited long enough. We want to hear your dog story.

[Skip]

Really? Yeah. Oh.

[Jason]

So it's not worth it?

[Skip]

No. Nice guy comes to pick up his amps. He's a show about amps. Nice guy comes to pick up his amp, and I didn't know, but he had a. Had a big fun dog in the back seat that was jumping around. And, you know, I have Junior, and so Junior was out, and I said, holy crap, he's gonna jump on the car and all this. So I get Junior to go in the house, shut the door. So the guy stays for a while, and we're yakking, and pretty soon the dog jumps out of the car. And he was fairly well behaved. Wasn't like, you know, he wasn't attacking the goats or anything. So he got to run around because, of course, I have, like, a dog heaven yard, right? And finally get this guy ready to go, and there's no dog, and he's kind of like, ah. He starts walking the perimeter of my place, which is big, you know, like, it took a while, and it was. You know, it was in the afternoon. It was kind of warm, and he was getting kind of panicky, and I was staying home, and we're just looking Everywhere and calling. I. I looked up a little while later. He's riding around. One of my neighbors had a dog that was barking. He thought, well, maybe the dog went down there, and that's why the neighbor's dog is barking. So he goes down there. Next thing I know, I see him with my neighbor in this golf cart, and he's given. And he's giving this guy a drive. As we drive all around the neighborhood, I mean, looking for this dog. Well, it was about. And I'm calling him on his phone. It was close to an hour, maybe 45 minutes. It seemed like a really long time. And I thought to myself, well, you know, maybe I'll let Junior out of the house. Maybe it'll be like bait, right? I open the front door. Both the dogs are sitting inside the front door of my house, and they'd been sitting there the whole time. So. So that. So I grabbed the guy's dog and I tie it up to a tree, and I start calling him on the phone. And finally we get dog and man back together. Dog was in the house, sitting there with Shep, polite as could be. I came back in the house later expecting, you know, trash all over the place, and, you know, the T bone steak drug off the. You know. But no, the dog just sat there.

[Jason]

Just chilling, Just chilling. They're probably making fun of you guys, and.

[Skip]

They'Re out there calling and looking for us, and we're just. If one of them had given us a little bit of a yip, we would have been sad. So I felt sorry for the guy. I mean, can you imagine? He was like, holy crap.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Here I am at the amp guy's house, and I can't find my dog, and my wife's going to kill me, and. But it all ended up fine. So.

[Jason]

That's beautiful.

[Skip]

The dog story.

[Jason]

That's a good dog story. Amps and dogs, we have a lot more questions. We even have another recipe, I believe. Let's do one where I don't have to read anything. This is from listener Nate.

[Nate]

Hey, guys. Nate in Vermont here. Been a little out of the loop with the Tava, but I'm getting caught up on a few episodes I got behind on. And I just listened to the one where Skip talks about the choir and the bus and. And all that. That's. That's quite a story. Thank you for that. It made me think of something I wanted to recommend for a musical thing to pass on. And so if you go on YouTube, there's something called choir, choir, choir. And I Recommend listening to the one with Colin Hay of Men at Work. He does the song Overkill, which I hadn't been familiar with until someone shared it with me, but I loved it and it gives me the chills every time. It's a. It's a cool little project that they have going on there with this. With this choir thing. So check that out. It's like five minutes or so and quick amp thing. I don't really have a question, but just wanted to thank Skip for recommending Trainers as being a good value. I've worked on a couple of the 50 watt heads and. And one of which is my own that I picked up. And I've also got one of the. One of the guitar mates. And so both amps have reverb and tremolo and they're just, you know, beautiful amps for the money, you know, crazy cheap.

[Skip]

So.

[Nate]

So thanks for that and thanks for what you guys do. Always love having a new episode to. To listen to and be well.

[Jason]

Thanks, trainers.

[Skip]

Pre about 1980. One of the most unbelievable, epic bargains of the decade. Most of them are too big, you know, for most people, but beautifully made and just. Whoa, how much Cheaper than a champ and a silver Face champ at that. So Trainers are great. And what was the other question I got lost on?

[Jason]

The other question was a music recommendation that Colin Hay from Minute Work, who's been to our fretboard summit, did a video with a big choir. He did Overkill, one of the big Minute Work songs. It's beautiful.

[Skip]

You can watch TV all you want. You can even go to the movies, but live like. You don't like choir. You don't listen to choir music at home, but you get a chance to hear 50 people all singing together who know what they're doing. You should check it out because it's. You don't have to be a choir buff. There's just something about, like a real orchestra. Everything. Something happens that. That is only there. Words are failing. Something is created. That's more than just the 50 people. It isn't just the 50 sounds. There's another sound that happens that you can't get without the 50 sounds. And if you listen for it, something to hear. I got to hear a choir and an orchestra in that old room at Harvard, like an old wooden. Oh, my goodness. There were. I think there were three or four double basses in the orchestra and no microphones, of course. Right. And you could just. It just rattle your bones. It's cool. So great recommendation if you get a chance to Hear a choir in a good room, like a church or something like that. Check it out. It's pretty. It's pretty inspiring. You don't have to stay all day. Just give yourself five or ten minutes to hear what that sounds like.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Love it.

[Jason]

Keeping it in the greater Seattle area. Dane, who I think is a mere mile or two from where I am sitting, is the guy who bought the Canadian Soundmaster model 600Pa amp. It was discussed a few episodes ago. We're keeping it Canadian. We were talking trainers a minute ago. He writes, I'm about to service it and get it running again. Including adding a conventional power transformer and 5 volt rectifier in lieu of the 12 volt battery only power transformer and vibrator.

[Skip]

But before I go, hold on because I didn't even know what the hell you were talking about, so I figured no one else does. Sound Master is a really rare Canadian brand. The great Kevin in Ohio, of course he discovered them. But this is a really weirdo thing that was made to be powered by a car. You know, Blues Brothers ice cream truck, like that.

[Jason]

Yep.

[Skip]

So that's what this guy's talking about. Now go.

[Jason]

Yeah, and I thanks to him. He sent me pictures of the aforementioned PA so I can post those onto our Instagram and our Facebook group. He's talking about servicing it. He's talking about adding a conventional power transformer, as I've already said. But he also wants to know before I go to the trouble, does Skip typically recommend repainting an old PA amp like this when it is severely corroded and paint is missing? I'm leaning towards not painting, just giving it a good cleaning and letting the old battered look. Carry on for now. But would love to know what Skip typically does. That's Dane and Ballard. And yes, this Sound Master is a thing of beauty, but also very pitted and kind of disgusting.

[Skip]

I have customers and friends who would just instantly throw down on that and most of them would say absolutely not. Leave. It doesn't matter how rusty it is. On the other hand, even if your skills run that way and you would enjoy it, by all means do it. Make it look as cool and groovy and new as you can if you want. Why not? It's not like now. We're not talking about refinishing your Chippendale High boy here, right? That was 50 grand and now it's worth 500 bucks. We're not talking about sanding down your granddaddy's old Strat. We're talking about a rusty old PA thing. So personal choice. There are amazing number of people who like it funky. Nobody ever sees any old cars anymore. But there is a thing in the old car world where people have old cars that still look, I mean, like primer and rust and. Yeah, I mean, they're, they're not dirty, they're washed. But there's no attempt at trying to like, put the $50,000 paint job on it, you know?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And that appeals to some people as well. And there's nothing wrong with that. In my world, if it was what I'd consider to be a valuable amp, like a rusty old Masco PA head, like an MA17, I wouldn't paint it. I will say that you can get some really authentic looking stuff. Crinkle paint that wrinkles. There's gray and there's black and there's hammertone paint that makes that swirly look.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And with skill, you can do a job that looks really, really, really, like, original.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

With. With those paints. And I never would do that because I'm too lazy. Well, not lazy. I just, you know, if I was gonna. Somebody brought me their PA head, I wouldn't say, well, for an additional $200, I'll repaint it for you. Nah, I just want to make it sound good and let the next person decide what to do with it after that.

[Jason]

You know, ever since I hung out with Barry and his classic British cars in Petaluma, I get these ads on Instagram for like cryo dry ice blasting of the underside of your car.

[Skip]

Oh, I do that weekly.

[Jason]

Yeah. And I bet if you took a cute little PA to one of these places that is constantly advertising to me on Instagram, they'd probably take it on as a little pet project and it would take them all five minutes. I can't imagine they charge much, but it does. At least if you're looking at an old Porsche or Land Cruiser on Instagram, it does take off all the pitting and everything. It'd be kind of interesting.

[Skip]

Yes. And there's new and no chemicals either. Yeah, people used to just wax over old, ancient, rusty finishes that they wanted to keep. You know, patina, Right.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

There's a whole, whole bunch of products that they make that are. That almost are like a sealer that provide a lot of protection, but you're putting it on paint where you can see the metal through, or there's light pitting or, you know, with a lot of patina to it. So. Yeah, I would think that an old PA had it's Paint just like a car. And it could benefit from some of that preservation type of treatment.

[Jason]

Yeah. How many sound masters from ice cream trucks still exist in the world? He should really baby it.

[Skip]

Exactly.

[Jason]

Yeah. Okay, moving right along. I'm looking at all these questions.

[Skip]

I know you screamed it and this.

[Jason]

One'S got another recipe. We don't need another recipe. Right away, Kenny. When I was a budding guitar player in my teens, I remember an ad for Lab Series amplifiers featuring Ronnie Montrose. He recorded a beautiful instrumental of Town Without Pity. They combined effect of his playing in the ad attached. Always piqued my interest in Montrose and Lab Series amps. What can you tell me about these Lab Series amps and other players who use use them? Thanks for the show, Kenny.

[Skip]

Barely anything.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

B.B. king.

[Jason]

B.B. king played one. Yep.

[Skip]

Late 70s. Kind of like music man. Like a early solid state hybridy kind of thing. And I bet they're super affordable if you can find one. And Ronnie Montrose, definitely. Great. I like. I liked a bunch of that stuff and I know that song he's talking about. But I don't really know too much about the Lab Series amps. They're really affordable when they're around. Oh, wait a second. They were made in Southern California and there's a Standel connection.

[Jason]

Well, they add that he attached has a Illinois address and it says another quality product from New Orleans. So at some point Norlin absorbed them and moved them to the Midwest.

[Skip]

Yeah. Then Gibson. It is a little bit different than. Than Gibson. I think it started independent. There's a great book about Gibson amps and anybody. Everyone should have it. And if I was to run down in the shop and had about three minutes, I could say more about those Lab Series amps because there's a little mention of them in that book. But they were quality and they were sleepers. And B.B. king could have had a twin reverb.

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip]

Right. He sounded okay. Right. So I'm sure that they were cool. And if anybody else has one another problem. We were talking about the trainers. I don't know if there's any small Lab Series amps. They're all pretty big, which means they're, you know, of limited use these days. Right. Now that we don't need great big amps as much. We've talked about that plenty of times. Makes the big amps a great deal. Go get you if you got a lot of dry storage. Fill it up with super reverbs and twin reverbs and big old SVT's and stuff like that. Maybe someday people will come around. I will tell you that something like a twin reverb is a logging truck, but it's still sounds great. It's not like it's unplayable at your house. It just has a clean sound, you know, and it does a lot of stuff you'll never do, like play really, really really loud. But it's still fun to play. Just. I mean, don't think it has to be a little tweed 5 watt thing in order for you to play at your house. That's going a little too far, right? If you already have a big old hefty amp like that, play that thing, man. If you can't get the sound like Sultan's a swing, then you just keep practicing because it will absolutely will love it.

[Jason]

We have even more questions and this next one is from listener Lorenz. If you ever want to get to the front of the line on the Truth About Binge Jams podcast, we have a Patreon where I'll spill all the beans on the retreat I just did. I'm happy to talk Loren's Subject Line smoke damage special HD130 I have an early all original Musicman HD130 head model 2100130 normal flash bass channels, tube phase inverter, no reverb or trim. It was in a building fire some time back. The amp itself seems fine internally, only suffering some smoke damage, discoloration and according to the previous owner, a retired NorCal amp Tech, it worked the last time it was turned on. Those are famous last words running when parked. I haven't done anything with it yet and I'm trying to come up with the best plan of attack. It definitely needs some new power tubes, but beyond that I'm not sure where to start. Should I just do a basic service and fire it up with a variac due to the amp's condition, do I need to do any cleaning beyond the usual deoxit and WD40? If so, how should I go about doing a D deeper cleaning? Should I replace anything preemptively due to its precarious past? Overall, I'd like to keep the amp as original as possible. The previous owner said that the caps were made much better back in the day and are probably still fine. I'd like to believe him, but given the amp's history and ridiculous plate voltage, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'm attaching some photos for context. Any advice? We greatly appreciated. This is an amp. I didn't send this to you Skip, but this is an amp he didn't send like the face plate or anything. Doesn't look all that bad. It probably stinks and you can definitely see some cloudiness on the tubes from the smoke. But it definitely doesn't look like, you know, a guy sprayed foam fire extinguisher on it or anything. It's just a dirty amp.

[Skip]

Let's start with this.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Shout out to Matt Dudman. Great player. I think you know him.

[Jason]

Do I.

[Skip]

He's, he's. He lives in Dixon or he lived in. Now he lives in Dixon. Anyway, he had a, a storage, little storage shed in his backyard. One of the kind that's like, kind of like a fiberglass kind of construction or a plastic kind of thing.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Somehow I think he blamed his neighbor. But it caught on fire.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

And there's an amp in there, a Masco and it burned down like it burned the. The transformers are just like coils of wire wrapped around the chassis of the, of the transformer. It just burned it to nothing.

[Jason]

Yeah, six.

[Skip]

All six is still worked.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

So check yourself before you. I'm a couple minutes into that. I heard him say, well, of course it looks like it's going to need new tubes. And I go, really? Tubes run hot. They don't care about being close to a fire. So the other thing is that the six CA7 tubes in a music man, which are an American made version of the EL34 but much more rugged. Again, I think they're $150 each for new ones and that you need four. So maybe we better carefully see if the ones that are in there are still good. The smoke is nothing. You know, you can literally wash an ample if you carefully dry it afterwards. I know because I've done amps that were underwater and floods and stuff like that. If the smoke is bugging you, just start. I just start cleaning it. And yes, you're going to need to clean all the teeth. You have to service it. And I don't do music man amps. I have a guru in Sacramento who does. If someone local, he won't take shipped amps. They run in a really far out way. 700 volts on the plates, which a lot of tubes just can't hang. But one tip I will give you this guy is that on those early amps, all the little transistors. Oh, it only has tube output tubes, all solid state preamp. The only tubes in it are the four power tubes. Yeah, some of the early ones have a tube phase inverter, but all the preamp circuitry and stuff is all solid state. So they're little tiny transistors. But these transistors fit into little sockets inside that they stick in there and you could pull them out. So what does that mean? People who've been listening to me for years, you don't think those things are dirty. You got to clean all those little transistors and transistor sockets they're plugged into just like you would a tube. If you turn one of those things on and start touching those things, you might find one. Every time you touch it, it goes. It's not because the transistor is bad, it's just because It's a good 75 years of sitting there in that that needs to be cleaned. Well, maybe not 75 years on a music man, but plenty of years. So if you ever have an early solid state thing that has transistors that aren't soldered in but, but are actually just plugged into little sockets, be sure and clean those very carefully. And you're going to need a Variac and life insurance. Now. They're, they're very well done. It's just they, they run in a way that I can't even comprehend. So I can't say too much about them except that they held up well. There is a Leo Fender connection. They were very popular in the day. They're super undervalued now and they're really quite well made stuff. I think they made those from 73 to maybe 83 and that's it. So they were expensive in their day.

[Jason]

Love it.

[Skip]

Be careful. Think about a Variac. Run that thing at a little lower. B plus wouldn't be a bad idea. And carefully test those tubes before you decide you need more because the real ones would be really expensive again. How's that? Did that cover most of it?

[Jason]

Yeah. Thanks, Lorenz. Thanks for including photos. Everybody should do that. Speaking of photos, this came in a while ago and I promptly ignored it. But then he resent it and. And also included the photos. Again. This is from Andrew. Subject line 1950 Ferguson Tractor. We have made it to the truth about vintage tractors. Yeah, after hearing Skip's banter on his Ferguson tractor on your last episode, I thought I'd resend this email I sent ages ago that got briefly mentioned on the show but never got read out. So I'm guessing Andrew wants me to read this whole thing out. Hey, Skip. And Jason thought I'd chime in after listening last episode. Skip Talking about his 1950s Ferguson tractor and the dangers of owning one only days Earlier, I received a text from my close friend with a photo with the photo attached saying not an ideal way to spend a Sunday arvo. That's Australian for afternoon. We've all learned something arvo.

[Skip]

There you go.

[Jason]

Like into the goalie with no working brakes. He managed to survive the wild ride down to the bottom of the goalie, but when attempting to drive the Fergie back up the steep embankment, one of the rear tires dug in, sending the tractor sideways, rolling back down the bank. Thankfully, the old girl had a rollover bar fitted. Without that, he assures me, I would have to find a new Saturday morning coffee partner. So to all the tavers out there, please be more careful around machinery and get your safety measures up to speed before it's too late. When I called to see if he needed me to run him to the hospital to get checked out, he said he was okay, just bruised and shaken. In the background I could hear his two boys laughing their heads off about the day's events. I didn't see the funny side of it at all. I actually really like my current Saturday morning coffee partner just fine. Apologies, no amp talk. But I have a quick and delicious food tip that most people probably know anyhow. Shelled prawns shrimp, preferably green tiger prawns. Wrap a piece of the nicest bacon you can buy around the prawn attached with a wooden toothpick. Make up some garlic butter with fresh chopped butter and garlic or fresh chopped garlic and butter. Crank up a nice hot barbecue or griddle. Put lashing on the garlic butter over the hot plate and prawns. Turn occasionally and cook until crispy and brown. The perfect entree on Christmas day or any lunch on a hot summer day. Washed down with an ice cold Cooper's Pale Ale, this beer has a best after date. Take care guys. Keep doing what you do so brilliantly. You are well loved. That's Andy from Wick Street Guitars in Nashvillquin Dunlinquin, Australia.

[Skip]

I knew that. Yeah, I didn't know that.

[Jason]

There are graphic pictures of a tractor on its side down a gully with a guy with a straw hat looking happy that he's still alive.

[Skip]

I'll share eventually for all for anyone who gives a crap about me. Don't worry, my place is flat.

[Jason]

It is flat.

[Skip]

I mean I'm in the rolling hills but I don't run that tractor on. I'll drive my lawnmower on a steep slope but not the tractor. And the other thing is that everything was so much more dangerous and we just were Expected to deal with it. And you should see footage of like a sawmill from the 50s, right. Like when the OSHA guy came to Fender in like 1950 and he took one look and ran out and had to call from the, from the phone booth saying you're shut down because he saw the girls putting that mother of toilet seat stuff on the lap steels with open flames and 50 gallon drums of acetone and stuff like that. And old tractors, they just, they don't stop. If you get up off the seat of most modern stuff, the engine stops. Like if you buy a lot, a fancy riding lawnmower, you can't even go backwards or do. You can't do anything without the engine stopping if you don't go through this little safety bit. But there's none of that on the old stuff. It would just keep on going. The drawbridges, the one at Freeport Bridge especially, it was from the 20s when I first went there. If you didn't slow it down and stop it, it would have just into the river. Right. I mean, you had to be in charge of everything. And by the way, that bridge had what's called a dead man switch, where you had to have your foot on this big switch on the floor. And if you took your foot off at any time, it was supposed to stop all operations of the bridge in case the drawbridge operator had a heart attack or something like that.

[Johnny Seven]

Right.

[Skip]

So you just gotta keep your wits about you if you're using that old stuff. But don't be so scared. I mean, America was built on guys driving tractors like that. And I don't want to see pictures of horrible tractor accidents. I'm sure there's been many, but there's something to be said about the old way of doing stuff. It keeps you sharp. You don't have a long shirt, not tucked in, but right next to your arm, there's this gigantic tire with these big treads on it. I mean, you can stick your hand in there, down by your feet, don't put your foot there. So you just have to be thinking all the time. Whereas the riding lawnmower, that's where I dream up crazy preamp ideas and stuff like that. Because you're just sort of sitting there passing time.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Also, the Ferguson goes. And then you get on your riding lawnmower and it goes. They both do the same thing, but they do it in vastly different ways. And Ferguson uses less gas than my lawnmower does. So ponder that.

[Jason]

Yeah. All right. You want some more amp questions?

[Skip]

Ready?

[Jason]

Okay, let me See here. Got a. I've got so many to choose from. But again, you all can get to the front of the line by joining our Patreon. You know what's weird is now Google AI answers the questions for you. There's a little fake reply. If I just hit send, I could answer everyone's question with AI and you won't have to do no more work, Skip. All right, this one is from listener Greg in Indianapolis. Subject line Twin reverb dual rectifier. Skip, we did it. After listening to you talk about modifying the power section of a twin reverb for the last couple of years, I went out and bought a 75 twin, pulled two power tubes and replaced them with a pair of rectifiers. I emailed Skip on this.

[Skip]

Hopefully the right rectifiers, maybe 6ax5, which.

[Jason]

Wait, we're getting there. We're getting there. I emailed Skip on this and he got right back to me to recommend six AX5 rectifiers. This was really smart. This particular rectifier has a 6 volt filaments and they are on the same pins as the 6L6 filaments. So half the wiring is already done. There's only a half dozen wires to remove and another handful to put in. If you've done some amp work, this will take you a couple hours. I use the interior tubes, V8 and V9 since this seemed to be the easiest wiring scheme. The dual rectifiers resulted in lowering the B from 445v to 410 in run mode, a 35 volt drop and that same drop is seen on all the other high voltages around the amp. Before changing anything, I sat down about five feet in front of the amp. A volume of four was all I could really comfortably take. After the change, I could handle about a 7, a noticeable drop, but there's still a lot of wattage in the cottage. Those are his words, not mine.

[Skip]

Good works. Yeah.

[Jason]

And now a nice thing happens. At volume of about five to six, we get a nice clean crunch. I hadn't planned on this, but it's really tasty. I like it. For fun, I tried it on just one rectifier tube, but the B drops to 350 volts and you end up with that farty distortion, which is no bueno. There's just not enough current to run things. I think we've converted a logging truck into a tow truck. Still big and heavy, but a little more manageable. And now you get some crunch. At A band level volume. I've seen a lot of discussion of this mod online, but no one ever does it. Most of the time guys get stuck looking at a GZ34 or 5U4 rectifier which needs 5 volt for filaments, which you don't have. So they bail on it. The six AX5s are perfect. $7 each from our friends at Amplified Parts. So this was a winner. Good idea, Skip. I made a nice layout diagram of this. If you guys want it, I can email it. Now. I could use some help. I rebuilt a filmo sound 385. It works great, except the 5879 tube has a lot of hum. I've tried at least 10 suggestions to fix without any improvement. It's only noticeable at idle, but it's annoying. If any listeners have a solution, let me know. Lastly, here's a music suggestion. If anyone really likes good Joe Pass style fingerstyle jazz, check out Evan Crafts. He has studied with Peter Bernstein, Andy Brown, and the great Dave Stryker. More importantly, he's my son. Check out his Instagram at ercrafts. I'll include a link to that in the show notes. As always, enjoy the show. Keep it up. Just so your sponsors know, I've spent about a thousand dollars on parts from Amplified Parts in the last few years. Jason, I'm originally from Seattle. Go Mariners. I think this was emailed when the Mariners still were possibly in the World Series. Not anymore. That's from Greg in Indianapolis.

[Skip]

Wow, that was a classic.

[Jason]

That was.

[Skip]

Can't even barely hold onto that. Sherlock Holmes has an even smarter brother, Mycroft, but he can figure out stuff even better than Holmes. But he won't do it. He's too lazy. So I'm mowing and I go, you know what you could do is you could take out two 6L 6s out of a twin and then use 6 volt rectifiers in that slot. And it would. But I never did it. So I'm glad it worked. I knew it would. And that's something that could be applied to any twin, reverb or shaman, you know, or any of those. And could even be pretty well, easily reversible, really. And so it's something that you could experiment with and I'm glad he tried it.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Jason]

What.

[Skip]

What else? I was.

[Jason]

Well, he had a son, Evan Crafts, who I'll include a link to Evan's Instagram. But then he's rebuilt A film of sound 385 and 5879 tube has a.

[Skip]

Lot of first throw the film sound in the garage.

[Jason]

A lot of is hum.

[Skip]

He says throw the garbage. Throw the, throw the film of sound into the garbage can get a better amp. No, other than the 5879, they're cheap. That's another vintage tube which is about to be used by a major manufacturer and a bunch of their amps because they could buy a thousand of them. Right? Okay, if you have another 5879, try it. If you don't, I don't know. It's a pentoed tube. It's basically the same as an EF86 or 6 SJ7 as the old octal style version. And hum is my nemesis. I regularly have problems with hum and I don't even work on those Fillmore sounds because they're just, they're too small, too much, too packed in there. So I bet you amongst our ten freaky listeners, one of them will be a film of sound fiend and will enter into conversation hopefully successfully. Get the hum. Get rid of the hum is basically, I think that's the first gain stage. So getting noise from that very first gain stage, that shouldn't be there. It can be defeated. Don't give up.

[Jason]

Okay?

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Jason]

Since we are at the Father Son portion of the Truth About Vintage Amps, episode 155, Matt writes in another one of our great Canadian listeners, hope one of you will adopt me one day. I recall that in one of your shows, Jason, you invited listeners to share creative projects that might interest other folks in the Truth About Vintage Amps, Orbit and then you might compile them. I'm a kids book illustrator and author and my newest picture book, the one about the Blackbird, is rooted in my lifelong love of music and guitars in particular. It comes out later this month through Tundra Books, an imprint of of Penguin Random House. Music has always been central in my family. My dad played fiddle and collected violins, my gram played piano and my mom sings for a while. My gram was in her late 80s and my folks in their 60s started a band, Highway 6 to play retirement homes. They played one show at the prestigious Roy Thompson hall here in Toronto. I started on my older brother's guitar in Grade 8. Saved up for Rickenbacher 330 by frying a mountain of french fries and still playing a band with the same guys I jammed with when I was 15. Back when our practices were in my grandparents basement while my grandpa smoked a pipe and my grandma baked pies, my dad's last words to me were Turn it up. Anyhow, here's how the publisher describes the book. A young boy learns guitar from his grandfather, and the one about the blackbird becomes their song. Years later, when his grandfather no longer recognizes him, that same song bridges the distance between them. A story about music's power to connect generations and hearts. I'll include a link to that. The author or the illustrator's name is Matt James. And I guess if anybody needs a book for their loved ones during the holidays. Check it out.

[Skip]

Occasional shameful promotion is allowed here.

[Jason]

Yeah, it was sweet.

[Skip]

Yeah, and it's a. It's a cool concept. I'm glad it wasn't, you know, Tommy the Tweed or something like that.

[Jason]

No, it wasn't Tommy the Tweed.

[Skip]

I think there is a book called that Timmy the Tweed App or something like that. All right, well, that's. Like I said, shameless. Self promotion on occasion.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Is acceptable here. So thank you very much for that. That sounds fun.

[Jason]

Boy, we have so many more, but let's do a couple more.

[Skip]

We're not gonna do them all. I haven't even. I haven't told. I haven't even told the best story yet. There's.

[Jason]

Is it another dog story?

[Skip]

No.

[Jason]

All right, well, let me.

[Skip]

Two words. Barn. Find.

[Jason]

Okay. That'll be our cliffhanger. We're gonna get to Mikey's. This is a two parter, a more philosophical non amp question, and a recipe. Okay. First, my wife and I run a small business together, and we had our first child a few weeks ago. More parenting as we adjust. I wanted to ask both of you, how did you all balance work and family when they both seem like they need all of your attention? Up till now, we've been happy to work long hours building our business, but now we have to figure out where to draw the line. And then there's a food tip. So why don't we skip. How do you. What's your work life balance?

[Skip]

I never had to draw the line. I got home from work and then I went to work at home. And then I got up and I went back to work. And when you have. In some ways, it's easier to have just a regular job because the phone ring. I mean, the alarm goes off. In my drawbridge days, it would go off at 4:30am Because I'd have to leave at 5. And you just did it. You know, when you don't have that. The hard part is every day you got like 50,000 things that you could do or should do, but you have to pick them up if you have to just go to work. I'm sure there's some days where you're thinking about a bunch of problems, but you're gonna have to do this because the next issue is due at the publishers at this time. And it's like having a little framework kind of makes it a little bit easier. But I just. I don't have any balance. I was family. I was family only, you know, I didn't go water skiing or time for myself or go on retreats or anything like that. I just.

[Jason]

You didn't go water skiing?

[Skip]

No, I didn't have any toys. You know, I didn't have an ant. Well, but. Well, I had an amp collection and a guitar collection when I was 21. But by the time I was like 23, 24, I was married. And that was the end of that. And I'm glad I did it that way. I'd do it that way again, you know, to tell you the truth, I can do kind of what I want now. Right. Mostly because my. My family on my mom's side hung onto that piece of property there. One next to I80 since 1868. And when they finally sold it, I had enough money to buy this place. So now I don't really have to have a ton of income because I don't have a mortgage. And that's about my only balance right there. Yeah, I just say. And if you have a spouse, just do whatever they. What? Well, if you're a guy and you have a spouse, doing whatever they want all the time is not a bad call, but at least most of the time.

[Jason]

Well, these two run a business together. And I think that's the big question I have is, well, what kind of business?

[Skip]

No cocktails until 5 o'. Clock. That was, that was from Robert Armstrong and his wife when they, when they worked at home together. And they finally just had to say, all right, no cocktails till 5 o'. Clock. That's our work. That's our work life balance right there.

[Jason]

Well, yeah, we need context of what the business is because if, if you can split up your time, that would probably be for the best. If you're, you know, running a circus or working at a farmer's market. Bring the kid along, I guess.

[Skip]

Circus.

[Jason]

Well, I don't know what they.

[Skip]

Realistic carnival.

[Jason]

Yeah, we need to know what, what you do. But I, you know, I will say it's your first child. You're very protective. You're very proud. As I just learned at the retreat Barry drove me to. You know, most kids don't get up till they're around 5 to 10 from what their parents are doing, and so you have a few years to figure your. Your shit out.

[Skip]

You can.

[Jason]

You can really phone it in. I know it's your only baby right now, but you can really phone it in until they are old enough to remember things when they're 51 years old.

[Skip]

Put yourself last. You're not first, you're last, really. And I don't think there's really anything wrong with that. I don't feel like my adulthood was stunted or anything because I had my priorities were other people, not myself.

[Jason]

Well, you're. You're a good dad.

[Skip]

Well, maybe not.

[Jason]

You don't have the stress Mikey and his spouse have running this circus.

[Skip]

Yeah. Think of the people that, you know, have a convenience store, and there's the playpen over there behind the liquor, and there's a kid. You know, some people are willing to do a lot harder work than other people, and it's hard to do everything. We can't all be, like, gorgeous and successful like Barry from Grez Guitars tooling around. Yeah, well, you know, if you want to make a bunch of money, go for it, but don't expect to have huge part in a family or a relationship at the same time, you know?

[Jason]

Yeah, follow up. Follow up, Mikey. I want to hear what you actually do. We don't want to make light of it. And we can't forget the second half of Mikey's email, which is a recipe or less of a recipe than an ingredient recommendation. Mai ploy curry paste. Mikey writes, my ploy is an economically priced Thai curry paste that comes in a big tub. You can buy it at Asian grocery stores where I live or online from Amazon. It doesn't have weird artificial stuff or preservatives in it. It's literally just spices, but it keeps forever in the fridge. We love curries at our house because they are delicious and flexible. You can basically add whatever you want to them. You don't have to shop for ingredients. Whatever is in the fridge can go in the curry. You need three things. Curry paste, coconut milk, and rice. Everything else is up to you. For curry neophytes, it's basically a spice mixture and a paste that you add to canned coconut milk to make a sauce or broth in which you simmer meat or vegetables to make a stew. Tofu, chicken, potatoes, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, onions, broccoli, kale, green beans, peppers, turnips. Any and all these things would be good in a curry. You just have to have Time. You just have to time when you add each ingredient so they all finish cooking together. You then ladle this soup over a bed of rice and you have a filling, fancy tasting meal made from odds and ends. Thank you both for what you do. Deeply enjoy and appreciate this podcast and your work. That's from Mikey in Eminence. Yes, that eminence.

[Skip]

Kentucky Eminence is how they say it there. And you could be walking to school and Colonel Sanders would stop in his car and pick you up and give you a ride. The real Colonel Sanders, and he wore the suit all the time.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip]

Really. That's why I have that on. On personal. I worked with a guy at the Drawbridge who was from Ambulance and he told me that story. And then of course, I went there before. Right before they became public. I went to the factory and checked it out because I went to Kentucky for a FFA convention in Louisville.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

So that's some good stuff. And fancy a curry? They say that in the English shows all the time. I got to get into that about the coconut milk. Coconut tastes weird to me, but to work on that.

[Jason]

Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Mikey. Do you want to talk about a barn find?

[Skip]

I don't know. Should I?

[Jason]

Sure. I mean, you found a barn, I want to hear about it.

[Skip]

No, I didn't find it. Oh, no. You know, well, I found some cool stuff with. There was that banjo and she also got a. A. I think it's a Dickerson lap steel.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

From early days. And on it beautifully hand painted on the peghead, it said H C of M, like in cursive. If you look at it really close, you could tell it was hand painted. Honolulu Conservatory of Music. I thought of it and I looked it up and I would write they sold like lessons and stuff like that, you know, like they would sell you the guitar for a dollar a week and a guy would come and give you lessons. The weirdest thing about this thing, I have never seen this. Keith's never seen it. Nobody's ever seen it. There's this hole where the jack would be where you plug the cord in.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

By the way, that Fender one just had a cord coming out of the body of the. Oh, wait, I haven't brought. I haven't brought that guitar up yet. No, this little Val Bronson thing, it looked like a speaker jack, but it wasn't. And what it is is the cord that was used with this thing had an end like a light bulb, like a number 47 bulb of a Fender. If you look in the guitar in the middle there's this spring loaded thing and then there's this little shell around it with the little slots in it. So you took the cord and you stuck it in there spring loaded and then turned it and it locked in place.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

I have never seen an input jack ever done like that. And I don't know how the hell I'm ever going to get a cord to fit that. We might have to take that all out and put a quarter inch jack in it to get it to play. But a push and twist guitar cord connector like the base of a bulb, I've never seen anything like that ever. So always starts with a phone call. Guy calls me up, he says, I my wife's mother's house clean and blah, blah. I found a 1947 Fender Princeton amp and a guitar. 1947. So in 1945 he made those K and F guitars and yeah, amps with the gray.

[Jason]

We've written about those.

[Skip]

46 was the, was the ones they call the woodies with the natural wood. And of course I said well, really? He goes yeah. And I go, well, what's the amp say? He says, it doesn't say anything. I said, what does it say on the control panel? It doesn't say anything. I said, well, what's the knob is. There's a knob on there. What does that say? He says, it doesn't say, it doesn't have a knob, just has two jacks. And I'm thinking I said that's probably not a Fender amp, right? It's whoever heard of someone took it, took him. There's two guys, they're best friends. One guy found it, the other guy actually, I think listens to the podcast and it's kind of enthusiast and trying to get him to bring this stuff to me. So they finally get it together to come up here and I get a call a couple hours later. They're broken down in Yuba city, you know, 45 minutes from my house because the truck alternator went out and they're waiting for the tow truck and I say, all right, I'll come to Yuba City, guys, Come on. Where, where are you going to take it? Oh, we're taking it to the auto parts place. I'm going to put another alternator in there. Kind of guys that could put an alternator in a truck on a rainy afternoon, right? So I go there, sure enough, there's a pickup truck with a, you know, on the back of a tow truck that they're unloading. This guy walks Up. Hi. Yeah, great. See, here's this lap steel case. Looks like a Gibson or something. Open it up. There it is. 1946 beautiful Fender. Princeton or student steel.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

With the cord that comes out with no jack, by the way, just permanently coming out. And then he brings over this little like a nylon kid's backpack. And he unzips the top and I look one, look, it is a woody Fender amp. It is. It's the matching amp.

[Jason]

Aw.

[Skip]

And I had never seen one. And on the back it doesn't say anything. It just has two jacks. You got a volume control on the guitar. Why would you need another one, right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

It didn't even have an on off switch. But you had to unplug it to turn it on and off. Right. And so this guy didn't really know that much. Did enough research and realized, you know, from pictures and stuff. And after I. Well, first I told him on the phone, look, buddy, let me fix this thing for you. Because if I fix it, it's going to be worth a lot more money. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I get this stuff and I've decided not to touch. Was made, you know, by Ray Massey and Leo and whoever was there is so crude. It's held together with wood screws, with big flathead screws and angle iron. I guess Doc Kaufman took the tool that made the finger joining thing when he left. So the first woodies, they just had boards that were held together with angle iron. It looks like they cut them with a hacksaw and just screwed them in there. Super amazing. So met him in the rain. They wanted me to take it all home. Fortunately, they knew who I was, right? They knew it was valuable and it's just unheard of. You know, this is so rare. Even Richard Smith, if we could call him up, he'd say, bring that down, let's have a look at it. I mean there's others. There's pictures in the Richard Smith book of a real clean one like this with the clean amp and the clean steel. But we're. I live in California and I've been working on. I'm pretty well known. I've had two or three KNFs, two Model 26s. Those are the. The common woody that are the more common. The one that's like got a 12 inch speaker. I've seen one shell of a 15 inch one. That's the professional. Those are like. There's two of those and I've never seen a Princeton. They're just defying the stuff in the barn. Like that. The amp is a little tired, you know, because it's just painted varnished, but it's all complete and untouched. And I peeked inside and it looked like nobody had ever done anything. And I decided that it really wasn't going to be worth any more money if I got in there and made it work. I think the person that needs to see it next is somebody that wants to see it just like that. The steel also. Thank you, Richard Smith, for your great book, Boxcar Pickup, where the strings go through the pickup. And he mentions in his. In the book about how there's this little plastic sleeve around the strings that crumbles and disintegrates. And sure enough, there's the plastic sleeve. It's all crumbled and disintegrated. The steel really needs to go to whoever is the guru of those things and have the pickup rewound. And the amp needs to just be left alone. If somebody decides they want to hear it, I'd be happy to put some parts in it and do the nicest job I could. But I called the owner and said, I think we should just hit the brakes because it's rare. And I've asked around a few times, and estimates of value are pretty wild. Princeton like that has sold for. I think we saw one a couple years ago that sold for eight grand.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

But the steel and the amp together, or could you imagine if that was a Spanish guitar from 47, some sort of prototype thing. You'd be making a. Buying a house or something, right?

[Jason]

So never have to replace an alternator again.

[Skip]

Just Northern California. I know a guy who ran a little music store in the same town. He must have driven by that barn a whole bunch of times. And yesterday the guy called me. He's almost done cleaning it out. The Guy was a CHP motorcycle cop and a World War II veteran, and he had everything. He saved all his uniforms and reams of pictures and tons of pictures of guys on Harley's in the. In the, you know, highway patrol in the 50s and stuff. And a book he was really excited about, 1788, like the English Book of Law. And it was two inches of dust on it. They were going to throw all this stuff away, by the way. And the book is filled with signatures. 1798. Like, the back, several pages are. He says, there's just all these signatures done, obviously, with, like, quill, you know, real pens and stuff like that. And who are these people? And why does this guy have this book from the 1700s? And why was it up in this barn for so long. He said an inch of dust on the book and all this stuff was just sitting there. So do I have to say every single podcast now? Don't leave your peeps with your stuff.

[Jason]

Yeah, don't do that.

[Skip]

Don't do that.

[Jason]

You need to use a leaf blower to blow the dust off all your stuff. That's a sign.

[Skip]

And. And that thing that. I mean, literally, if it wasn't for Joe and Mike. Mike and Joe, it wasn't for them, that stuff would have got thrown away, including, you know, just completely, like, primal piece of Fender history.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Don't leave people with your junk. And I had to tell. And I'm. I'm hoping I know this guy that publishes a magazine about guitars, and I'm hoping I'm. If I was good, I might be able to get published, because I think we could probably get a better photographer than me to take a bunch of pictures of that stuff and just a little, you know, two or three paragraphs or, you know, Joe said he'd be on the podcast and talk about how he found the pile and what he did, stuff like that.

[Jason]

So I'm open to both those scenarios.

[Skip]

It'd be fun. And it does still happen once in a while. And I was. I didn't even want to touch the guitar. I was just like. I didn't even want to turn a screw, you know, so just. Just a cool thing. And they were really cool about it. And fortunately, they don't need, you know, the money in a gigantic hurry. Right? No.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

They're able to just kind of lay back, and it just. It's just so unique. It's hard to even put a value on it. It's one of the very few amps. I can only think of one other that I've said, you know, maybe I better not fix this like this. Maybe it's valuable.

[Jason]

Had only two pieces of musical gear, and they were.

[Skip]

It wasn't extremely rare.

[Jason]

There was no, like, drum kit.

[Skip]

Oh, no.

[Jason]

The Squire, or none of that.

[Skip]

Okay. No. But. But carefully preserved uniforms and pictures and stuff from, like, World War II. Right now, I would say the guy just saw it somewhere and thought it was neat.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Stuffed it in his junk pile and never looked at it again. I'd say that's where it probably came from. Crazy. Anyway, I'm lucky to. I don't have to. I can live vicariously.

[Jason]

You didn't even have to do anything. Yeah.

[Skip]

I just dream up stupid things to do to a twin, and then other people do it for me, so I just had to answer the phone. It's a good life. Well, it was fun. It was. I don't normally drive 45 minutes because a guy on his way to bring me something, but geez, you know, he broke down. It just seemed like I had to. Right.

[Jason]

And they got the car working, I take it.

[Skip]

Oh, Put the alternator in the parking lot, drove it home, no problem. Right.

[Jason]

Amazing.

[Skip]

So. So the stuff is here and everybody's just kind of letting it marinate. And I got it in the ultra safe spot. Just fun to just kind of look at it and imagine what was going on ins. I had to. So the cord goes into the guitar and I could tell it wasn't connected in there. And it would have been nice to see if we could get the steel to work because Joe really wanted to play it. He's a musician. And so I said, well, I'm gonna have to take it apart. In order to get it apart, you got to take the pickup. There's like a plate on top with the pickup mounted on it. Since the strings go through the pickup, you pretty much got to take the strings off. Right. And they were all rust off, Just solid rust. Big old monster things, you know, like barbed wire. And I got that up and I opened up the control cavity and it's still full of shavings from them drilling the hole in the body to put the pot down inside there. And the shavings even had a little bit of paint stuck to them. If you tip the guitar over with the control plate off, the shavings would have fallen out. But of course, I made sure the shavings did not fall out.

[Jason]

Keep all the shavings.

[Skip]

Got to keep the shavings. No, it's just like you're there for just a split second. You know, Leo's gonna go out to lunch in an hour. Ray Massey drilled the holes. I forget. Not too many employees around at that point. And it just. It's just a little time capsule. That's really neat. So I guess, basically, cool story. And thanks to Mike and Joe for getting me involved in it.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip]

Great. There you go.

[Jason]

Well, we did it. Thanks to our sponsors, Grass Guitars, Amplified Parts and Emerald City Guitars. Thanks to you all for supporting the show and sending us questions. Keep those coming. That's kind of what the show depends on. Podcast, fretboardjournal.com and Skip. We did it.

[Skip]

Another one. I know.

[Jason]

155.

[Skip]

Didn't know there were so many. Well, unless the questions stop, we'll keep doing it. A couple weeks ago I was looking in the shop and I said, man, there's only like 10amps. Usually there's 40, right? And then like within a week, just like a wash in amps again. So as long as people keep, keep rattling our cage, we'll keep doing it. Thanks to all the listeners. Thanks to you, Jason. Foundation of the Fretboard Journal foundation is what really got this thing going for or enabled more people to hear it. Otherwise it would just been you and me and my friends.

[Jason]

Two cans and some string.

[Skip]

And we'll talk about the retreat soon.

[Jason]

Yeah, make that a. We can do that on Patreon or to the public. You know, there's probably someone out there listening who, who needs to hear about it.

[Skip]

Yeah, good. Okay, sounds good. Thanks, everyone.

[Jason]

Thanks, Skip.

[Skip]

All right, we'll talk again soon.