Ep. 157: "Coyote and Deer"

Summary

The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons

Episode 157: "Coyote and Deer"
December 18, 2025
Host: Jason Verlinde (The Fretboard Journal)
Guest: Skip Simmons

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Episode Overview

This episode kicks off with discussion of bizarre weather events and flooding in Washington state before diving into listener questions on vintage tube amps, repair, and music recommendations. As always, hosts Skip and Jason blend practical tube amp wisdom with tangents about wildlife, recipes, and music – all in their trademark laid-back, witty style.

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1. Weather, Floods, and Local Life

[00:12–09:25]

• Jason gives a detailed account of being trapped in Duval, WA by the worst flooding in recorded local history:

  "There's four roads in and out of the town. They're all underwater... but the actual town, which is not a small town, there's probably 10,000 people who live here... the stores are all open. We just can't leave our island." (Jason, 00:42)

• Warmest winter ever reported, ski resorts closed, and an 'atmospheric river' causing widespread road closures.
• Skip shares dry weather conditions in Southern Oregon and reflects on strange climactic changes:

  "I remember it being in the 70s. I'd say four or five weeks. Zero sun, not at all. Now... you get up to a thousand feet, 65 degrees..." (Skip, 02:51)

• Stories of locals gathering in pajamas to see the floodwaters and incidents like huge logjams threatening Everett, WA bridges. Aspiring luthiers are jokingly encouraged to go wood-hunting.

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2. Guitar Shows, Aging, and Traveling

[03:52–05:41]

• Skip declines attending the Marin County Guitar Show due to dislike of hotels and unpredictable weather, referencing The Clash's "London Calling":

  "I can't sleep in a hotel. Just. I can't." (Skip, 04:22)

• Musings on aging, travel fatigue, and the anxiety of committing to bring repairs to shows.

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3. Sponsors and Vintage Gear News

[13:20–16:49]

• Grass Guitars: Boutique brand praised for reclaimed redwood guitars with a modern twist.
• Amplified Parts: Emphasized as the complete source for amp and pedal parts, including gift certificates and kits.
• Emerald City Guitars: Noted for their overflowing vintage amp and guitar stock, including rare Dumble finds.
• Jason highlights a unique store policy:

  "Once you're buzzed in, you can play pretty much anything on the walls... they're extra cool if you tell them you're a Truth About Vintage Amps listener." (Jason, 15:47)

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4. How to Participate & Show Format

[16:49–17:41]

• Jason explains: anyone can submit amp/guitar/repair/life/recipe questions by email or voice memo to [e-mail].
• Emphasis on inclusive, open-format show.

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5. Wildlife & Game Cameras

[17:41–20:02]

• Skip describes his new trail camera capturing nightly visitors—coyotes, deer, skunks, and possibly even a badger:

  "Coyotes don't eat deer that much because otherwise why would we have so many pictures of coyote and deer in the same place in the yard?" (Skip, 18:02)

• Coyotes seem to prefer gophers; possible badger sighting.

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6. Bench Updates & Vintage Amp Stories

[22:41–28:57]

• Vibro Champ Repair: Early '69 Silverface receives a subtle tremolo fix via capacitor swap; Skip emphasizes value of diagnostic ‘alligator-clip’ troubleshooting.
• Offers the amp for sale, promising authenticity and quality.
• Ampeg J20 Discovery: Finds a '90s hand-wired Ampeg that's "the bomb" for $350—rare, overlooked gem, handwired on a turret board.

  "If you ever see one of those [Ampeg J20s], pry that thing open... should be jumping on it now." (Skip, 25:46)

• Skip praises Fender’s recent return to handwiring tube sockets, making reissues dramatically more serviceable.

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7. Listener Questions & Answers

Selected Highlights

Vintage Amp Scavenger Hunt

[29:03–33:38]

• Greg from Indianapolis seeks hidden treasures on a cross-country road trip.
• Skip:

  "No... All you can do is try to figure out if there's a mom and pop music store, a pawn shop or any place... The truly hardcore in the old days would put little ads... and then they'd go to the town and see if they could get anybody." (Skip, 30:47)

• Suggests hitting guitar shows, monitoring Vintage Guitar magazine’s event calendar, and letting the community know via Facebook groups.

Speaker Wattage & Loudness

[35:12–37:17]

• Nick in Detroit asks about 2x50W vs. 1x100W Marshalls, and how speaker efficiency affects perceived loudness.
• Skip:

  "Mathematically... 2 4x12 Marshall cabinets each with a 50 watt head would be officially the same as a 100 watt head driving two 412 cabinets. But I think in practical use, I bet two 50s would be even a little bit louder than 100." (Skip, 35:17)

• Notes speaker efficiency is a crucial real-world factor.

Speaker-Level Controls & Attenuators

[37:30–42:06] (Ezra’s voice memo, Oregon)

• Hooking up 1950s hi-fi speakers with built-in volume controls.
• Skip:

  "There's always been basically level controls for speakers, always in very sub. In very low fi situations... people yank all that junk out. That's all just passive junk. You don't want anything in your speaker except the speaker wires." (Skip, 40:00)

• Suggests removing the potentiometer for improved tone; not a true substitute for modern attenuators.

Obscure Winston Amp with EL84s

[42:06–46:05]

• Rick finds a mysterious "Winston" amp with 7189 (heavy-duty EL84) tubes; asks about running standard EL84s.
• Skip:

  "You could use EL84s in place [of 7189]... don't get confused, just like a real KT66 is, you know, $500 for one in the box... The one you got for $49.95... is not the same exact thing." (Skip, 45:33)

• Also riffs on vintage tube supply issues and the impact of international politics on tube pricing:

  "Countries that hate us, that number is growing. So inevitably..." (Jason, 46:05)

Historic Fender Deluxe Tweed for Gigs?

[50:30–55:35]

• Stuart wonders if he should gig his rare 1947 Deluxe.
• Skip:

  "If someone was committed and did not care and just really wanted to do that, this is what I'd do... Replace the handle, replace the speaker [and save the original] if you can... then you could just let the good times roll. Wouldn't have to worry about it at all." (Skip, 52:19+)

• Advises on non-destructive upgrades, emphasizing preservation.

Can You Run 6L6s in a Deluxe Reverb?

[55:35–60:39]

• Bud in Maine wants to use 6L6s or even 6550s in a Deluxe Reverb.
• Skip:

  "I had to change my mind. Not a Princeton Reverb, thank you very much... But it's pretty obvious that the Fender Deluxe reverb power transformer has enough filament current capacity to run 6L 6s, because everyone's been doing it." (Skip, 57:00)

• 6550s: Not advised unless you add extra filament capacity; only do this in purpose-built amps.

Treble Controls & Their Interactions

[60:41–65:16]

• Jake in Charlottesville asks if amp treble, bright switches, and guitar tone all do the same thing.
• Skip:

  "The bright switch... allows the highs to just detour around a volume control. So they're on 10... that's different than a treble control, which... just rolls highs to ground, kind of like on the guitar... they're not quite the same." (Skip, 63:35)

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8. Cooking, Music & Pop Culture Breaks

Sprinkled throughout

• Jason, Skip, and callers share seasonal recipes and music tips:
  • French lentils, "Satan's saliva" (WD-40) debates, super-simple garlic bread, and curry chicken tips (marinate thighs in yogurt/spice blend).
  • Music: Roy Buchanan, Dan Hicks’ Christmas Jug Band, Van Morrison's rocking "You Are My Sunshine", and recommendations like Chuck Prophet and Joe Pass with Roy Clark.
• Skip:

  "I have a new uke, Hawaiian Koa Kamaka uke..." (Skip, 39:11)

• Frequent shoutouts to classic TV/film (WKRP in Cincinnati, Slow Horses, Life on the Line, Runaway Train), with Skip’s stream-of-consciousness humor throughout.

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9. Wild Tangents & Amp Troubleshooting Wisdom

Multiple segments

• Converters, old PA amp mysteries, the importance of systematic troubleshooting:
  • Disconnect speakers & test them first when the amp is dead ("Jackdaw" method).
  • Always start at the end (output) and move backward.
  • Advice on never being afraid to try a simple swap (e.g., pots) when a kit build has hum only with the volume all the way down.

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10. Closing, Resources & Acknowledgments

[86:47–93:38]

• Nostalgic discussion of the Whole Earth Catalog and early DIY/alternative lifestyle influences.
• Enthusiasm for Vacuum Tube Valley magazine and the "Tube Dumpster" column exposing rare/cheap but great tubes.
• Guitar wisdom meets lifestyle tips:

  "The conversion has begun. You know, get somebody something sturdy and small. That sounds good. While they're waiting for their curry to cook, you know?" (Skip, 93:17)

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Notable Quotes

• "The only thing we can count on is two Bamps working." (Skip, 08:39)
• "You gotta be ready to go on the fly. You can't get up there and put your knobs all where they were at your house and expect it to be anything the same." (Skip, 62:34)
• "Maybe the keggers who get him to afford it." (on Lee DeForest, vintage tube pioneer) (Skip, 11:17)

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• Flooding, climate, and town stories: 00:12–09:25
• Ampeg J20 discovery: 25:00–28:57
• Bench report: Silverface Vibro Champ repair: 22:47–24:59
• Trail cam wildlife & badger mystery: 17:41–20:02
• Tube types and tube trivia: 46:11–48:23
• 1947 Deluxe Tweed: 50:30–55:35
• 6L6s in Deluxe Reverbs: 55:35–60:39
• Treble controls Q&A: 60:41–65:16
• Whole Earth Catalog reflection: 86:47–90:14
• Curry chicken recipe and Canadian geographic trivia: 66:44–73:19

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Episode Tone

Casual, humorous, full of sidebars and real-world stories. Skip’s commentary is technical and idiosyncratic, often colored by years of experience (and a little curmudgeonly wisdom), while Jason keeps pace with earnest curiosity and good-natured banter.

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Final Thoughts

The show blends serious tube amp insight (often “from the trenches” info unavailable anywhere else) with a fun, warm, and community-driven spirit. Segments range from highly technical repair tips to neighborhood wildlife antics, all filtered through Skip and Jason’s distinctive personalities.

"As long as you keep showing up. I will keep showing up." (Skip, 94:12)

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Transcript

[Skip]

Good morning. Good morning.

[Jason]

How are you?

[Skip]

Fine. How are you?

[Jason]

I'm fine.

[Skip]

Well, that's from living on a hill, right, instead of in the flats.

[Jason]

Yes. So if anybody is watching the news and seeing flooding in Washington state, that's about 10 minutes from where I'm sitting. Wow.

[Skip]

So just because of the geography, if you're down at close to river level, that's the issue. You've got flooding rivers.

[Jason]

Well, what we have is what's known as an atmospheric river. And the river that goes through the town, as is often the case with rivers, has a lot of farms on the sides because the soil is fertile. Yeah. We are having the warmest winter ever. None of. I think one ski resort in Washington state was temporarily open, but the. The one that I go to is literally just dirt. Like, there's not a single inch of snow at all on it. And so all these rainstorms are just coming down in sheets down into these valleys and rivers, and it flooded the river that goes through the town of Duval, where I live. And. And so we had. There's four roads in and out of the town. They're all underwater. Right. But the actual town, which is not a small town, there's probably 10,000 people who live here. Like the. The gas station, the five restaurants, the stores are all open. We just can't leave our island. So that's where we're at.

[Skip]

And you're not home. You're at the island at work?

[Jason]

Well, no, I'm at. I'm on. I'm at my house right now on the island. They told you the river was rising. So basically, whatever day that was two days ago, they told everybody, like, you're going to have to either leave town, get to town before midnight, because the river's going to crest. And that's what happened. So there were some people who were on vacation who are probably landing at CAC who can't get home right now. But we are home. We're fine.

[Skip]

And the Fretboard Journal offices that you have to pay a bunch of money for, that's not in either place.

[Jason]

The Fretboard Journal offices are in. In Seattle, Washington and Seattle. It's just. I mean, I was there until two days ago. It just felt like another gloomy, abnormally warm winter. And so it wasn't like there was. It wasn't like. It felt like we were having the floods of the century in Seattle. It just felt like another wet November December, which is all it ever is. So.

[Skip]

Southern Oregon, Grants Pass. Yeah, not that far. Well, kind of pretty Far but dry as a bone. Like here, so. But very strange here. I like. I remember it being in the 70s. I'd say four or five weeks. Zero sun, not at all. Low 40s to the mid-40s, you know, high, low. Every single day exactly the same. Now if you drive 15 minutes up, that would be east from where I live on the east side of the valley, you get up to a thousand feet, 65 degrees, people are, you know, walking around with the tank top. So the old Tuli fog that they get in the Sacramento Valley has been an issue again, which hasn't been for a long time, where you can't even sometimes even in the day, like out on i5 in the middle of the valley at night. Nah.

[Jason]

What's going on with this world of ours?

[Skip]

I don't know. Speaking of weather permitting, our guitar show, January 11th and 12th, I think the one in Marin County. Danger UXB is no. Has to help a significant other through some. I think a surgery. And Skip says maybe Saturday, weather permitting. But I. I don't think I'm up for the. You know, I can't sleep in a hotel. Just. I can't.

[Jason]

You've talked about that.

[Skip]

Terrible. So I drive this drive, you know, you guys. A lot of people would laugh. Ha ha ha. I do that every day. Well, I don't. You sort of lose the skill, especially of a lot of traffic because, you know, not much traffic in Marysville. Well, there is, but not like that. And driving back and forth is a killer. So I'm not sure if I'm going to allow people to bring me stuff, because if I tell somebody I'm going to be there, then I got to be there. And if it was a big, gigantic. I'm just afraid this whole crazy weather thing might do something else crazy. Well, there's no snow here, right. All your famous Lake Tahoe ski resorts manufactured snow only so dry, but cold and overcast. Anyway, I'm glad you were that Clash song. London Calling and to live by the river. I'm glad you don't live by the river.

[Jason]

Supermarket.

[Skip]

Yeah. No, that's from London Calling.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Yeah. How long has it been since this has happened? 10 years or 50 years?

[Jason]

This is the. For this particular town and I think some other towns in Washington State, this is, I think, the worst flooding in recorded history because the rain gauges didn't exist in the 70s and 60s. And so maybe they were. Maybe it was worse, but. And all the roads have changed since then, and. And where the bridges are and everything. But yeah, no, it's. This is as bad as anyone can remember.

[Skip]

Have you been to see. Can you see the spectacle? Can you see, like, the.

[Jason]

Yeah. So I. I went to go get my kid a bagel yesterday. Like I said, the town hasn't stopped. Everybody's just walking around. I went and and about. There were probably 300 of us, many who were still in their pajamas, who were walking down the bridge till it hit the water. And then roughly an hour later, the cops showed up and they said, everybody's got to get off because we're going to use this as a boat ramp in case there are any. Anything floating down the river that needs to be saved. And so, yeah, I got the thrill of walking down the bridge that terminated in rushing water.

[Skip]

And lots of it. It looks a lot different than it does on a normal day in August.

[Jason]

Well, and the other crazy thing that's happening in the city of Everett is all these logs that have been on the side of this river for decades. They're all creating this giant log jam in Everett, Washington. And so they've got cranes and tractors trying to pull them out because they're going to destroy bridges. But there's a big, big pile of logs. If any aspiring luthiers want to go claim something, drive to Everett, Washington, right now, it'll be damned.

[Skip]

The drawbridges, right. There was one. The Freeport bridge was on the Sacramento river, which is big, and it usually had 25, 26ft of air from the bridge to the water. In other words, you have to have a bigger, taller than that sailboat to have to open the bridge. But one winter, they had people down there 24 hours a day, all night long, because it was maybe four feet, and there was stuff coming down the river, like chunks of dock and trees and same thing. They didn't want it to get hung up on the bridge and that. You want to talk about dangerous doing anything, even if you have a crane, you know, getting down there and standing on that and trying to put a cable around it and just. Oh, my God.

[Jason]

Yeah, it's a crazy.

[Skip]

So aspiring luthiers better wait for the log to get hauled out.

[Jason]

So that's true.

[Skip]

And again, you either use the wood, it rots in place, or it burns. It's what I say down here, from my forester friend. But having it just go on down the river, it's like they should have done something with it a little sooner than that, eh?

[Jason]

I guess so. Yeah.

[Skip]

Seems like. I don't know. Is it just junky wood that's not good for anything.

[Jason]

It's just. I mean, there's not like there's homes along this. I mean, there's just a lot of forest.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Jason]

Stuff that just falls.

[Skip]

Yeah.

[Jason]

I don't know.

[Skip]

Wow.

[Jason]

Crazy. It's all crazy. It's a world. The only thing we can count on is two Bamps working.

[Skip]

Brett Board Journal. We can count on that. There's another deadline coming up. I'm sure you'll make it.

[Jason]

The. I get to rest easy for about a week here because we're just waiting. The printer has the issue it's been signed off on, and we're just waiting for them to mail everybody right before Christmas, so.

[Skip]

Well, can't you blow off a bunch of responsibility by saying, hey, man, it's all flooded?

[Jason]

Right. I mean, I. To whom? To. To our readers, to our listeners. I can't blow. All right.

[Skip]

I called you yesterday saying that, you know, if you were sandbagging the house, then don't worry, we don't need to do this.

[Jason]

Literally nothing else to do. Yeah.

[Skip]

Perfect cook. You could cook.

[Jason]

I. I could cook. I did have. I did have that idea.

[Skip]

Some of those good beans.

[Jason]

Yeah, I did. I did think I. I did stare at a jar of French lentils and thought I should finally use these.

[Skip]

Yeah, put some ham in there. I know you won't, but I won't. Well, let's see. Let me get. Let me get some Kevin in Ohio out real quick. Oh, before I forget. The great Kevin in Ohio. He's been pestering me, and he's right. I'm putting together some sort of little reason why Lee DeForest is so amazing and interesting. And he was a pioneer of two body. I mean, one of the two or three, in fact. Good thing he's not on with us. I think he made the first effective triode tube, you know, that allowed amplification of sound. And he lived for a long time. I think he was alive up into the 60s or maybe the 70s. And we're talking like, early. Early on. Right. So I'm going to read up on him, and we're going to have to mention him in there with, like, Earl and Steve Sost as old pioneer geezers from another time. Like the real Tesla. I could. He's a very interesting cat, too. Did some crazy stuff and maybe the. Maybe the keggers who get him to afford it. He sent me this article a while back that I meant to pass along. It was basically about power conditioners. People are really into being able to plug their stuff into some Groovy thing that eliminates all that noise that we have to deal with from fluorescent lights and irregular power and things like that. And it was basically a comparison between commercial power conditioners and audio. So if you're in the hi fi world, you have pages and pages of these black boxes that supposedly do all this mystical stuff that costs jillions of dollars. But if you just go to one of the big old catalogs where electrical contractors go, you can get stuff that's way better for a lot cheaper. Right. Because it's not all dolled up with goofiness. And they kind of get behind some of the different ones because, you know, there's. Open it up just like an amp. You know, open that thing up. What. What really are you getting? What really does it do? Does it regulate voltage? Is just some capacitors to take out the noise or what? And if anybody's considering one of those, something to look into.

[Jason]

Okay, I looked up lead to Forest and one of the YouTube thumbnails about him said the con man who created radio. Was he a con man?

[Skip]

Oh, see, we're just gonna have to get into it. So probably with the, the age group that we run with, we probably have some childhood friends of this. If you, if you grew up with Lee DeForest, call us. Call up and give us some memories.

[Jason]

You know, 1873 in council plus Iowa.

[Skip]

Yeah, he was an old dude, man. So anyway, a couple. Couple of Kevin things that are good to point out.

[Jason]

No, he was accused of mail fraud.

[Skip]

Oh, man. Yeah, I could tell you a few things about him. Well, figures. But there's more. You know me, I'm not going to read that. I'm going to read the book about him from 1950, you know, or some of his own stuff. He. He wrote quite a few things and just sort of have a few little things as to why someone would care about that.

[Jason]

Yeah. The DeForest Lofts of. In San Jose, California are named for Lita.

[Skip]

Yeah. All right, well, let's get some. Thanks to our sponsors going on.

[Jason]

Well, gosh, Grass Guitars. Greatest, greatest little guitar brand out there. Barry's making just the coolest guitars using reclaimed redwood and a handful of shapes, all of which look like they could have come straight out of the 50s or 60s, but are like totally modern boutique guitars with great pickups and quiet and ergonomic and all the things. And I'm the proud owner of a grand tour. We way back in the day had a Mendocino junior with that one lucky Tava listener one. And I just Love these guitars and everything that Barry stands for. And, and they're not as expensive as you might think for a boutique guitar brand. And you should all be following Barry.

[Skip]

Well said.

[Jason]

You're going to see him at the this guitar show if you go weather permitting.

[Skip]

Yes. Wind and tide permitting.

[Jason]

Yeah, for sure. And then we are also brought to you by our friends at Amplified Parts. And Amplified Parts is pretty much, I don't know, everything new that you might ever need to work on a pedal or amp project. Skip orders from them all the time. They do have gift certificates in case any loved ones are asking you what you want, get a gift certificate. That way they won't buy the wrong thing for you. They've got pedal kits, they've got amp kits now they've got tubes, they've got pretty much everything you need. Amplifiedparts.com Last but not least, our friends at Emerald City Guitars here in Seattle, Washington. They are not flooded out either. Their store is filled to the brim with vintage amps. Go check them out. They've also got a Grezer too. At any one point. And they just found the other Dumble from the Beach Boys. We, we just did a video last year with Ben Harper on his amp that he's had forever his Dumble that turned out to be one of these Beach Boys overdrive specials. They found the other one in Hawaii of all places, and just did a video about it. So go, go check out their YouTube channel. It's pretty entertaining.

[Skip]

As close as you're gonna get to one of those.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Really?

[Jason]

I know, right?

[Skip]

True enough.

[Jason]

Yeah. I mean it's, it's, you know, one of the few stores in the world where you can just. Once you're buzzed into that store because there's a buzzer. Safety first. Once you're buzzed in, you can play pretty much anything on the walls. And whether it's a rare old Martin or Gibson or a Dumble, they're really cool. And, and they are extra cool. If you tell them you're a truth about vintage amps listener. I can, I can promise you that.

[Skip]

Word, word gets around.

[Jason]

It does get around.

[Skip]

Thanks sponsors. Barry said it Amplified parts can't beat the price. That garment. My wife loves to get a good price, but I'm telling you, it is hard to beat the price. And maybe you could beat the price at Emerald City, but you got some people that know what the hell they're talking about and like a guitar show. The ability to put your hand on that thing.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

You know, and just hold it in a Quiet room. And that's just hard to duplicate from the UPS truck.

[Jason]

Totally. So those are our sponsors and the way the show works. And we have a Patreon page if you want to get in the front of the line. But. But basically you send me, I screen all these sort of an email. It could be just a typed out email or you could record a voice memo on your phone and you send it to podcastretboardjournal.com could be a question about one of your tube amps or how to fix it. It could be a question about philosophy or relationship advice. It could be a recipe from your family multi generational. Whatever you got, you send it to us and we'll read it or play it. And hopefully it has something to do with guitars and tube amps, but we're pretty inclusive.

[Skip]

And I ramble around.

[Jason]

Yeah, we talk about weather, whenever, flooding, you name it.

[Skip]

I've got some stuff from that. I'm not sure if I did. I mentioned that we got a camera that takes pictures at night if it senses motion. A trail camera.

[Jason]

Like a tra. Yeah. For wildlife or intruders. What are you, what are you using for?

[Skip]

Well, getting up in the morning and getting on the computery things and looking for intruders. I don't know. That seems like that wouldn't do you much good. But now my yard is packed full of coyotes, deer, skunks, all night, every night. By the way, coyotes don't eat deer that much because otherwise why would we have so many pictures of coyote and deer in the same place in the yard? You know, seriously. And we always, we have baby goats at times, right? Little tiny things. We're always like, whoa, I hope there's no coyotes around. Well, there's so many coyotes around. Apparently they're not all that into goats either. I think they like gophers, which I have. You know, 90% of the world's gophers live in Lomerica, so maybe it's that we. Sometimes we see place where there's a bunch of gopher mounds, but in between where the tunnel would be underground is all dug up. And one picture we've got a sighting of something about as big as Junior Wide, wide body. Can't really tell quite what it is because the. This thing kind of takes pictures that look like a night camera. You know, they don't. It doesn't have a super big flash. That's the deal. It doesn't scare them. Right. So the pictures aren't beautiful. It might be a badger, which I've never seen in My life, but do live in California. I didn't even know they lived in California. I've never seen one. But it might be that we have a badger. They also like gophers. Dig up the. Dig them up and eat them. So you guys have ever been here? That big field is just. There's all sorts of creatures running around out there at night. Pretty, pretty wild.

[Jason]

I want to see these pictures.

[Skip]

Really Just like grainy, you know, like night vision picture with like a deer and a coyote in the same frame.

[Jason]

Who wouldn't want to see that?

[Skip]

I don't know.

[Jason]

I want to see that and their eyes glowing kind of.

[Skip]

Yeah, yeah. All right, we'll. We'll put our tech team on that, See if we can do that.

[Jason]

So you've learned a little bit about the flora and fauna.

[Skip]

Yeah, it would be. Be wild to see something like a mountain lion, which do live here, you know, of course, or something that you just don't know. You know, something unusual but you don't really think about it. But. Well, if you've been here, you know, it's like you could get through here and never leave the COVID of trees. It's like in England, there's those swales, you know, with what? With kind of wet, watery, lots of trees and BlackBerry bushes and so there's a lot of COVID even though it's open and all sorts of creatures. I've never seen a bear, but we have seen. My neighbor's seen a mountain lion right here in the daytime. Oh, so game cam is fun. A guy called me or emailed me. You know, we talk about the Gibson Falcons, the GA19 RVTS, and how most of them have this little capacitor resistor filter thing in them that is one of the many reasons why they sound terrible. And a guy called me and he wanted those.

[Jason]

Oh, what's he going to do with them?

[Skip]

Something about some mod he cooked up for the reverb. And I said, well, of course, you know, my house, they just go in the garbage can. But I dug around in some of the boxes I have where I scrape off the bench every so often without sorting everything on it. Okay, so I can see it. And I found them, you know, a few. I haven't gotten around to sending them to them, but I think I got five. And just shows you one man's trash. And by the way, I think I told him that, but you know, it. There's a schematic, I believe it's in Jack Darling that shows exactly what's in that little square thing. With four wires coming out of it. I think it's two capacitors and two resistors. But it shows it schematically, which means that you wouldn't really have to have that thing. You could make that thing out of four, I believe, four or five individual little components. So anyway, never know what some people are going to want.

[Jason]

He's going to make something from these.

[Skip]

Yeah, he's got. He's got some model, okay. For the Gibson Falcon reverb, which, man, I've never, never known anybody who felt like that needed to be done. But, hey, get out there on the cutting edge, right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And I'm cranky. I never want to do anything until somebody says, you know, you ought to do that. Then I go, all right, all right.

[Jason]

You set up a game cam.

[Skip]

Sometimes they're right. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty fun. And she likes getting up in the morning and checking out, see if. What you got, you know.

[Jason]

Yeah. What's on your bench?

[Skip]

A really clean, early 69 silver face vibra Champ. The drip edge, as the younger crowd calls it. All 68 parts, you know, really unmessed with. And the Tremolo, even though it's a Vibro Champ, it's Tremolo. It worked great at faster speeds, but when you turn the speed down to slow, it just washed out. And you don't want to be just yanking. I mean, it's not quite a tweed amp, but even so, a really clean one like that just don't want to be yanking stuff out of there. Besides, I hate guessing. So what would Jack Dar do? He would take a extra capacitor of the same type and he'd alligator clip that thing in there and just go click. Which I did. And as soon as I did the speed, it. The Tremolo worked far better at low speed. So then I was justified in taking the original one out. It's one of the little white plastic ones. And putting another one in there. Case closed. Remember last month, that amp that just didn't sound loud enough and bright enough. And it was because someone had flipped the 1 and 2 input jacks on the input. So I was plugged into the number two jack. That's why it's. Oh, my God. But anyway, you got to be. Try to be discreet. And by the way, that is a beautiful Vibra Champ with a brand new Jensen in it.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

And the high, low inputs, which we're going to put on Fretboard journal app when we get it. And the tweed tone control for sale, same price as it would be on reverb or something like that. So if anybody wants one, I'm thinking about buying some boxes that'll fit those. Because I never have a box that will fit those. I only get chassis. But I know somebody's going to say, will you ship it? First of all, no, not in December, but maybe. And if somebody wants to come by, then I have one. It's pretty awesome.

[Jason]

It's great.

[Skip]

Another thing on the bench, guy called me up and said I fixed something for him already said, I've got an ampeg j20. And I said when was that made? Like in the 90s or 2000s. And I said no. I might have even said hell no. Because all that reissue Ampeg stuff like the flip tops and stuff, beautiful on the outside. They got the same Tolex company and the same handles and they look just like the real deal. They're really sturdy looking. But on the inside they're just printed circuit board fragile. So the guy said no, no, no, this is a hand wired amp. And I go, oh yeah, right. But he brings it. So sometime in the 90s, I think it's from, it's called a J20. It just has volume and tone and that thing looks like a nice quality, like a Weber kit, right? As a big thick turret board. All hardwired, right? Simple circuit. 6v6s tube rectifier. It's the bomb. And I don't think anybody knows that those exist. If you wanted to build an amp and you started buying that junkie, he said he got it for $350. It's like, so if you ever see one of those, pry that thing open. And if you find that it's a all hardwired, really well made, should be jumping on it now. I will admit that it had a blown output transformer. I'm not saying like that all the parts are the quality that you would want. But I put an output transformer on it and I did a few little tweaks. It has an odd circuit. There's like a bright input and a dark input, but just volume and tone. And this guy was a steel player, so I changed some of it around, gave him a switch to disconnect the first bypass cap. Just like we're talking about doing to your champ one of these days. And by the way, that was super well received by a steel player. It's just like, why wouldn't I want both of these sounds? Because this is cleaner and you know, jazzier and this is more hairy and. And it does it in a very organic Way that is is super cool. So anyway, I was shocked. Was easy to work on. And I would say that thing was worth Even maybe four or five hundred dollars, you know, and if you saw one for 300, you couldn't even. You could barely get a cabinet like that, you know, and it looks really cool on the outside. And there you go. Who knew that Ampeg ever made anything like that? I didn't know. I'd also really love to know who in the Fender hierarchy had enough juice to get them to start hand wiring all those tube sockets. Remember I told you I had that reissued twin reverb and this guy showed up with a. He thought it was a 65 twin reverb, but I opened it up and trust me, it used to be all the tube sockets were mounted on printed circuit boards and now they're not. And I know it added a lot of labor to the cost of that thing, but if anybody at Fender is listening to me, they should be pointing that out. And if they did one more little thing, not have those plastic junky jacks, those things would last a long time. Remember Marshalls from 75 on all of them, all those cool old 70s ones, they had printed circuit boards, but they didn't fall to pieces because they didn't put the stuff we break on the circuit board. And that makes them a lot more serviceable. So I'm just curious in the back rooms of Fender how that somebody said, you know, we should really be hand wiring these. And somebody else said, yeah, but that's going to add like $60 per unit or whatever. $160, I don't know. And, but it, but it made the thing from completely unrepairable to something that, you know, should hold up pretty good for a while.

[Jason]

Yeah. All right, you ready for some questions?

[Skip]

We are supposed to answer questions, I know.

[Jason]

Yeah, keep the questions coming. [e-mail] this is less of a question and more of a public service announcement, I guess. Greg in Indianapolis. He is the self proclaimed Tava nut who recently tube rectified a twin reverb. He is looking for some help from you and the Tava listeners. I'm retiring next spring, he says, and I'll have a few months before my wife of 40 years retires. I'm thinking of making a solo road trip to visit family. The route would include New Orleans, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Denver. I see that Austin, Texas is also on this route. Question where are some good places in those towns that I might find old amps that need repair and a little love. I can find all the big shops online, but I know there must be some out of the way places and pawn shops that I'll never come across. As always, I enjoy the show and continue to be a regular patron of your sponsors when I rebuild Amps. That's from Greg in Indianapolis. So send us kind thoughts.

[Skip]

Yeah, kind thoughts. Out to the great Steve Malka. The great. Rest in peace. Yeah, that guy. So far ahead of the curve. I remember one of his catalogs, you know, would have like 50 pages of books and literature, you know, with maybe 10, 15, 20 books per page. I mean a lot, a big stack and then right in there, like number 125 would be treasure map shows all the cool places that I've found old tubes and, and gotten great stuff for cheap, you know, only one copy, you know, $100 or something like that. So no, hell no. All you can do is try to figure out if there's a mom and pop music store, a pawn shop or any place that you might see a guitar, like, you know, stuff like that, because there's no. Yeah, the truly hardcore in the old days would put little ads and like those penny savers and nickel ads that say, you know, want it, blah blah blah, and they'd run it for a couple weeks and then they'd go to the town and see if they could get anybody. But I mean, I say just enjoy the trip and everywhere you go, instead of going to a different restaurant, you know, go to any place that might have any stuff like that, you know, I don't know how you'd ever get a hold of a private person. You know, like if somebody was visiting Loma Rica, they would never know that there was a big pile of junk right over here. Yeah. So. Well, if any of our listeners are out there that say, yeah, I got a PA head for 100 bucks, you know, that somebody can have, then they can, they can network like that. That'd be swinging.

[Jason]

I was going to say, Greg, if you're on our Facebook group, you could probably post there. And I'm sure there's some listeners in all of those places that might have some projects that they're tired of staring at.

[Skip]

But yeah, yeah, yeah, big amps are a deal. You can still get big amps for pretty cheap. And even printed circuit board amps at the right price make great amps. You know, if it's a 210 crate thing or whatever. I mean, A, it's a cabinet probably with good speakers in it. B, got that thing and build something else in it if you want. So at a certain price, even AC, DC amps, those 40s and 50s amps. No, we're not crazy about them. But if they look cool and you're willing to do some work, you can build your own cool little amp in there and have it look really. Boss Kevin from Ohio again, he sent a thing on the inner on ebay. It's a Dan Electro amp that has a switch on it that goes from AC to dc because in certain parts of New York City, they had DC and the wall voltage for a long time up in the 50s, I think. And that's all Westinghouse and Tesla versus Edison. Edison said AC would kill you. And Tesla and Westinghouse said, no, no, no, we can't do dc. We can't transport it like we can ac.

[Jason]

Right.

[Skip]

Big huge battle of billions of dollars at stake. But here's an amp I've never seen. You know, usually they're one or the other, right? Or they're those amps that we were just talking about that can run on either one, but not with a switch like that. It's like a Dan Electro Corporal or something from 1950. But I digress.

[Jason]

You do?

[Skip]

As usual.

[Jason]

I would just recommend find good places to eat and then reverse engineer where the amps are around that.

[Skip]

But that's a good point too.

[Jason]

All right, this one.

[Skip]

Do some research before you go. Like, is there a big. You know, even. There's a magazine that's supposed to be about vintage guitars. It's like a vintage guitar magazine.

[Jason]

Basically.

[Skip]

They'll have a calendar. It used to be millions of places, but there's places where just some guys, you know, the. The east coast, the small town guitar show, Some of those still go on. And if you could coincide with something like that, that'd be a cool network.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

What did you do when you had all that wood and all that cool woodworking equipment that belonged to your dad? Get the word out a little bit, right? Amongst some people.

[Jason]

Yeah, exactly.

[Joseph]

Including.

[Jason]

All right, our sponsor, Grass Guitars. Nick. Right. Beginner. Beginner corner. Newbie corner. I was listening to a podcast interviewing Andy Aladore, who played in Dickey Betts Band. It was made known that Dickie played 50 watt amps with very high wattage speakers. Andy played 100 watt and lower wattage speakers. Dickey would claim Andy was playing too loud and didn't want to see Andy's volume knob above a certain number on the 100 watt amp. Andy was convinced the efficiency of Dickey's speakers forced Andy to turn up the 100 watt amp to compete with Dickey's 50 watt amp. If the speakers were the same, what are the differences between playing a full stack with 100 watt Marshall head and playing two 50 watt half stacks? That's Nick in Detroit.

[Skip]

You want to tackle that one?

[Jason]

No, not at all.

[Skip]

Mathematically and officially, if you had two four 12 Marshall cabinets each with a 50 watt head, power in would be officially the same as a hundred Watt head driving two 412 cabinets. But I think in practical use, I bet 250s would be even a little bit louder than 100. But my question is, who cares? Allman Brothers speaker efficiency. It's absolutely true that we could have an amp on and you're playing it and through some mystery switch. Don't do this at home. We could instantly switch to some different cabinet or different speakers and it could sound louder or quieter. Efficiency, you know, is definitely a thing, but man.

[Jason]

Why.

[Skip]

I mean that's just. Theoretically, if you just got your guitar going into more and more and more and more amps, you're, you're at, you're have, you have more and more and more wattage. But since everyone has left the house, the street, the, you know, your whole vicinity by then should have gone with are you single? So is that basically anyone to know if 100 watt head with 412 with two cabs was the same as two 50s and two caps?

[Jason]

Yeah, basically, yeah, yeah.

[Skip]

Be fun to have. But again it, if you have the opportunity to wind that stuff up, you live out in the country, you jam it in your barn and all that great rock on. But for most people that's something like should I get a Ferrari or a Lamborghini? You know, it's like, nah, probably not going to get either one of those. So which one is be better is sort of. Anyway, moving on, moving right along. Slow it down.

[Jason]

Yeah. All right, this next voice memo, you can do that. Just record a voice memo on your phone and send it to [e-mail] is from Listener Ezra.

[Ezra]

Hi folks. Ezra from Oregon here. Recently I picked up a couple of old HiFi speaker units from the late 50s. They each have two speakers with a crossover cap, a couple of the cutest 3 inch Jensens I've ever seen and they sound great. Hooked up to the old Filco hi fi. Now each unit has a potentiometer on the top that the speaker wires go through that acts as a volume control for each cabinet independently from the amp and from each other. The impedance on an isolated cabinet is 8 ohms wide open, then increases to about 35 ohms when you turn the knob all the way down. So as far as I can tell, this potentiometer shows increasing impedance to the output transformer while also sending audio signal to ground. When I went on the interwebs to find out about it, I got lost in discussions of old Radio Shack speaker volume controls and L pads and my eyes started to glaze over. So my question is, is this a relatively harmless method to attenuate speakers? Is this a viable alternative to the power soaks and stuff like that? It seems too simple. I'm curious to hear your take on it. My music recommendations for the holidays. If you're searching for some music that is not quite like all the rest, check out the Christmas Jug Band. Legend has it that Dan Hicks and friends started jamming in his kitchen with no fancy instruments allowed. And they've been bringing tongue in cheek cheer to the holiday season for. For a while now. Start with Somebody stole my Santa Claus suit. Thanks fellas for all you do to bring tube based cheer to the tava community.

[Skip]

That was there. You type.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And Dan Hicks reference.

[Jason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Skip]

If those guys were jamming in your kitchen, it'd be pretty lively, like Armstrong, Keith, those guys can all just play ukes and stuff, you know, and have them still just go like crazy. I have a new uke, Hawaiian Koa Kamaka uk. Eddie, local Eddie came by and he saw that I had a cheap plywood one. And he goes, oh, you like yukes. And I go, yeah, but I. I used to have some good ones, but I sold them, of course, because when they began to be worth a couple hundred bucks, and he brought one that was all beat up and it sanded down, had a bunch of cracks and the bridge was falling off and Keith Carey said he'd fix it and brought it up not too long ago. And it's the coolest there's. They're so loud. You mean you hold the thing? It's like a Martin guitar. You hit the strings, you're going, whoa. That thing really jumps out at you, right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

All right. There's always been basically level controls for speakers, always in very sub. In very low phi situations.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

WKRP in Cincinnati, Johnny Fever in the office. The guy would reach up and turn a knob on a little speaker box sitting there. And then the radio, you could hear the radio station through it, right? Any kind of intercom, stuff like that. They'd have like a knob on it so you could adjust the volume, but people yank all that junk out. That's all just passive junk. You don't want anything in your speaker except the speaker wires, right? Replace that capacitor, which is a very crude crossover that keeps low notes from going into that 3 inch speaker and blowing it up. Replace that and lose the pod because it doesn't do anything. And it might sound better with that thing completely out of there. And no, it's not too easy answer to things like attenuators and power soaks and millions of other things that have been invented to go between the amp and the speaker and enable you to think you got a great tone with your way too loud amp in your bedroom. Which would be better if you just had a little dinky ass Supro like Jimmy Page had. But we won't go into that. So that's how it kind of works. And there's really no purpose for it in our world. I remember the Harp dogs. First they got into mixing different speakers. Of course the old guys had different speakers because one would blow up and they just stick whatever one they had in there. But then one guy wanted to have like individual level controls for like the two eights and one hundred twelve. No, you could do that. But remember, it's all passive. It's only going to reduce. It doesn't add anything. And I just say take all that stuff out. And then I bet those speakers sound even better. Next.

[Jason]

Okay. All right, subject line. Mystery amp. Oh, this is from Rick. I bought an amp that is a bit of a mystery. It's a medium sized combo branded Winston with no model number. A badge on the grill says made in USA but it reminds me of a 60s Japanese import like Sano. The tube chart shows two.

[Skip]

Hold on.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Thano was not a 60s Japanese import. How about Taisco or something like that? Santos were made in America, but keep going.

[Jason]

Okay, tube chart shows two 12ax7s, six CA4 rectifier and misidentifies the power tubes as 7891, though they are actually 7189s. The control panel faces up and has two inputs and a volume and tone. Other than a scratchy volume pot, the amp sounds great. Similar to my Gibson Discover GA8T. Like my daughter's Chevy Malibu, which you need to take off the bumper to change a headlight. I had to remove the speaker grille to get to the chassis. Once opened, I found what I believe to be a carbono speaker and a schematic glued to the inside of the cabinet which included voltages for each pin of each tube. Voltages were close for all but the power tubes, where I have EL84s installed with the plates at 365 and screen 345. Interestingly, the standby works by disconnecting the ground. Everything but the heaters. Also, a couple of shots of WD40 into the volume pot cured the scratchiness. My questions, have you ever seen one of these winstons and are they really USA made? That's the first question. Let's go with that.

[Skip]

Don't think so.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

But it sounds like the really super sub budget amps that were still made in America. What is the name of those things? Dang it. There's some that say mark X or mark xx, like Dos Equis. I know Louie great guitar pig has had some of those. And they're just super budget American made amps that they would put. You know, you might see a foil kind of sticker that says the name of a store. And if you peel that back, it might say something else.

[Jason]

Gregory.

[Skip]

But Gregory, thank you very much. Are you googling while we're doing this?

[Jason]

Yeah, I was googling.

[Skip]

Yeah. Maybe a Gregory amp. And that's cool. I mean, that's two EL84s. 7189s are super heavy duty. EL84s have been cool if it's came with those, because those are. Those are some cool tubes. And a tube rectifier. That's the 6ca4 and no, but I bet the cabinet's kind of junky. Oh, I know. If it's offshore, almost always going to say so on the parts. Like on the capacitors they'll say made in Japan. Or they'll say oil filled. And if it has that, then it is Japanese. And if it does have those oil filled caps, you don't know what that thing sounds like. Get rid of all of those. They're terrible. But if it has just cheap disk capacitors and you and basically all the components in there seem American, then it probably is some super low budget like western auto, you know, Gregory.

[Jason]

All right, good score. Yeah. The. The next question from Rick is, although I plan to install a pair of 7189s, is it okay to use EL84s in their place at these voltages?

[Skip]

Yeah. And good luck finding any 7189s. I think new old stock ones are probably a hundred dollars. So maybe there's a company in a country that hates us that's making a tube that says 7189 on it, but it isn't a real one. It's just a two. You know, it might be a fine tube, but don't get confused. Just like a real KT 66 is, you know, 500 for one in the box. So don't think the one you got for 4,995 from amplified parts is the same exact thing. Right.

[Jason]

The good news is countries that hate us, that number is growing. So inevitably that number.

[Skip]

Hopefully it'll come more. Yeah. More tube factories open up. I was wondering about again, Fender or the Bigs. Do they always have a steady supply of 12x7s and 6l6s and whatever from China and Russia this whole time? Did their price go up? Did they stop making tubes in Russia because they were making a million people, man, a million people dead in that thing. Did they stop making tubes because they were making other stuff or what? You know, you kind of think that those. That the tube supply might have dried up from Russia, but I don't know if it did or not. Kind of just we had Any industry insiders.

[Jason]

Yeah. Be interesting to know someone take a photo of. Of the. The tube wall at Fender. That would be fun.

[Skip]

Well, they got to be. For there. I would think 12 AX7s have got to be, you know, like in a. Like in a freight load. Like a container of.

[Jason]

Yeah, they're not going to be in the little cute boxes.

[Skip]

No. And China, I could see that they'd still be coming there, but there may or may not have been increases in tariffs. And then Russia, it just seems like. Are they really making that much money selling, making 12 AX7s and selling them all over the world enough to justify doing it when they're at war? I don't know. Oh, it's world issues. Can we get back to like a recipe or something?

[Jason]

Oh, it's funny you should say that. That's the next part of Rick's email. Garlic bread spread. Mayo, garlic powder, basil and salt on bread and toast for 90 seconds. The mayonnaise adds flavor, browns nicely.

[Crash]

That's.

[Skip]

That's. That's very late night, you know, in your underwear. But I could see that getting you through a pinch. Or maybe with kids, especially. Garlic powder.

[Jason]

Yeah. No butter. Just. Just go straight to the mail.

[Skip]

Straight to the vegetable oil.

[Jason]

Yeah. And then Rick has a music tip. Roy Buchanan's the Messiah Will Come Again supposedly used a maxed out Fender fiber Lux and relied on the guitar volume control to alter sound sounds. Rick concludes, thank you for the podcast. I'm a longtime listener, Patreon member and subscriber to the Fretboard Journal. Keep it going. Thanks, Rick.

[Skip]

Thank you.

[Jason]

Congrats on your Winston.

[Skip]

Yeah. And if you. Yeah. And if you've never. If you wonder why anybody cares about, say, Roy Buchanan, that would be one where you put that on there and you'll. You'll get the drift right off the bat. This is pretty far out. I heard a Hank Williams tune being done instrumentally by Joe Pass and Roy Clark. Right. From Hee Haw and Joe Pass. And it was just tearing it up, man. Tearing it up. Oh, and another music recommendation. I never heard this song until yesterday.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

And I'm a Van Morrison fan. And you may hate him. He's probably an. But this was. It sounded like the Mavericks. Rest in peace. That guy. Leader of the Mavericks. It just had the Darren in. It had that telly just. And he was just ripping like with the honky tonk, the Bakersfield style. But the song was you Are My Sunshine, and it just. It's just killing. And I'd love to know who that guy is playing on there because he sounds just like Red Volkart or one of those super cool truck like Bill Kirchen. Right. Just playing this super cool, like, telly. Just grind it. And it's quite the take on that song that I'd never heard. It's very. It's pretty darned up tempo. So put that on there. I didn't even know it was Van Morris until the singing had gone on. For a second, I was already thinking it was a cool Tex Mex band or the Mavericks or something like that. But it's driving. It's really cool.

[Jason]

There was. There was a time pre Covid where we were asking every musician who came through the Fretboard journal to do their version of youf Are My Sunshine. We had. They're all on YouTube, I think. Yeah. Ah.

[Skip]

I like the slow ones. I like the Mo Allison one. He croons and plays the piano in a cool way on that just completely reconfigures it. But that. That rockabilly Tex Billy thing on that song is really fun. You'll. You'll. You'll like it. Great.

[Jason]

I love it. Stuart writes subject line, 1947 Deluxe 5A3. Happy Holidays to you and your fellow listeners. I enjoy your show. And from a guy who cannot and has never tried to solder, that's high praise. I am fortunate to be a new to me owner of a 1947 Fender Deluxe, the Electrolytics and Caps have been replaced as needed. A three prong cord has been added. Speaker is original. Sounds incredible. I'd like to play this out open jams and bar gigs. Open jams, full band are not mic to the gigs are. YouTube suggests to replace the original speaker to be heard above a drummer. Thoughts? That's Stuart.

[Skip]

Oh, where do you start?

[Jason]

Yeah, congrats.

[Skip]

47 my peeps. That's the first year that there was tweed. Before that we're talking woodies like that Woody Princeton we talked about last time with the wood on the outside. I mean rare. Rare. If you went down to the Fender museum and you said, hey, can I come and show your guy? They'd say, come right on in. Let's have a look at this. And of course, super valuable.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And condition still important. So. Wow.

[Jason]

You're not going to tell Maria?

[Skip]

Well, no. Well, yeah. At least I didn't say sell that thing, man. That's a house payment. Right. But no, if someone was committed and did not care and just really wanted to do that, this is what I'd do.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

I take off those four screws on top and put a better handle on it. If it still has some old ancient leather handle, you don't want that thing to break when you pick it up. Save it. Put a boot lace on there. Or go to bob at Brookwood. Leather will make you a handmade beautiful tweed amp handle. Lots of people will now, but that guy was doing making those for me like 25 years ago. He's a cool guy. So handle then. Unless. Unless it's just completely wasted. Like it doesn't have any tweed or it's been recovered. I suggest some kind of a cover. And it doesn't have to be some padded tukey thing. I like the ones that you just make out of cardboard and duct tape that just like a sleeve that slides down over the top of the hole for the handle. Then pool take that old speaker out and put it in the box that you just got your new speaker in and park it and don't unsolder the speaker lead. Actually 47, that thing might have the output transformer mounted on the speaker. Probably does. That's going to be a little challenging. You're either going to have to find another speaker that you can mount the output transformer on that has the little place for the screws, or you're going to have to mount the output transformer on the chassis like Fender did eventually. But that would mean. Yeah, drilling a hole or two, you know. And. You know what a really cool Thing to do would be have. Well, I bet it has a bunch of input jacks that are the same that don't have any different sound at all. If you took one of those and put in that switching speaker jack thing we're talking about. So when you plugged in, it would turn off that old speaker and you could play it through some sort of extension cabinet. If it wasn't for the output transformer mounted on the speaker, I'd say put a new speaker in that thing, park the old one, check the fuse. And now you could gig the hell out of a 47 tweet deluxe. Might want to keep it handcuffed to your leg, but you could just. Speaker is the only thing you're going to hurt. Of course, it'd be nice to know that it's actually been serviced and is working. And we really don't know if it has coupling capacitors from 1947. And it's still no. Right. So. But replace the handle, replace the speaker. If you can actually have it fixed by me, preferably. But, you know, hopefully it's working and then. Sure, you could run it just. It's not like it's fragile or anything. It's just rare.

[Jason]

We don't know where Stuart lives. Thanks. Stuart, though.

[Skip]

Can't tell. Can't tell anybody where he lives. He has to, like, you know, be in witness protection with his 47 Deluxe. But it sounds like he appreciates it. I would say.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

You'Re welcome to call me up and ask me some questions. Maybe in the past it already had that transformer moved, in which case you could put another speaker in there and then you could just let the good times roll. Wouldn't have to worry about it at all.

[Jason]

Okay, let's move right along. Cartwright or no Bud in Maine, who's the real name is Cartwright. I think this may have been covered previously, but I was wondering what is involved in using 6L 6s in a Princeton Reverb or Deluxe Reverb? What are the potential problems? The only thing I could think of would be too much filament current. Additional headroom would be nice, but I'm mainly interested in doing this because I have a bunch of really nice new old stock 6L6s and 7581s and I'd like to put them to good use. This is probably crazy, but I also have some 6550s which I know draw a lot more heater current. Would it be possible to use them in either amp if I were to install a separate Filament transformer. I know I must be missing something. That's Bud in Maine.

[Skip]

Well, I've. I've told this story lots of times because it, you know, you get ideas and you think you know what you're talking about, but eventually if you got your eyes open, you realize you were wrong. And that happens to me all the time. And it needs to happen to other people sometimes a little more often. So 25 years ago, you say, dude, I'm putting some 6L6s in my deluxe reverb. And I say, no, no, no, no, no, no. Look, in the tube manual, those things draw. I forget what the numbers are. They draw more filament current. And that filament voltage is the thing that lights the tube up. It's not the high voltage like, like you have on filter capacitors. It's the reason we threw tubes away because they require all this electricity by far the most of any part of the amp just to heat the dang tube up so it'll actually do its lead to forest thing, thermionic something or other. So don't put six L6s in your deluxe reverb because the power transformer is going to overheat because it wasn't designed to put out that much heater current. But people have been doing that in deluxe reverbs forever. Pete Anderson, he started talking about that during the old LA country punk Dwight Yocum days. When was that? Early 80s, I think. So people had been putting 6L6s in deluxe reverb since the dawn of time. So I had to change my mind. Not a Princeton reverb, thank you very much. I'll pass on that one. Because that's not the same power transformer. But it's pretty obvious that the Fender Deluxe reverb power transformer has enough filament current capacity to run 6L 6s, because everyone's been doing it. Kind of like the death cap. Where's the dead guys, by the way? Weather related.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Also, my place is covered with mushrooms, all sorts of kinds, including amanita, the big old orange ones with the white stripes that look like. Or white spots that just look like they'd kill you and they would. So some other dealio of the wet, strange weather and the constant temperature or something, but there's all kinds of mushrooms all over the place, so I'm eating my way through. No, I'm not touching any of them. But pretty wild, like in big stripes and circles around trees and stuff, you know, that you normally wouldn't see. But a Few. So anyway, mushrooms are amazing. Yeah. Go ahead, Go ahead and put a 6L6s in your deluxe reverb. No, 6550s because they draw even more. Yes. You could install an additional filament transformer and then use power tubes that you wouldn't normally in an amp. But you're really going to do that to a deluxe reverb? Kind of missing the point.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

You know, I mean, I wouldn't go that far. I have made that Mega Champ and you could put 6550kt, 88kt, 66, 6L6, any of those in there without doing anything to it. But I made it that way on purpose and it was a lot simpler thing than a deluxe reverb. So you're fine using six L6s in there. I. I often set people up with the American made 80s. Little short 6L6. That was a military one, of course. Steve from Angela had those for sale forever stubby. They're real small. They're just a little taller than a 6V6. But they say 6L6 WGB. I like those for deluxe reverbs because they run Those tubes really hot. 6V6s. We've talked about that a lot. I don't know why vendors should have made those things 6L6s all along, but they had great 6V6s then and they ran on them fine. But now we're. Unless you're the Kelly amp guy. Remember when he was on, he bought, you know, 2006 V6s and that's why he can still sell amps that use 6v6s where he has the power on them really cranked up because he's not using the ones from countries that hate us.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So did that cover it?

[Jason]

Yeah, you covered it.

[Skip]

Did I? That's good.

[Jason]

Jake writes subject line Treble Guys, in your opinion or school of thought, is all available treble the same, say on a correctly functioning black panel? Fender with a bright switch? Do you consider cranking the treble knob the same net effect of using the bright switch? Or do they somehow come into play for different reasons? What about the tone knob on the guitar? Do you consider that amount of control to be the same category as the amp treble controls? A tech I trust mentioned that his use of the different treble sources depends on all the factors at play, like stage and room, sound, volume, guitar, and how the other musicians are dialing in their sound. I know it's salt to taste like most things, but do you see them as different Tools for different situations or it's all simply adding and reducing the same treble. That's from Jake in Charlottesville. Whoa, Trouble. Yeah. Take some of those mushrooms and then ponder treble for a while.

[Skip]

Wasn't the not in the office where they had the, the boat, the men's glee club from then they were called Here Comes Trouble. Right. Isn't that right? I think. Yes, it was. Right? Yeah. The guy that went to the Ivy League school that they always made fun of in the office, he got his old band, his old acapella group back together and they were called Here Comes Trouble. I'm glad he had a friend who said, dude, you can putz around with your stuff in your basement all you want. When you go down to the pizza place or the jam or even to somebody else's house, everything's changed. And you have to adapt on the fly, right Then to get everything to sound the best you can at the volume that you're going to use. You know, that's. That's something that makes a great musician. Yeah, right.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Imagine Nick Drake, you know, when you first put a microphone in front of him and he'd just been sitting in his bedroom for years playing by himself. He did pretty good. But no, you just got to be ready to go on the fly. You know, you can't get up there and put your knobs all where they were at your house and expect it to be anything the same. So I'm glad somebody told him that. And then basically he's just saying all these ways of adjusting brightness and treble. Are they all the same? Yeah, and no, I'd say not. Did I mention that I can't really play the guitar? When I was in bands, you didn't touch the knobs on the guitar unless you make sure they were all. All the way up, you know, but gods, do they turn the amp way up and then. Roy Buchanan, they use the volume and tone controls, little Charlie, to get a super wide variety of sounds that mere mortals can't. Right. But it's not quite the same. And let me just. I'll just touch on the bright. The bright switch.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Remember what that thing does? It's a capacitor that's soldered to the volume pot. And when you turn that volume pot up, the highs above a certain frequency determined by the value of that capacitor, they're on 10. And the rest of the sound is being attenuated by the pot. In other words, it allows the highs to just detour around a volume control. So they're on 10. And that's a balance between highs and lows. That's just not turning highs up and down. Dig what I'm saying? Does that make sense?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

So if you floor the volume control all the way and then connect a bright switch capacitor, like flip it up and down on a twin or put it in and out of an amp, the effect will be a lot less noticeable because every frequency is already on 10. But when you have that thing down on two or three, and you flip a bright switch on. On a super or a twin, it's like boost the highs because they're all on 10. So the amp gets louder, and that's different than a treble control, which in Fenders is mostly just passive and basically just rolls highs to ground, kind of like on the guitar. But some amps have more active, you know, things where I make, like, preamps where there's three channels and one's a bass channel, one's a mid channel, one's a treble channel. And the way you adjust the tone is by adjusting volume, right? That's, like, active. But most tone controls aren't like that. They just basically are rolling off frequencies. How's that? Too boring?

[Jason]

Well, it's a question about treble. What do you expect?

[Skip]

Here comes treble.

[Jason]

Here comes treble. All right, here's our next voice memo.

[Skip]

He went to Cornell, that guy, right? Because one of my kids went to Cornell, and everyone was all, what school did you go to? Because he was always telling people he went to Cornell, and here comes trouble. All right, keep going.

[Jason]

All right, be a part of the show, folks. [e-mail] here's our next voice memo.

[Joseph]

Hey, Skip and Jason. This is Joseph from Fort St. John, British Columbia, up here in Maple city syrup land, aka Canada. Yeah, Reed. We're at about mile 47 on the Alaska highway, so if you've ever done the Alaskan pilgrimage, you would have come right through here. Enjoy the show overall. Just learned a lot, and I like your approach to troubleshooting, Skip. Just don't fix it if it isn't broken. And, yeah, just, like, go through all the components. Good multimeter technique. I'm a. An electrician by trade. I do that for a living. I've never been, like, a real passionate about electronics, but I've learned a lot about. About troubleshooting and electronics and amps just by listening to your show. Fancy myself a bit of a musician.

[Jason]

Just trying.

[Joseph]

Still trying to learn new things. Yeah, I. On your one comment, about shows. I have a comment and a recommendation. Slow Horses. Really love that show. I like. I don't know, I like British stuff. And there is a really complex character in there called Jackson Lamb. Yeah, I don't think you'll find a better TV than that. So, yeah, two thumbs up for that. In the kind of electrical world. A movie that was filmed in British Columbia is called. It's super cheesy. It's called John Travolta. It's called Life on the Line and it's not meant to be funny, but it is funny. And I think it's like, supposed to be set in Oklahoma. It's based on some events that really happen, but it's actually filmed at the BC Hydro Training center in part down in Vancouver, Hollywood north, also in British Columbia. One last thing. I've got a recipe recommendation. Been trying to make curry over the years. Popular dish in this part of the world. We have many wonderful people from India that live in our province and we have one of the best Indian restaurants in the province in this town of Fort St. John. It's called spicy fusion. Anyway, been trying to make curry and one thing I found out is when you're making chicken curry, don't use chicken breast. It's too dense. It doesn't, like, absorb the flavor. Use boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Just a little bit of fat content and the different type of meat, it really absorbs the flavor better. And then before you cook your chicken, you're going to want to use a little bit of yogurt and curry spices and your garlic and mix that up and let it sit in a bowl for anywhere from 10 minutes to 24 hours. I usually shoot for about an hour, 30 minutes, something like that. It just lets the flavor get into the chicken more. It's much more enjoyable. Anyway, again, love the show. Didn't have an amp question. Sorry, my fenders are working just fine. Yeah, love the show and keep up the good work. Thanks, Jason, for making this happen and enjoy everything that you do. Goodbye.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

Wow. That was proof of quite a few things. Like, we obviously don't edit this stuff. They must grow some pretty smooth herb up there in bc, Right. Like, I'd hate to be the drive through guy when that guy pulled in. Right. He might take a while to figure out how many tacos he wants or something like that.

[Jason]

Right. Kind of set the tone for what he's about and what he does for a living. Yeah.

[Skip]

Mile 47. That's pretty. That's pretty awesome.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And I'll Check out Life on the Line because Slow Horses is pretty fab. It's. Listener Tom Gunnerman said it's the darkest English show he's ever seen because it is pretty dark, but it's pretty complicated. And there is a character who's really skilled, but it's so odious that, you know, he's difficult to like. And so if you like that kind of stuff, you know, English cop shows. Slow Horses is a little rough, but it's definitely among the cream of the new. The new ones that are out right now. So we've been watching one that's in Ireland called Blue Lights, and it's a little more Murder, She Wrote, but still, still great. And you can. You can pick up all sorts of weird recipes, like, you know, those bacon sandwiches. And, you know, of course, they're always eating chips off a newspaper as they're walking down the street. Right, so. And British Columbia, beautiful. There was a movie probably from the 70s or 80s called runaway train that was just these two gangsters on this train going across Canada. And it's. There's hardly any talking in it, which is my kind of movie. I think it had Jon Voight, but Runaway Train had some unbelievable Canadian scenery and no talking, which makes for a good movie in. In my opinion.

[Jason]

Sometimes, I mean, I. I had to look this place up because I never heard of it. Yeah, it's way up there.

[Skip]

He is way up there. He. Like I said, you got to have a slow pace. Maybe you'll go out and get some firewood pretty soon.

[Jason]

Most people can imagine where Vancouver, British Columbia is. According to Google Maps, this place is a 14 hour drive north of there.

[Skip]

Mush.

[Jason]

Yeah, exactly. You're way up there. It's like due east of Ketchikan, but hundreds of miles east that I had.

[Skip]

A customer from Point Barrow. And that's as far as you can go on the North American continent. To the north is way above the Arctic Circle. There's nothing there but like an airport for the oil refinery or something. And he came to my house and he said, nice place. And I go, yeah. But he goes, now we could never move. He showed me a picture on his phone. It was just nothing, you know, just like white flat and his wife looked like an Eskimo. And, you know, people live in different. Different spots. Remember that couple I saw walking down the street with in New York City with their CVS bags and their tennis shoes on and they were in their 80s and they would have thought I lived in a hellhole, right? So different strokes, baby.

[Jason]

All right, well, thank you, Joseph.

[Skip]

Thank you.

[Jason]

Yes, we got a curry tip out of that.

[Skip]

Yeah, I'd like to know how to do that. I need to branch out a little bit, but up here in redneck country, but you don't just experiment with like Thai food and Indian food. You gotta get a recommendation. So I haven't quite. I haven't quite gotten there yet.

[Jason]

All right, this is, I think, a shorter voice memo from our friend Crash.

[Crash]

Hello, Skip and Jason. This is Crash from Ohio. I'm working on a Knight Allied Radio PA amp. It's a Model 93 Sierra X Ray 670. I have two questions. One is regarding the output transformer options. So along with the 4, 8 and 16 typical options, there are three others at higher values. The one in particular is at 160ohm. But it also indicates on the schematic that it's 70v. I'm curious as to why it's labeled. Also labeled with 70 volts. You know what's up with 70 volts? Thanks. And second question is there's some circuitry related to connecting a record player or phono to this amp. There's a phono motor socket and something called phono top. Anyway, I'm considering removing all that circuitry just with the intention of making everything just simpler. Less parts, less wires, less stuff. What do you think about that? Or should I just leave it alone and leave it in there? Thank you.

[Skip]

Bye, Crash. Pretty short. Threw down the Sierra X Ray Tango lingo. That's pretty good.

[Jason]

That was. Yeah.

[Skip]

Sounded like he knew them all. Like he knew he could have said any letters, huh? Yeah, that's pretty cool. First question. Old PA amps often had a winding on the output transformer. That was what's called constant voltage. And the point of it is that let's say you have a 25 watt night amp like this dude, and you're in a school and you have 20 different classrooms that you want to be able to pick up the microphone and go, you know, assembly at 2 o'. Clock. The way they did that was each speaker had its own matching transformer inside. Those are the little boxes that you'd see on the wall, like in WKRP and sometimes with a L pad on it so you could turn the volume up and down. But it's just a different way of hooking up a billion speakers. So if you just had an 8 ohm amp, you get out there 10 or 20 speakers and things aren't going to work right. The 70 volt was designed to have A step down transformer at each speaker. And if you have that set up, you can run almost an unlimited amount of speakers off of the one amp. So that's why they did that. And the other thing is it was a phono top amp. So it had a turntable on the top and you could lose all that. And there's going to be a spot where you plug in the power for the turntable, you know, like an AC outlet and you could lose that or leave it. The tricky thing on those nights is that they use a phonograph preamp. And that I have not found to be anything that we can really do anything with. For guitar, it's EQ'd, you know, super different and weird. And it's for an old fashioned turntable. Yeah. And the last thing about those nights is they're really cool looking, but all the circuitry is just crammed down into the corners of the amp with all sorts. I mean you got to start changing the capacitors and you're going, how am I ever going to get that out of there? I mean it's, it's hardwired, but they're not easy to work on. I would suggest on this thing look for a mic input. Right. That's where you want to plug a guitar and forget that phono stuff next.

[Jason]

Okay, we got a couple more. Unless you have some food or tips.

[Skip]

I had, we're going to speak briefly again about Satan's. Satan's saliva. WD40. I had somebody. I don't care what you use, as long as it works right. If you can jiggle the tube around in the socket and it's nice and quiet, go for it, dude. I mean, I don't think that WD40 is some sort of panacea. I don't usually drink it in the morning. It's the whole point of it was when we first started bringing it up was don't go buy some expensive stuff online and wait. Go clean the tube sockets on your dang amp right now with some WD40. And I'm just saying it works fine. But if you prefer something else, that's just fine too. One of the reasons was thrift. Before I realized it didn't work quite as well, I bought bottles of stuff that was $20 for a little tiny bottle. And if it had worked the best, I probably still would be buying it. So there's other stuff that it just, it just. It's like speaker reconing. There's this mysterious aura around it. I mean there's people that Just hate it. I told you the cool typewriter book says. Oh no. You spray that in a typewriter it's eventually going to get all gummy and make everything. No, no it doesn't. We know it doesn't. So there's just this heavy bias against it. So use a little bit of it here and there. If it works for you and if you prefer some other socio political type of cleaner and lubricant, I say great, as long as it works good, then I'm. I'm down. So we're all about inclusion.

[Jason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Skip]

I don't normally bring that up, but this one guy that's just. And we haven't got one where. I think you sent it to my email. It was basically, I have this old amp. It. I fixed it up but I don't really know what I'm doing and now it's stopped working. What's wrong with it? We haven't had one of those today.

[Jason]

Well, hey, you know what, you know that one listener, Paul here, I recently completed my first amp build, the Angelo amp. I don't know if that's a reference to Angela or not, that's not the.

[Skip]

One we're talking about, but sounds like this should work.

[Jason]

Thanks for the inspiration for this. It's a mojo tone tweed Princeton kit customized with a 10 inch 8 ohm speaker and NFB adjusted to compensate for 8 ohms. The amp sounds great, but when I turn the volume all the way down, there's a loud hum. I'm struggling to isolate what is generating the hum. I've tried swapping out multiple known good tubes. I've quadruple checked all the wiring. I've tested the 68k input resistors. Here's something. If I simply touch the wire coming off of the Preamp 12 AX7 Tube Pin 7. It eliminates the hum. Suggestions? That's Paul.

[Skip]

There was some. First of all, there's something about in there about inverse feedback adjusted for 8ohm.

[Jason]

Negative feedback just for the 8ohm speaker.

[Skip]

I don't think that's. I think that might be some, some Internet jive. I mean that's something that you might possibly look into, but it's certainly not something that I've ever done. Right, but now we're talking about an amp and it works. You built it and it sounds good, but if he turns the volume all the way off, it makes a big loud noise, but not when you turn it up. Is that what he says?

[Jason]

He is saying, yeah, I think that's what he's saying. The amp sounds great, but when I turn the volume all the way down, there's a loud hum.

[Skip]

What? I don't know. I don't know. Unplug the guitar. Still humming. Pull the 12AX7 out. Still humming. I bet not. And that's pretty weird. I mean, usually when you turn the gain up, that's when you get more home, not when you turn it off. So when that thing is off, the center lug of the pot, which goes to the next gain stage, should be close to zero ohms. In other words, that grid should be grounded out. Maybe the pot is bad and it's going off the track at one end. If it was a kit, the gut definitely could be. Pots aren't the greatest quality, I think. Turn the volume control down, make sure that the center lug of the volume pot is in fact just an ohm or 2 above ground and not like 250k or 500k or something like that, because it should be pretty close to grounded and that should eliminate any hum in the amp. Then I think I might find another pot. Even if it was 250k, 500k, 100, whatever. Put it in there and see if it does the same thing. Because it might just be a defective pot. And you could call me on that one if you want.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

In the day, weather permitting.

[Jason]

The email that you were asking about, which will be our last email, it's a little long.

[Skip]

I'm not sure you really need to read it. Basically, what kind of amp is it?

[Jason]

This was an RCA MI 12155 PA head that I know listener Kevin has been enjoying for several months. And do you want to walk through?

[Skip]

That's all. That's all we need for one thing. Thank God I don't memorize all those numbers. I'd rather he said yes. Of RCA with two 6L6s and a 5U4 and, you know, this kind of preamp tube that helps me get into exactly what it is.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Basically, he got lucky and he got a PA head working and sounding good and used it quite a bit. And then all of a sudden, no sound. Correct. And he went through a whole bunch of stuff, but it didn't sound to me like he started in the right spot. Jackdaw. Okay, so my amp stopped. I say, well, what do you mean it stopped? Is the light on? Yes. Well, that means it has power going to the power transformer. Is there any sound from the speaker? No. No sound at all? Absolutely. No hum, no hiss, nothing? No. Well, then you better unplug that speaker and make sure that speaker wiring and the speaker still work somehow. Hook them up to a different amp with the 9 volt test on them or something. In other words, if you got no sound, you got to start at the very last thing, because otherwise you're not going to be able to find it. So, okay, the speaker does make sound, you open that amp up and you start poking around in there, measuring some voltages on the plates of the phase inverter, say for instance. And every time you touch your prod to one of those leads, it should go in the speaker. If it doesn't, then you've got to figure out why before you go any further. So all the stuff with tubes and preamp stuff and measuring this and that and that, you should be able to hear some sound through the speaker unplugged from the amp. And then when the, when the speaker's plugged into the amp, there should be some hiss and some hum and a click. Unless it's maybe on standby somehow permanently. That would maybe make an amp silent like that. But in general, start at the output stage and then you'll find, find out what it, what it is. Could be something as simple as just a bad speaker cable. And he didn't really say in the, in the email that he broke it down like that starting at the end. Got anything to add to that?

[Jason]

No. He had some music and food tips. Yeah, music. Give Chuck Profitt a listen. He's a San Francisco cat who wields Mean Telecaster and he's.

[Skip]

He's pretty cool.

[Jason]

Changed things up this year by releasing a cumbia inspired album called Wake the Dead. It's been on heavy rotation. Booze. Kevin recommends the Mosquito coast cocktail, which consists of rum, allspice dram, lime juice and simple syrup. He recommends the book Night Train to Nashville, the story of wlac, the first high powered radio station that broke the color barrier and played R B music.

[Skip]

That sounds like a good holiday read.

[Jason]

And he wants to wish everybody a wonderful holiday season and a happy 2026. And special thanks to Jason for reading this long winding missive, which I didn't even have to read. And then he concludes, in the words of the great Henry Rollins, knowledge without mileage equals. That's Kevin. Not from Ohio.

[Skip]

Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, that guy could also give me a ring in the day. But you better have that thing hooked up to a speaker and it better be upside down so you can see in there and we can figure out why it doesn't make a Sound, that's easy. It's the kind of stuff where it only does it every other week that's hard. Right. So again, for our octogenarian listeners, were you old enough to remember the whole Earth catalog?

[Jason]

Well, I have one, but I was. I did not read it when it.

[Skip]

Was the whole Earth catalog came out. When was that? 70, I think.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And it's this huge paperback and basically it was just information about a ultra wide variety of topics from chainsaws, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance that was in there to, you know, where to go for food, mental health, everything. And the guy's name was Stuart Brandt and he has a book out that George is getting and we're going to be passing around. And that guy, he had a, he. He had a concept in his own way, like you know, the Internet pioneers, only it was in a, in a book form. His idea was just this information should be out there. If somebody wants to write in and say, these are the best sheep shears I've ever used, we want to have a place for that in this gigantic thing. Or if a doctor wants to write in and say, here's a Native American remedy for poison oak, we want that to be in there too. And my ultra lefty parents of course had it when it first came out so you could leaf through it and just there's almost like no limit to the topics in a way. And there managed to be a few more of them over the years and I guess I bet they're still around and I bet that it still would be a good resource. I remember pages that said like, you know, Fender guitars and sure, microphones, you know, are sturdy and we like them out here in Ohio or wherever. The guy it was kind of like is pretty cool. So I think the Stuart Brand book might be pretty interesting.

[Jason]

You're not going to like this, but I think they're all digitized and available to. Are they scroll on your browser? Yeah, they're pretty cool.

[Skip]

The same.

[Jason]

Did you read that book as a kid and think like I'm going to build a dome house or do you have durations of going off the grid and doing some kooky hydrogen powered cars? Anything like that?

[Skip]

Yes. There were people with not very many clothes on and there was all sorts of back to earth types in there. But it also had, you know, this is a good ax, right?

[Jason]

Oh yeah. So many, so many luthiers, people I've interviewed were inspired by that to take, you know, woodcraft.

[Skip]

Yes. And making a dome and just living out in the Boondocks and all of that. But at the same time, he wasn't down with technology. He embraced technology like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite. I still love technology. So it was a. Just a crazy browse. And even by junior high school, a kid could look in there and go, whoa, whoa, that's. Oh, these are the best canoes. Or just all sorts of crazy stuff. So if you had one, if your parents have one, drag it out over the holidays and just leaf through it. It represented a. A serious effort to try to combine a bunch of things that aren't really connected. But still, you know, it's not like it was just chainsaws and axes, Right?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Or just, you know, the. The best massage oil. It's like it's everything. So kind of fun.

[Jason]

Yeah, super fun. I just interviewed my yogi friend who was singing the Merits of AI didn't expect that. That was on the Fretboard Journal podcast.

[Skip]

I will be staying as far from that as I can get instead. Also on the computer, mentioned it before. There was a magazine for a few years called Vacuum Tube Valley.

[Jason]

Yeah, of course.

[Skip]

And these guys had a couple. This guy named Eric Barber who worked for Svetlana and, like, really knows how tubes are made and stuff. Right. And there's another guy named John Atwood who has been working on tube amps since, you know, there were dinosaurs. And one of his cooler columns is called the Tube Dumpster. And what does he do? He finds perfectly groovy, great, awesome tubes that weren't in fenders, and so they're a dollar. Right. And if you. If you go online, you can see all those issues are digitized, and you can see some of my favorites. One recent One is called a 6 AV5 Alpha Victor 5, and it's a 6L6 that just would kick the. Out of almost any 6L6. It's just a killer, but requires a certain type of circuit or some. Sometimes they need some modifications to work in certain things, but they're RCA is in the box, you know, $10, right. Love it. So tube. So the tube Dumpster in a vacuum Tube Valley, and that guy's name is John Atwood, and he talks a lot about preamp tubes that nobody cares about. And I've often said if you have some tubes that have some audio purpose, you can make them do something. You don't have to have 12 AX7s and 6 L6s and all the crap we're talking about all the time. So there you go. That six AV5s. I did a bogan that inspired this search. 700 volts on the plates, but only like 250 on the screens. Usually, an amp that powerful is going to have 4 to 500 volts on the plates and the same amount on the screens. But these six AV5s are made to run on a regulated screen voltage. And that amp sounds killer. Like, so clean and powerful, Like a bass player could use it, Even though It's only like 30, 35 watts. Because it's very sophisticated. Very sophisticated. Fancy, from the 60s. Not an old Western Electric, you know, Fender Pa type circuit, but something a lot more sophisticated and, you know, cheap. I'm going to. I'm going to sell that amp to a bass player for $350. And it. It absolutely thunders because I got it cheap. And it didn't take much to fix because it's from the 60s instead of the 40s. And trying to have a few PAs around that aren't $1,000. They're fun to trip people out with. Right. The. The. The guy that bought brought me the reissue twin. I sent him home with a silver face champ, and I never saw it again. He came back with the money the next day. Said, I got to have this. I said, all right. The conversion has begun. You know, get somebody something sturdy and small. That sounds good. While they're waiting for their curry to cook, you know?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Something you got to take out to the barn and turn up real loud to get it to sound good. All right. What else? Is that it?

[Jason]

That's all we got. That was the truth about vintage amps. Episode 157.

[Skip]

It just. They just keep on coming.

[Jason]

Just keep on coming. I want to see the. The. The webcam field cam, whatever. The.

[Skip]

Yeah, I'm gonna write that down. I got that written down. Keep your powder dry.

[Jason]

And we'll include a link to the Marin guitar show. And that's all I got. Keep the Questions coming, everybody. Podcastritboardjournal.com as long as they do. Yeah.

[Skip]

And as long as you keep showing up. I will keep showing up. Okay, thanks, everyone.