Ep. 164: "Kern County Wool Growers"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons

Episode 164: "Kern County Wool Growers"
April 25, 2026 | Host: Jason; Guest: Skip Simmons

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Episode Overview

In this lively installment, amp repair legend Skip Simmons and host Jason take listeners through a rich tapestry of vintage tube amp repair questions, offbeat technical insights, and digressions into cooking, classic books, Basque sheep culture, and the everyday realities of running a repair shop and a podcast. As ever, this episode blends practical answers for nerds and tinkerers with old-school wisdom and quirky asides—plus memorable listener contributions from across the globe.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Garnet Book & Amp Schematics

[00:31 – 06:07]

• Contest Results: The podcast's "Baffler" contest winner correctly identified the only classic Fender circuit without a death cap: the reverb unit.
  • “The answer is the reverb unit. We could ponder why. I think it has to do with the fact that you're plugging two things into the same wall outlet... And reverb units always had a two prong cord.” — Skip ([00:43])
• Unusual Schematics: Skip praises the Garnet book’s hand-drawn diagrams, which present familiar Fender circuits in a new light.
  • “Seeing classic Fender schematics ... drawn in a different hand ... makes you say, look at it a little closer and say, oh, I kind of see how that works.” — Skip ([03:23])
• Amp Circuit Insights: Discussion of optocoupler tremolo negative voltage application—actually to stop the tremolo oscillator, not to enable it.

2. Book, Kit, and Gear Recommendations

[06:11 – 08:19]

• Sponsor shout-outs for boutique guitar makers, amp parts suppliers, and Seattle’s Emerald City Guitars.
• DIY advice: Build a Champ kit chassis and mount it in a vintage radio cabinet for a unique amp.

3. Stories from the Vintage Amp World

[08:20 – 12:47]

• Discussion of unique, rare vintage instruments and amps (1935 Rickenbacker tenor guitar with vibrola), and challenges pricing or restoring oddball gear.
  • “It’s so bizarre. If you were running that estate sale, you’d have a hard time trying to figure out a price tag on it.” — Skip ([09:45])
• Anecdotes about renowned musicians, from John Vanderslice to Roy Rogers, and their vintage equipment needs.

4. Listener Q&A: Technical and Life Topics

A. Patch Bays & Speaker Switching

[14:10 – 17:33]

• Safely switching speaker cabs: OK to use a patch bay if amp is not being played during patching. Standby switch may help but real risk comes from playing with no speaker load.
  • “Just don’t do it while you’re playing.” — Skip ([16:00])

B. Running Bass Through Fender Champs

[23:25 – 27:15]

• No harm to the amp itself, but can stress a small open-back speaker; use a sealed enclosure for much better bass sound.
  • “Hook that Champ up to more speaker or take the speaker out ... A couple of eight ohm ten ceramic Eminences in a sealed box will play bass like a big dog.” — Skip ([25:17])

C. Unobtainium Fender ‘Jewel Light’ Washers & Vintage Epiphone Schematics

[28:00 – 30:00]

• Call for listeners able to supply rare hardware, and for missing schematics on rare Epiphone amps.

D. What Amp Project Next?

[30:55 – 32:36]

• Encouragement to branch out beyond classic Fender clones; Premier Twin 8 with bias-modulating tremolo suggested for builders seeking a challenge.

E. Ampeg B15N Speaker Jack Conversion

[32:36 – 35:11]

• It can be done: Convert the rare 4-pin XLR to a standard 1/4" by hardwiring standby circuit wires if necessary.
  • “Many B15Ns have had that cable taken off ... [just] find the two wires that are the standby switch and twist them together.” — Skip ([34:15])

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

“Three Things in One Week” – Skip’s Bench Oddities

[35:32 – 44:16]

• Princeton Reverb with Intermittent Reverb Transformer Short: Short appears when hot, vanishes when cold – evidence of insulation breakdown.
• Parallel Filter Cap Anomaly: Adding a cap in parallel fixed hum, but old cap seemed to “heal” itself after the parallel cap was used.
• Mystery Transformer Wars: A reverb unit kept burning up power transformers—the true culprit turned out to be an internally shorting pilot lamp assembly, a nearly unheard-of issue.
  • “The pilot light assembly had somehow developed an internal short ... I have never, ever seen that.” — Skip ([40:10])

Book, Cooking, and Culture Sidebars

[19:10 – 22:45]

• Detailed recipe and meditations on Basque cookbooks, sheep, and rural California traditions.
  • “This one is called From the Sheep Camp to the Kitchen ... published by the Kern County Wool Growers Auxiliary, Kern County, California.” — Skip ([21:01])

International Listener Mail

[47:12 – 52:25]

• Listener Jorn from Norway shares touching stories of reading It by Stephen King to his son, the global quest for 2-prong amp plugs, and playing on tour for children.
• Discussion on sci-fi’s role in blowing young minds and the benefits of early exposure to wild ideas.

Quirky Gear: Tube “Donuts”

[65:26 – 68:10]

• Are rubber o-ring “donuts” around preamp tubes snake oil? Mostly, yes:
  • “Hendrix always used those things, the rubber gizmo? No, hell no. Nobody ever used those things.” — Skip ([67:23])

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Advanced Amp Diagnostics

Troubleshooting Imbalanced Plate Currents

[57:05 – 62:47]

• Listener Mark describes a Sir Bella 44 with wildly mismatched current draw between tubes. Skip suspects a faulty (even if new) output transformer or possible ultrasonic oscillation.
  • “Some new [output transformers] ... It's not that old, but it's bad.” — Skip ([61:10])
  • Suggestion: Sub in a known-good OT from a Fender and retest.

Tweed Deluxe Clone Plate Voltage Differences

[70:44 – 75:50]

• Listener measures a notable voltage difference across the 6V6 plates.
  • “If it sounds good to you, you could just calm yourself, say ‘oh, well, that’s how it is.’” — Skip ([74:23])
  • Technical advice: Swap tubes, check grid voltages, try a new OT if chasing perfection.

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Community and Event Talk

• Planning for a potential “Skip-a-palooza” barn sale and meetup.
  • “Give people plenty of notice because a lot of people from far away want to attend.” — Jason ([77:35])
• Listeners interested in attending should stay tuned for a formal announcement.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:43] – Quiz Contest: Fender’s death cap omission
• [03:23] – Garnet book’s schematic wisdom
• [14:10] – Patch bay/speaker cable switching advice
• [23:25] – Using Fender Champ for bass
• [28:00] – Jewel light washer/parts sourcing
• [30:55] – Amp build ideas for the restless
• [32:36] – Ampeg B15N speaker jack conversion
• [35:32] – “Three Things in One Week” repair stories
• [65:26] – Tube “donuts” myth busted
• [57:05] – Sir Bella 44/imbalance diagnosis
• [70:44] – Tweed Deluxe voltages
• [76:41] – Barn sale and Skip-a-palooza event talk

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Episode Tone & Character

This episode continues Skip and Jason's trademark blend of technical expertise, accessible storytelling, and wry, grounded humor. The mixture of amp talk, personal anecdotes, community interactions, and even recipes provides a unique and engaging atmosphere that welcomes both amp pros and novices alike.

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Keep the questions coming—and maybe your amp (or recipe) will be on the next show!

Transcript

[Skip Simmons]

All right. We did it.

[Jason]

You did it. How are you?

[Skip Simmons]

I'm fine. I had it. I've only been ready for like one minute instead of like 10 minutes like

[Jason]

I usually flying by the seat of our pants over here.

[Skip Simmons]

And that's all right. That's all right. And thanks to everyone for keeping the questions coming, keeping the Garnet books coming.

[Jason]

Are there more?

[Skip Simmons]

Our. Our first contest winner was really fast. He called me. You must have posted that last podcast pretty quick because I think by the next morning he had the answer to the Baffler, which was what classic Fender circuit doesn't have a death cap. And the answer is the reverb unit. We could ponder why. I think it has to do with the fact that you're plugging two things into the same wall outlet. And reverb units always had a two prong cord. Two prong cord. So you could flip the polarity because you got to make it the same as the other thing. Or when you touch them, you'd hear a noise or you'd hear. Or you could potentially feel a shock. And remember that death cap does allow voltage to. To go through it, which means that you can feel a little tingle if there is a death cap. And I guess Fender decided they didn't need that one. So what was that guy's name? So I didn't write that down. But we have. We have a winner and we're going to do another. I'll think of another one. Probably not today, but I'll do another one. Because the Garnett book is just trippy. You know, some of it seems really crazy and some of it you'd never want to do, but some of it is like, huh. I want to build the reverb unit that only has two tubes in it. It only uses three triodes, so you use a 12x7 and a half a tube, and that's all. And if you used a short tank, you could make a outboard reverb unit that was really small. Now, I'm not saying it would work better than a regular Fender one, but sure be a lot easier to make. So it's just good for. If you can't read schematics, really, forget it. But if, if you do, it's just, I see a lot of books and I got that thing and I went, wow, this is weird. But the more I looked through it, I would say, oh, look at that. That's interesting. Well, there's a 16 06, you know, single ended amp or whatever. So we'll have another contest soon for another copy of the book. Or you can just buy one yourself. I know they're expensive, but, you know, so what?

[Jason]

Yeah, so what?

[Skip Simmons]

Yes. Like sponsoring our podcast might seem expensive to our sponsors.

[Jason]

It's not that.

[Skip Simmons]

But it's not that expensive.

[Jason]

Not that expensive. Nor is supporting our patreon. This is the 164th episode of the Truth About Vinnie Jams podcast. Thanks, everybody. Every week on this show or not every week, every two weeks on this show, we field your questions on tube amps. You just jumped right into it. The Garnet book. What's the biggest head scratcher?

[Skip Simmons]

Oh, they're just full of head scratchers. There's stuff that's really, really budget, really, really like, designed to be cheap and affordable, like two little tiny alpha transformers instead of throwing down for a larger one. Some of it's really sophisticated. The guy does his own hand drawn schematics very nicely. And sometimes seeing. I found it interesting to see classic Fender schematics like the phase inverter or the reverb system or the trem drawn in a different hand. It makes you say, look at it a little closer and say, oh, I kind of see how that works. All right, big Fender amps with the optocoupler tremolo, we're talking deluxe reverbs on up, not Vibra champs and Princetons. They have a connection to the negative voltage, which is the bias supply voltage for a big power, big powerful amp like that. And I always thought that somehow the tremolo circuit needed to have this negative voltage applied to the circuit in order for the tremolo to work wrong. The Garnett book points out that that negative voltage is applied to the tremolo to make it not work. And when you put the foot switch in, it cancels that out and it lets it start working. So what they do is they apply so much negative voltage to the oscillator tube, oscillator tube stops working, and that's why there's a connection to the negative voltage. Pretend you care. Jason. And, and half, half the other.

[Jason]

Tell me more, Skip.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, I'm just telling you for, for, for amp nerds, there's just some weirdo stuff in there. If it cost $100, it would be worth it, in my opinion. Like, I don't know, all the vacuum tube Valley magazines, they're all online for free. RCA tube, manual jackdar. I mean, what's that thing worth? And that's just some stuff to be thinking about having as you're getting past the basics of just building Your first kit or something. Or if you care right about things like that. I. I still get inspired when I go, look at that. I could make this tiny little reverb unit. I made John Vanderslich a tiny reverb unit. I gotta call him now that he's in Sweden or someplace. I'm gonna get a hold of him. And he loved it. I used the premier reverb unit circuit for that thing, which, again, is a cheapskate one with fewer stages and fewer parts compared to the Fender outboard reverb unit. Who cares? I gave you an intro to the sponsors.

[Jason]

Okay, fine.

[Skip Simmons]

We have a big fat pitch to the sponsors. Let's move it along here.

[Jason]

All right, fine. First off, we have a few sponsors. Grass Guitars based in Petaluma, California. Barry is making some of the most exquisite guitars around. If you want a hollow body, if you want something that looks like it might have been designed in the 50s or 60s, but is totally boutique and modern and doesn't make noise, this is the guitar for you. He's got the reclaimed redwood. These guitars are just so cool. Follow Barry. See him at our 2026 Fretboard Summit in Chicago that's taking place August 20th. We are also brought to you by Amplified Parts, where I want to remind you, you were just talking about amp kits, the model electronics amplifier kits. They've got the full line. And what I love about Amplified parts is you can. If you've already got a cabinet, you can just kind of decide how much of the amp kit you actually want. So you're only spending as much as you need. You don't have to buy something that you're just going to toss or that's not as nice as what you already own. Go to amplifiedparts.com Tell them the truth about Jam sent you. And then last but not least, our friends here in Seattle at Emerald City Guitars have so many vintage tube amps, it's kind of ridiculous. Right now. You can go over there, get buzzed in, and play a 1995 Dumble Overdrive special commissioned by Steven Bruden. I think I saw this amp in Austin, Texas when I interviewed him. Just so much cool stuff from the very high end, like this Dumble all the way down to Champs and everything that we talk about on this show. So tell them the Fretboard Journal and the truth about Manny. Jam sent you. We have a cool story with Trevor Boone on 59 bursts in 59th issue of the Fretboard Journal, which is mailing right now. So subscribe everybody. Those are our sponsors.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, build a little Champ kit that's just the chassis and then put it in your granddaddy's old radio or some old cool box thing that you found some piece of whatever that is. Free your mind.

[Jason]

Free your mind. Get the Garnet book. And then you can ponder the Champ schematic and go, how can I, how can I change this?

[Skip Simmons]

Good times.

[Jason]

Good times. Skip, you were mentioned a couple times recently on the. On the Fretboard Journal YouTube channel. I just interviewed Ryan Richter who played at Coachella with Dijon and he was bemoaning that there isn't a Skip Simmons plugin of all the cool amps that you have worked on and champion. And instead most of the modeling software is, you know, high gain loud amps that don't really have much character. And then the second thing I want to point out to every truth about vintage amps listener on The Fretboard Journal YouTube channel is we just did a video with Gabe Noel. Now he is the guy who played cello on Kendrick Lamar's how to Pimp a Butterfly. He's like the in demand upright bassist cellist for all the pop hits coming out of LA. He bought a 1935 Rickenbacker tenor guitar with vibrola with the matching amp with the stand. He bought it in estate sale. We shot a video with him. I think he's the only guy who actually plays one of these things. It's a tenor four string tenor guitar, electric, with the built in vibrola system which is like this motorized spinny thing inside the guitar and he's playing like Cuban music on it. It's incredible. So go check that out.

[Skip Simmons]

That is cool.

[Jason]

I'll send you a link, Skip. I won't expect you to track it down.

[Skip Simmons]

I, I know of those, but this is obviously one that hasn't been in the collection of those guys that have all the cool ancient amps and have for a long time. This is one that just obviously popped up and it would be. It's so bizarre if you, if you were running that estate sale, you'd have a hard time trying to figure out a price tag on it. Yeah. Because it's so different. But yes, motorized. Is that Doc Kaufman connection there? Right? Is that's the Doc Kaufman vibrato that he invented which actually like tugs on the strings through the bridge somehow with a motor. Right. Do people bring those to you, the

[Jason]

guitar as well and say like can, you know, it's obviously a matching set. Can you, can you help me?

[Skip Simmons]

I've never seen one. I Think there's only a small handful of any of these? No. And there's a lot of pictures. So the amp sits on the floor, and then there's like a little pole. That's a pole. And the guitar sticks on that. And you just walk, get behind it and start. Well, this is the cool.

[Jason]

This is the cool thing about this video. You can watch it as an amp nerd. Unfortunately, the amp is out of frame, but there's a picture of it. You can watch it as a vintage guitar amp nerd. And then turn to your kid and go, this guy played on the Harry Styles record. And so you could. You can bond with your family over vintage guitar gear, which is a very rare thing.

[Skip Simmons]

You can make some connections.

[Jason]

You can. Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

I say I already mentioned John Vanderslice for the first time today in a long time, but he's one of the people that explained to me. I don't remember the words, but some people like to get a piece of equipment and see what it'll do, as opposed to getting a piece of equipment and seeing if it will do this preconceived thing that they have in their mind. So here's this guy with mega chops going, hmm, let's see what. I think Roy Rogers would dig this part. Let's see what we can do with this thing. And since he's a talented guy, he's making it do something really cool. I would also suggest that the odds of that amp working like it's supposed to are pretty low. From the 30s.

[Jason]

I interviewed Gabe. It's going to be in the 60th issue of the fretboard journal, and it didn't need much of anything. That's the crazy part.

[Skip Simmons]

I know every. Took it to did good. Just, you know, keep that thing. Well, it's got capacitors and stuff in it. You know, certain things are not likely to still be in good shape. But that's. That's. That's what I'm talking about.

[Jason]

Yeah. You know, I have a lot of tenor guitars, or I have a couple and have been known to collect them. Yeah, but. But that's.

[Skip Simmons]

Buy that Bigsby one.

[Jason]

Oh, sure. With my. My fretboard journal publishing riches. Yeah, sure.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, you could sell some of the other ones. That thing was so neat. Oh, man. Bob Stoltenberg is the owner of that. It was made for. I don't know if that. That's his dad or that's him, but the Stoltenberg Bigsby tenor, There's pictures of it in the Bigsby book. Check it Out. I got to hold it. I wish every luthier builder guy I knew could have been standing there to hold it too. Just to sort of go, huh? It was interesting. All right, moving right along.

[Jason]

Moving right along. The gist of this podcast is you send us questions to podcast at Fretboard. They can be a voice memo, they can be an email. Sometimes people ask us for advice about life. Sometimes people have a recipe. Whatever you want, send it to us. If it's loosely amp related, we'll probably field it. Or not. Skip. What's on your bench?

[Skip Simmons]

A basque cookbook. Oh, another one, A different one with the Basque soup that you would eat. Leeks and onions and just. Well, we'll get to that. Last time I veer we. Well, we had Roy, but this time,

[Jason]

yeah, Roy was great.

[Skip Simmons]

This time we better get to the questions because otherwise I'm going to talk about Basque soup recipes for the whole time or. And I do have a couple of important things I got to squeeze in, but go. Let's have some. Let's have some questions.

[Jason]

Wow, look at you.

[Skip Simmons]

Maybe that'll inspire me to, you know, I can give you the three things that happened in one week in my working on amp's world that I've never seen before in my life and would have never thought could ever happen. Three things, one week.

[Jason]

Okay, well, listener Chris, we'll start with him. Beginner's corner question, he says for switching between different cabinets. For comparison, is there any reason not to use a simple open patch bay with speaker cable from the amp to the front of the patch bay and speaker cables to different cabinets from each patch point at the back of the patch bay? Is this simple minded approach is okay? Assuming there's no playing going on, can the amp be on standby while repatching, or should it actually be all the way off?

[Skip Simmons]

I have a thing that was made by Switch Craft. It's about a foot square and 10 inches deep, and it's covered with buttons. And on the back it's covered with jacks. And it was made to be like in a music store or something where you could say, could I have that turntable plugged to this amp and plugged to those speakers?

[Jason]

Yeah, like when you go to the car audio store and you'd have all these buttons.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, like that. And I would say I would just unplug the speaker and plug a different one in. Right. And if you don't play the amp, if you're not playing it, then you don't really have to turn it off. If you have a standby switch. You could use that if you want, but it wouldn't. The thing that blows up output transformers is. Is going, how come my amp's not working? And you turn it up, up, up, up, up. And really it's not working because it's not hooked up to a speaker. And then they go kapuya. Or they can. Most Fender amps, when there's nothing plugged into the speaker jack, say, for instance, it grounds out the output transformer, which is safer for it. There's nothing wrong with using a patch bay thing like that. If you really wanted to do it fast and cool, you'd figure out a way to put some heavy duty switches in there so that you could switch it from one to the other. Just don't do it while you're playing. Right. And it would be valuable. You know, once I went to the great Rick Estrin, harp player, leader of Little Rick Estrin and the Night Cats, and he had all these amps, five supers and all this different stuff. And the fact that I came over with my extension speaker cable stuff, and while he played, I went, here's this amp, here's these speakers, here's this super reverb. But through the tens in that super reverb. Well, this one sounds terrible. This one sounds. He just. He lit up in like 45 minutes. We figured out that the reason why he didn't like that amp was because the speakers were crap. Right. And remember, every combo amp is a head and a cabinet. And every time you. Anything you can do to play that same cabinet through a different amp or the same amp through a different cabinet, cabinet is a Sonic plus. Or in my world, playing every God dang thing. Everything through the same cabinet is a Sonic plus for me. Because I don't want to know. I just want to. I just want to know what the amp sounds like. Right. So there's no problem doing that. Just don't go crazy. Don't plug in a bunch of 100 watt marshalls and start switching and unswitching the speakers while you're playing. That wouldn't be good.

[Jason]

And standby. Go for standby.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, standby. I mean, actually, that's not really gonna do much.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

Right. The main thing is that, you know, when the speaker cabinet is unplugged, that's that the cat doesn't come and like step on the guitar and, you know. Right.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

Leo Fender lost some hearing when somebody. I think it was Dick Dale playing the Showman and didn't work. And he got really close to it and all of a sudden it came on again. And didn't you tell me a story about some modern famous dude who same problem. Oh, it was the head of T Rock. Not Bill, but the boss. Yeah, he was, he was like at the Nam show or something and he was messing with an amp and all of a sudden somebody turned the amp on super loud and it blinged his his eardrum in some sort of gnarly way. Not good.

[Jason]

That's not good.

[Skip Simmons]

All right, I think we've covered that.

[Jason]

All right. And then Chris adds an equally simple minded cooking tip. We cook a whole lot of plain white rice, which means we also reheat a whole lot of plain white rice to add flavor. Reheat in a bowl in the microwave or toaster after adding a small pour over with your favorite El pado herdes, et cetera. Soy sauce also works well for this. Not only will the rice be more moist, but it's amazing how much flavor the rice will absorb in whatever short time it takes you to heat the rice to your desired temperature. Great for a quick snack. Thanks for the podcast. Even as someone who will never dare lift a soldering iron, it's an endless source of interesting ideas and information and has been so very appreciated. Chris a Skip and Dixon era Davis site now living in Nashville.

[Skip Simmons]

Wow.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

Lazy, lazy person's little Charlie Spanish rice. Take the cold. It's rice touches. I've never done that.

[Jason]

No. Yeah, thanks Chris.

[Skip Simmons]

I'm going to have to try that now. You know, after the Basque soup. So ahead of cabbage, a leek, four carrots, two potatoes, one onion, tablespoon of tomato paste, they go for a tablespoon of chicken base which of course you know, it's like bullion but you wouldn't have to do that. Salt and pepper and water. So there are companies that publish small run cookbooks. So when the Lions Club or the whoever wants to have their own little I have a Loma Rica Lions Club cookbook too. Then they just send all the recipes in and they send it back in these spiral bound things. But you can find them on Book Finder and Libris. This one is called from the Sheep Camp to the Kitchen because it's published by the Kern County Wool Growers Auxiliary, Kern County, California, down by Fresno. And a super long tradition of old school sheep grazing and shearing. And a lot of that stuff is done by people from the Basque region with really crazy long names. And I've already talked about the art of Basque cooking that was done by A lady in Winters, California, home of Keith Carey and Robert Armstrong. And that's great. This one is really great too. From the Sheep Camp to the Kitchen, Volume 2, Kern County Wool Growers Auxiliary. And it's full of great vintage pictures of like herds of sheep going across down a little road with his dogs and stuff like that. And just yesterday on my way to the dentist, I went over the big bypass, big open area where they let water out in the, in the summer up here. And I saw a trailer and a truck and it was a sheep herder. There still are people that do that mostly they'll bring in a bunch of sheep or goats, put up a bunch of quick electric fence because they get trained, you only need like one string for, to keep, you know, goats and sheep where you want them. And then they stay there for a couple weeks and everything up to about 5ft tall that's growing gets all nibbled and the sheep eat the grass and the goats eat the brush. And it's a, it's a thing that's happening in California. This guy's not out there with sheep and he's going to shear him and all that. That's what you see in this, in this cookbook. In fact, we went a couple weeks ago, we went through near Zamora over there, kind of by Winters. And there's a big area out there that's a commercial sheep operation. And we happened to drive by on shearing day and they had big pop ups up and they had like eight guys under these tents and over here were a bunch of sheep that were all long haired and over there was about, you know, 75 or 80 sheep that had just been clipped and the guys are in there blazing away. That's something to see. That's a skill. I've done it, but I can't do it. Not really. I've had to do it, but man, is that a tough job. So anyway, Basque cookbooks, I'm sure you could find this one. And it's got all sorts of tons of vegetables and tons of some stuff where it's, you know, you're making it from canned goods out in the wagon there. But a lot of stuff where you're starting with the whole hardcore dry beans and you know, really old school way of doing it.

[Jason]

So I love it.

[Skip Simmons]

All right.

[Jason]

I was in Sacramento last weekend and the weather was amazing. Better than I remembered from my childhood.

[Skip Simmons]

So it was a wild spring. We've had heavy rain in April a couple times, which is pretty rare.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

So the upshot is it's still really nice and green and mossy like Ireland up here instead of already turning all brown. Beautiful today.

[Jason]

Yeah. Sacramento Airport. It used to be my favorite airport in all the lands and now it's kind of follow there's a lot of boarded up restaurants in that terminal. What happens to be they're switching all the restaurants but they decided to switch them all at the same time. So there's like a Wendy's and nothing else.

[Skip Simmons]

Anyways, that's rough.

[Jason]

Pat in Los Angeles has a 1972 champ and he was wondering. Wondering if running a bass guitar through it will damage the amper speaker. He tried it. I don't love the tone, but it'd be nice to get a little bit more value out of the.

[Skip Simmons]

This thing won't hurt the amp, but it will distort a crappy little speaker. Especially one in an open back cabinet. Go down to the car part the car stereo place and get a little or make a little MDF or plywood box that'll hold an 8 or 10 inch speaker that's all sealed up, you know, it closed and hook that up to the Champ and it'll sound 10 times better. Interesting in the Garnet book is the schematic for the bass buddy. And it's a 1 6v6 bass amp.

[Jason]

Right.

[Skip Simmons]

In other words, it's like the cheapest amp you could maybe get your mom to get you. 1 6v6. So 1 if you look in there you can see a schematic for one guy's idea of how that should be. And it's basically like a Champ. But it doesn't have that bright, that tone control that gets it bright. It has like a different tone circuit that obviously somebody thought worked better for bass. But hook that Champ up to more speaker or take the speaker out, go to our sponsor, get something like the reissued Jensen 8 or 10 inch speaker like a C10 or C8R or Q. That'll sound good for guitar and give you a little bit more low end. Right. If you put that thing up against a wall or put it over in a corner, you could position it and all of a sudden there'd be more low end. If you're careful just because of the acoustics of it. You know, don't close off the back because the tubes need to have some ventilation.

[Jason]

Okay. Wow. We've done 160 of these. I don't think you've ever mentioned that. That closing the back would make it a little better for base.

[Skip Simmons]

The best base cabinet. The best bass amp ever made. Ampeg svt, right. Supposed to have two cabinets each with 8 tens for full svt rig that's a 300 watt tube amp. But if you look at the cabinet itself, it's really just four separate sealed 210 cabinets. And that is the best. You know, you're talking to an old bass player. I had the ported 15 Alembic this and that. If you're out there looking for some budget bass action, all you need to do is get. They sell these at car stereo places to make subwoofers to put in the trunk of your lowrider, you know, but they're just particle board covered with carpet holes for 2/10 all sealed up, no particular dimension. You know, they're kind of about as small on the front as 2 tens would fit comfortably and fairly deep and then just all sealed. If you had one of those for small gigs and two of those for big gigs, you would be kicking it. And if you hook the champ up to a little 210 cabinet like that, as long as it didn't have crazy power hungry speakers in it, then it's going to sound great. And by the way, those SVT's just had eminence tens in it. They weren't anything special. They're big magnet ceramic tens and they were a weird impedance, I believe 32 ohms. In fact I have one of those. Somebody needs an SVT speaker that works. I've got one. I think they were 32 ohms so that they could wire them up in a special way to end up with eight ohms for all those speakers. But you don't need that. Just a couple of eight ohm ten ceramic eminences in a sealed box will play bass like a big dog.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, I have a base rig for sale like that. It's an old Gibson made cabinet from the late 60s that's real heavy and it has two monstrous tens in it. But it's real small. Like it's as small as you could fit tents. And then there's a bogan head that I made to go with it. That's a later 60s one where it's pretty compact but it's like 40 watts. And I want $350 for the whole setup. And it kicks butt. Sounds great. Like a. Like a real. A cool. Well, it'd be. It'd be an awesome bass rig to play around the house or even a small local blues band kind of thing. And no one would steal it because it's pretty plain looking, you know.

[Jason]

All right, next Listener Sean asked about those Unobtainium washers that for the Silver Face Jewel lights, which I know a couple of our listeners made. They seem to, if you have any, or if anybody has any, reach out to me, help Sean out. I thought I had a few and I can't find them.

[Skip Simmons]

So maybe we could get those guys to make some more if we told them we wanted 50.

[Jason]

To Sean's credit, he reached out to Amplified Parts and he sent me the response from Rachel and customer service and it was really sweet email, but they do not really have those.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, yeah, you know what I need, maybe somebody can find is the washer that goes on a toggle switch like an on off switch on the back of a Fender. They just don't seem to sell those separately. They're half inch internal diameter and they're real thin like the, like the washer you'd see on a quarter inch jack. But they're half inch instead of 38 to fit switches. And man, I made a few ab by my ab boxes recently and that little part, they don't give you that part with the switch anymore. And I gotta find a spot that has those. Just, just got to. Oh, and I had lots of people send me epiphone schematics because I'm fixing the one for Roy Rogers that is a Zephyr with tremolo, but no one sent me the right one yet. It's all octals and it has tremolo and I got most of the ones that people have been able to find, but so far we still haven't found this one. So ancient, probably 1940. All octal tubes. I believe it's fixed by. I believe it's fixed bias. It's going to be a project and I'm going to do it no matter what. But a schematic would be awesome.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. Next.

[Jason]

All right, this is the 164th episode. I think on 161 or 162, you read some questions from a vintage guitar player magazine. And that inspired listener Doug to write in some questions. So whatever it takes, folks. Podcastretboardjournal.com Doug writes, I have built a tweed Princeton tweed Harvard and Tweed Deluxe. And I'm getting a hankering to build another. Now I don't need another, but do I go smaller or bigger? Tweed champ tweed baseman tweed high powered twin. Discuss amongst yourself. Food recommendation. Anything with Spam. Slice a can of Spam, put it in a baking dish with pineapple and a can of Dr. Pepper and throw it in the smoker simple, easy retro function. That is from Doug.

[Skip Simmons]

Spam has a big following in Hawaii.

[Jason]

Yeah, it does. I don't know where Doug is though.

[Skip Simmons]

I haven't had Spam in a long time. I remember it was salty.

[Jason]

I've never had Spam.

[Skip Simmons]

The Monty Python bit, right? Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam. You're old enough to know that.

[Jason]

I do remember that.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. Go different, my young friend. Why not a reverb unit? Why not a single 6L 6PA head circuit wine? Oh, here's one. Premier amps, really weird, really crappy made, neat looking on the outside, super unhip. Like Even in the 70s they were still like trying to make it look like they were from the 40s, right? With a wood grain, vinyl paper stuff. And there's one called a twin eight with two eights which is really cool, right? And they're neat looking and they sound pretty terrible for guitar, which means harp players love them because they're low gain and they don't get real bright so they don't feed back and they get a good tone for our players. Well, There's a Premier Twin 8 that's single ended 6L6 cathode biased with bias modulating tremolo. I've never seen that. So, guy getting bored? There's some ideas for you. Why not a single ended premier twin eight circuit with bias modulating tremolo? Eh? Fine. Damn. Next.

[Jason]

Message us when you're done with that. I'd love to see pictures and hear a video. Let's do one more. And then I do want to hear about the week of Bizarroness where three things happened. Okay. Patrick writes, I have an orphaned. Oh, we were just talking about ampeg. So I have an orphaned ampeg B15N amplifier head and was wondering if it's possible to convert the four pin XLR speaker jack to a standard quarter inch jack. My guess is no because of the protective standby mechanism.

[Skip Simmons]

That it?

[Jason]

That's it. No Spam? No. No other food tips?

[Skip Simmons]

Easy today.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

First B15Ns are finally coming on. You know that's the low volume classic recording bass amp. That's a good project to make too. Their whole bag is that it's a big square box with a handle on top. But you undo these clasps on the side and when you lift up the top, the amp is upside down in there and you flip it right side up and you clamp it back to the cabinet and you've got this really cool looking amp with the transformers and tubes all sitting There and you have a sealed cabinet. That wasn't very long ago we were talking about that or at least ported, you know, not just an open back box like Fenders are. So that's a cool thing. And then an Ampeg weird dealio that they did was to make sure this segue is too much. To make sure that when you turn the amp on, you had the speaker plugged in. Right. They have the cable coming out of the amp hardwired, and on the end of it is a four pin xlr. Like, good luck. I actually have a couple. But good luck finding one of those. This is obscure as hell. And you stick that into the speaker cabinet. Two of the wires go to the speaker, but the other two wires are basically a standby switch that won't let the amp come on unless that thing is plugged into the cabinet. Inside the cabinet that there's a little jumper wire that goes between these second pair of wires. And when you plug it in, it connects them and then it'll come on. But all you got to do, and many, many B15 ends have had that cable taken off. Quarter inch jack put right in the hole. You just have to find the two wires that are the standby switch effectively and twist them together, turn it on. Then it'll just be like a normal amp. It will turn on with no speaker plugged into it. But don't be a dope and quit doing that.

[Don]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

Everything is just, Everything is just aligning today.

[Jason]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm, you know, I am trying to be more organized and I did do the beginner's corner in the front third of the podcast and then we'll go into the weeds. But I do want to hear about the week that had three curveballs.

[Skip Simmons]

Okay. Number one, Princeton reverb drawn a ton of current. Like one of the resistors kept overheating. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna do more reading. I'm not gonna do it right now. But he's. He sent this guy sent me this Princeton reverb and he gave me this big long page and a half of what he did. And I think it'd be interesting for people to have me read it and say, well, that was a good idea, but this is what you should have done then. But it ended up with, it's here and the thing is still drawing too much current. And I finally figure out that. And I've been seeing this recently. The reverb transformer had a short to ground. And since the primary side of the Reverb transformer is hooked up to high voltage. If it has a short to ground internally, it's going to draw a massive current through that thing. So I disconnected the primaries and I read with an ohmmeter. Holy crap. This is only like 25 ohms above ground. And I did it over and over because I wanted to make sure. The next day I came back and I put my ohmmeter on the thing and it read perfect. That's not 25 ohms to ground. It's just a coil of wire inside the transformer like a pickup. So the thing has an intermittent of some kind, right. Or remember the wire in a pickup or in a transformer is all tightly wound together, but it's not touching itself because it has insulation on it. Just paint basically. Right. So I would say that transformer, maybe when it had been on for a while, it got hot and that that insulation is breaking down. And all of a sudden I'm reading like a dead short to the secondary practically. And then once it got cold, that thin, thin coat of lacquer isn't like it stopped being liquid enough. And now we're not showing a short to ground. Bottom line is got to replace that thing.

[Jason]

Okay, Right.

[Skip Simmons]

Because it's going to happen again next thing. An old jack dart trick. If you're trying to be check out electrolytic filter capacitors in your amp to see if it's causing a problem, you alligator clip another one in parallel. You don't have to unsolder it. You just have a big 500 volt filter cap and you just click to the ground and clip to the hot. And if the hum goes away, then you got a problem with the capacitor, right? So I did that and sure enough, the hum went away. But the next day, I've been busy. I fired that, I lit that thing up and it didn't hum anymore. Somehow having the other capacitor helping the bad one made it work for a while. Electrolytic capacitors are weird, man. I've never heard of that. But again, like the reverb transformer, you know it's going to happen again, right? So that thing's got to be replaced. Now number three. This started, I don't know, six or eight years ago. Great friend, great player, Dave Siegel, beautiful old white reverb unit that he bought from a local blues hero a long time ago, Steve Samuels, who was a monster. And this thing is on its third power transformer. I don't think I've ever replaced a power transformer on a reverb unit ever. But I've replaced this one, like, once or twice. And he's had it for years. It'll play like this guy gigs. It'll play for a long time. Then all of a sudden, poof. And he brought it to me, I don't know, last time, about a month ago. And sure enough, the brand new Hammond power transformer in that thing was just burnt to a crisp.

[Jason]

Right?

[Skip Simmons]

So what's causing that? Why is this thing eating power transformers? You'd look at the filter capacitors. They were the fancy new blue sprags. You look at the diodes. Because this thing doesn't have a tube rectifier, a solid state rectifier and a tube reverb unit. You know, replace those if they could possibly be bad. And then the last thing is the reverb transformer. It could have an intermittent short in it, just like the reverb transformer in the Princeton reverb that I was just talking about. Although in a reverb unit, these things are more like a little amp. So they have a bigger, different type of transformer for the reverb transformer itself.

[Jason]

And

[Skip Simmons]

I got all new everything. New power transformer, new reverb transformer, new diodes with the filter caps. I go to turn that thing on and it's drawn a bunch of current like it would have blown a fuse. So in other words, the miracle had happened. The intermittent problem was showing itself to me here when obviously it never did before. And if it hadn't, I would have given this guy his reverb unit back and said, well, that's it, everything's been replaced. And it would have blown up again. Because the actual pilot light assembly that holds the little pilot light had somehow developed an internal short, which means that the two wires coming out of the power transformer that light up all the tubes are connected together. And they can't be connected together. And I have never, ever seen that. The pilot light assembly is very simple, mechanical thing. It's not a plastic box. You can totally see where the wires solder to it. And they appear to be completely separate. There's kind of fiber washers on the outside of these things. Anyone with a fender amp, just look at it. That little thing like inside where the spring is, you push the bulb in and give it a little twist to hold it in. Somewhere in there, there's a blob of solder or a broken something. And it enabled that pilot light assembly to connect the two heater wires and they're not supposed to be connected. And that's what was wrong with it all along from the very beginning. And I'm just thankful that it's. I would have absolutely have given him back and said, here it is. It's gotta be fixed now. And it wouldn't have been son of a scam. And now, if you ever want to have a chance, and you live in Oregon, you ever want to have a chance to hear a really good player play your amp, the aforementioned Dave Siegel is going to be in Seaside, Oregon, from the 19th through the 21st of June.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

And he's driving up there in a little vintage Miata. And if you've ever seen one of those things, there's like. I mean, if he took an amp, he'd have to leave home his suitcase, you know, like this is. And he's driving all the way up the coast to play some gigs up there. And we're putting out the word. If anybody wants to go there and loan him an amp, any anything, you know, Princeton or deluxe or whatever. He has tweeds and all kind of stuff. He has a Masco. So if anybody up there would go and loan that guy an amp, I'm sure you'd get some free food and some free music and stuff like that. And if anybody is interested, I can put you together with the great Dave Siegel. And how about my house to there in the Miata? That's. That's the code. That's the coastal. My only problem would be keep your eyes on the road there, buddy, because it's pretty beautiful, Right?

[Jason]

So that'd be fun, though.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. And by yourself, you don't have to, you know, make plans with other people. Geez, I turned that thing down. It's still loud as hell. That's my answering machine going off. You know, by yourself, if you feel like pulling over, you just do. But, you know, when you're with other people, it's always like, you know, you want to make. As the dad, you always want to make sure that other people's needs first. So I am a little bit jealous of that. Although I think I'd be terrified in a car that small these days after driving around in my pickup truck all the time, like, whoa, I think I could touch the ground. Right?

[Jason]

Yeah. The only problem with this plan is, like, the giant RVs on Highway 1. That would be a little bit.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, it's a. It's very maneuverable car. And he's. He's a. He's like, he won't be driving too fast. And got to take a Strat somehow stuck behind the seats. But he asked me about that. And he's the guy that owns this reverb unit that now will work thanks to just divine intervention.

[Jason]

Amazing.

[Skip Simmons]

Amazing. Just amazing.

[Jason]

Well, speaking of reverb units and grounding, I think we have a question. Okay, this is a voice memo submitted by listener Anthony, and I'm going to play it now. You can be a part of the show. Podcastritboardjournal.com is how you can send us stuff.

[Anthony]

Hey, Skip. Hey, Jason. Love your show. Been listening since the start. This is Anthony from Chicago. I've got a Fender black panel deluxe amp, non reverb, and I also have a companion Fender reverb unit. They're both from 65. The deluxe amp has been serviced. It's got the grounded cord replaced. I'm sorry, the two prong cord replaced with a grounded cord. But the Fender unit has the two prong. I do plug it into the accessory outlet on the back of the amp. Just wondering if I'm actually grounded safely using that or if I should go ahead and put the. The old grounded cord on. On the tube reaver unit as well. Anyway, love the show. Would love to hear an answer. Cheers.

[Jason]

Kind of covered that.

[Skip Simmons]

Wow. Is everything, like, all interconnected today? First, nobody ever had a grounded cord on the reverb unit. And somehow where's the dead guys? You know? I mean, where are they? It's like the death cap. Do you know that Fender is still putting those things on amps up in the 90s and 2000s? If they killed people, do you think they really would? Anyway, it's all about polarity. And you don't have to plug into the accessory outlet on the back of your amp. You can plug it right into the wall. The main thing is that you plug it in one way and you plug it in the other way. And if there's a quieter way, which there very well may be, that's the way you leave it. The way you can tell is you just touch the strings of a Strat and it'll go. And then you flip the thing over in the wall and stops doing it. And that's. That's just two. That's just instrument amplifier 1A from way back in the 30s. Somehow everybody got along without a grounded cord.

[Jason]

The.

[Skip Simmons]

The sev. I believe the 70s reissue tube reverb units that they made in the 1970s, they have a grounded cord, but they sound terrible. And who knows what else they ever they did to those things. I'd say Stick with the two prong unless it's so brittle and old and funky that you gotta replace it. And even if you do replace it, I still would stick to the two prong on a reverb unit. So there.

[Jason]

All right. Speaking of two prong, another segue listener yorn over in Norway. Subject line Easter, two prong and a thousand thank yous. Hello, Tava, Skip and Jason. Thank you for submitting my question last time. And thanks for the nice words around my folkish noodling in the background while talking about reading Stephen King's it to my 12 year old son. So I got some messages from nice tavers being a bit concerned that reading that book to a 12 year old was not a good thing. And I agree. But it started with him wanting to see the movie and all my friends have seen it talk and in my opinion he does not need to see the movie. So I said to him, you can see the movie when you have read the book. We read it out loud before bedtime in English, not our native language. And as anticipated, he lost interest after the first two chapters. So now we read a novel called they Both Die at the End. A nice but dark, highly philosophical book about the meaning and beauty of life for teenagers and young adults. We read one chapter and then we have a talk before he falls asleep. And I must admit, I do love censoring when I read. My son gets it, of course. Did you skip something now? Did he really say darn it? As for myself, I'm currently reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. I bet some of you have read it and we can talk about it when we all meet about the music I played in the background last time. The noodling I did in my last inquiry was just me playing my electric les Paul with P90s built by my neighbor through my super reverb from 1967. First thing I bought after my first tour as a hired musician many years ago. Currently I'm on tour with a theater play for kids. Playing a guitar, playing dad with that amp. We're doing 30 days with one or two shows a day. Thanks for all you do. Hope we can meet at Skip's place next year. And you said you could send me a two pronged plug. I really can't wait. Cannot get a hold of one around here, so that would be amazing. Going to watch Life of Brian with the family now. It is Easter after all. Best regards, Jorn Eric from a peninsula outside Oslo, Norway.

[Skip Simmons]

Wow.

[Jason]

All right, we're going to get you a two prong plug.

[Skip Simmons]

Oh, wow.

[Jason]

I mean, I can't believe that you can't find one, but I'll, I'll send you one. I'll go to the hardware store.

[Skip Simmons]

I say thusly. And I've been saying this for the last month or so. When I was a kid and I think even older, I mean, I'm sure this was true for quite a few decades, guys, especially 10, 12, 14, we had this genre that has kind of disappeared called science fiction. And as kids we read stuff like Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, you know, and we, we watched 2001 A Space Odyssey and we, we read the book about the guide, proposing that Erich von Donegan Chariots of the Gods proposing that aliens had visited Earth, you know, thousands of years ago and showing what they considered as proof of that. And I say nothing wrong with blowing your mind a little bit early. You know, AI has been in science fiction for, I don't know, probably since the 1800s or something. But now I wouldn't know where to steer somebody as far as modern science fiction. And I bet we'll probably get a few people making some suggestions. But the classic stuff, Ray Bradbury was like heavy. When you're 12 and there's like the carnival and the Tattooed man where the tattoos come to life and all this crazy stuff, your kid will survive it. Will. Watched it on TV when he was pretty young and he turned out okay.

[Jason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

When I see, when I dig into the chest that was at the ranch and look at the books my grandfather studied, you know, had for seventh grade math and seventh grade English and stuff, you just go, man, kids can do a lot more than you might think if you just give them the opportunity. Right.

[Jason]

So what do you think? Should I just go to the hardware store and buy the two prong thing with the screw for your and Eric, or is there like a fancier version?

[Skip Simmons]

Okay, yeah, probably.

[Jason]

I'll get your address. We'll mail you, I'll mail you a little care package.

[Skip Simmons]

Probably, probably get, I don't know, might have a decent one at our sponsors. Possible, but any Ace Hardware. There's a little brown one that isn't the most structurally great, but it looks vintage. It looks like an old brown two prong and it's got a little plug that goes between the metal parts that you pull out and then inside there's little screws to hook up, you know, so that one or I don't know, I just hate those gigantic big plastic, huge ones that are supposedly for, you know, a 200 foot long cord or something like that, so. But that's good. That's your world. You're worldwide once again.

[Jason]

This one you are, Skip. I'd just be a guy sitting in a basement in Seattle without you, with a leaky skylight.

[Skip Simmons]

You got that backwards. I'd just be a guy in Loma Rica yakking on the phone to my friends. Okay. We often mentioned the classic bookshelf that. Where did you learn to do this right, Jack Dar tube manual. I forgot about a heavy early influence.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

And I'm not exactly how hard it might be to find, but it's. It's a copy of Guitar World and it must have been, I'm thinking, probably in the 90s. And it was an amp issue and it had a big long article about tweet amps and it had a big article written by Cesar Diaz. I remember there's a picture of him in there with like a doctor suit on, with like a stethoscope or something, holding it up to the amp. And even though he kind of went crazy later in this, he talks about cleaning the tube sockets, he talks about tightening the jacks, he talks about all the stuff that I won't even turn an amp on until I do. And that article I already kind of knew by then. But having somebody in a magazine say that instead of, you know, within a few years, the article in the magazine would have said, oh, yeah, take out all those good blue molded capacitors and put in these orange drops, because then the guitar will resonate better in the keys of G and what the heck. But this particular article had some serious truths in it. So if you have a big collection of guitar worlds, you could look. And maybe if you troll around a little bit, if you could find that issue, I think it would be worthwhile just posting the whole thing at the kegger because it's. As I recall, I don't have it anymore. I lost it in the move or something.

[Jason]

But.

[Skip Simmons]

But it talked about the kind of stuff that I always talk about and it was, it was very interesting. Guitar World magazine with the article by Cesar Diaz.

[Jason]

I love that.

[Skip Simmons]

Groundbreaking.

[Jason]

Yeah. Okay, let's do a couple more. I know you're busy. This was a last minute podcast. Since I'm gone tomorrow, you should see my yard, baby.

[Skip Simmons]

I got like 30 hours on the lawnmower or something like that. Well, this rain, you know, normally we'd be done with the parts that I don't irrigate and it would just be brown and short, but it keeps Raining. So I'm gonna have to mow the huge field, like, at least another time with the tractor. Okay. Which is like five hours. Man, are you ever tired after that? I mean, it's not hard, but something about the vibration and concentrating because you can't screw up on that thing yet. Pay attention to what you're doing.

[Jason]

It's like driving a Miata. Eight hours.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, kinda. Yeah. But with more ocean views than I got. Trust me, the view is pretty much the same the whole way through. The only fun part is getting done and then just looking out over the vast expanse and saying, all right, I did it all.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah.

[Jason]

Okay. You know where we went? This is a diversion. We took my mom, she knew about this. To Loomis, California, which is outside of Sacramento, to the High Hand Nursery. Have you been out there?

[Skip Simmons]

I've heard of it. Jill's been there. I haven't been there.

[Jason]

I mean, it is like acres and acres of the most beautiful plants for sale. But then there's a restaurant, a brewery, and a venue. There's like a. You know, they got the drummer behind the plexiglass. It's one of those kinds of things. It was like Disneyland. If you're into plants. That's my Sacramento tip for anybody.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. Wow. A wood fired restaurant.

[Jason]

Wood fired pizza. It was great.

[Skip Simmons]

So it's like Pottery World. You go to shop and eat.

[Jason]

Yeah, no, it was. It was kind of a madhouse. And then they also had, you know, thousands of roses and plants and succulents, and I think she had everything. Imagine fig tree.

[Skip Simmons]

I think she got a fig tree from there.

[Jason]

I mean, I'm sure it's expensive, but it's like Disneyland. It's crazy.

[Skip Simmons]

And your mom had a blast.

[Jason]

My mom. It was a perfect spot to take an elderly relative.

[Skip Simmons]

And how was the food?

[Jason]

Ketchup. It's pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. The brewery opens in the afternoon. They have kind of more of a brunch lunch spot until the brewery opens anyhow.

[Skip Simmons]

Getting hammered, buying roses, coming home and go, what the hell? Why did I buy all these roses?

[Jason]

That's exactly what they're hoping for.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, that's a good business model right there.

[Jason]

All right, we're in the intermediate to advanced portion of the Truth about Vintage Amps.

[Skip Simmons]

I've got one for that.

[Jason]

Mark. We'll get to where Mark is soon. Hey, Skip. Jason. I'd like your opinion on plate current on a Sir Bella, 44, about five years old, but played hard by a hard rock punk band here locally. The band is Tucana and then he includes their band camp. These amps have been blowing the or this amp has been blowing the 120 volt primary 2amp fuse on repeated occasions after a few hours of hard use, usually at the end of a second set or long day in the studio. Idle current is around 36mA for both 6L 6GC output tubes. Playing current however, runs up to 100 milliamps on tube 2 and over 200 on tube 1. And the problem follows the tube socket, not the tubes. I have also tried a different set of match 6L6GCS, same situation. Blade voltages measure around 435vdc and I've checked plate load resistors, screen grid resistors, coupling capacitors. They've even taken them out of the circuit and meggered them on a 550 VDC to make sure they weren't leaking at high DC voltage. So everything seems fine to me circuit wise. The output transformer reads 56 ohms center tap to tube 2 and 49 ohms center tap to tube 1. About 14 to 15% DC coil resistance, a large enough difference, but I don't think DC resistance tells the whole truth and I don't currently have the means to test the transformer primary ac impedance for balance. I'm reading Jack Dar in the Garnet Amp books trying to come up with a solution, but so far I have not found it. I was wondering what your thoughts and your process would be for this thing. Let me know. This is from Mark. And then there's a whole bunch of other stuff about his hobby farm with pigs and chickens. It sounds like Mark is in Canada. Ontario. Canada. So what would you tell Mark?

[Skip Simmons]

What would I tell Mark? Or what would I tell the person who wanted me to work on that thing?

[Jason]

Either.

[Skip Simmons]

I would say, nah, I'm really not qualified to work on that. You know, I'd suggest talk to my guy in Sacramento, Patrick, who's really no, who's a serious tech. I believe so when you check the bias of a fixed bias amp, like a big Marshall or a big Fender, you can see what current is flowing through each output tube when it's just sitting there and you're not playing it. But when you whack a big old power cord, that current goes up a lot. Old amps, cathode biased amps, Champs and Princetons and crap like that, they pretty much draw the same amount of electricity whether you're beaten on them or not. That's one of the things about class A is that the the circuit draws full current all the time. But fixed bias amps, they have an idle current and then when you smart smacking on the guitar, they go up. And I believe he's saying that he's determined that one of the power tubes is getting up to 100 milliamps when you're pounding on it. And the other one is double that.

[Jason]

Yep, that's what he said.

[Anthony]

And

[Skip Simmons]

if this was an old amp, we'd be looking at some possible component breakdown. You know, like a capacitor leaking voltage would upset the bias on one tube. Blah, blah, blah. This thing, 2amp fuse, I don't know. But I would suspect the output transformer, some new ones. There's a Marshall here with a new output transformer by a very big time output transformer company. It's not very old, but it's bad. I would suspect it could be the output transformer. The only way you're going to really know which is a super huge hassle, is to put another one in there. And it's not that big a hassle, you know, some soldering, but somebody's going to have to buy one. And an amp that's really new like that shouldn't have a bad output transformer. Really shouldn't. I don't know. I just don't. You know, you could substitute an output transformer that you happen to have around. He doesn't say how big this thing is. I imagine it's two. Oh, he said it's two 6L6s. Right. So any kind of 2.6L6 output transformer, you could unsolder the three leads to the primary of the original one solder. These new ones in, you could just leave it out on your bench and hook it up to a speaker, make sure you have the feedback hooked up still and then do your testing and see if that. If that current is still so different between the two sides. I think that's what I do.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip Simmons]

After that's what I would do if the guy lived next door to me and I couldn't get out of working on it. New stuff, man. I'm not saying that it's easy to make new stuff great, but new stuff almost always there's somewhere where they just could have done it a little bit better or a part that I, I would think, well, this part can't be bad. It's only 5 years old or 10 years old or whatever, but it is, is. So I think I would sub in a beefy Fender output transformer, swipe one out of somebody's amp. And then see if your current draw changes. Finally, a question that I is over my head really.

[Jason]

Mark in his PS added a lot about his background. He not only builds classical and finger style guitars and wants to show them at the fretboard summit one year. He is now a master electrician and runs an electrical contracting and industrial agriculture automation business. And he repairs all sorts of guitars and electronics on the evenings and weekends. He has a 50 acre hobby farm. Pigs, chickens, ducks, coyotes to take them away, a cow, many kids and in laws and the in laws run 120 milking cow dairy farm and 150 sheep. He likes our farm references. As for food, I'm a terrible cook, he says, but make some decent apple cider. Just grind and press apples, Put the juice in a glass carboy, add in a pouch of activated EC1118 champagne yeast, stuff an airlock on the top and wait a few weeks for a good natural cider. It doesn't get much simpler than that. He says.

[Skip Simmons]

That is. I hate that guy.

[Jason]

No, he's got a troublesome Sir Bella 44 on his bench. We should have sympathy.

[Skip Simmons]

He's a nuclear physicist. He's one of those guys, guys like, like 40 hours in the day. That's impressive. That is impressive. I just remembered what Bill Kernard would say. Okay. He would say oscillation that you can't hear makes the amp draw power. Parasitic and ultrasonic oscillation. It could be that there's some sort of oscillation going on that you can't hear that's making one side of that rig draw too much power through the output transformer. And a good scope jockey, somebody who knows how to run an oscilloscope might be able to see that, you know, as a waveform. Right? Yeah, but man, that's. That's pretty impressive. 50 acres and all the cows and goats and. Yeah, and that, yeah, I think making some cider, it's a good. Would be a good retirement goal, even if you were only retiring for a couple days or, you know, here is when the apples are ready. I mean, you gotta admit, there's probably like a certain time where there's just like here, you want 25 gallon bucket of apples, Right. And it would be fun to do that.

[Jason]

The amazing actor, comedian Zach Galifianakis has a gardening show on Netflix right now and the first episode's on apples. And it's adorable. Watch it with your family. It'll make you feel good.

[Skip Simmons]

That's cool.

[Jason]

All right, we'll do a couple more again. Podcastritboardjournal.com is how you can reach out to us. We have a Patreon if you want to get to the front of the line. Let's do a question from listener Sam.

[Sam]

Hey, Skip, I want to ask what's the deal with these little goofy looking rubber donuts that people put around tubes? You know, it's not like a tube shield, it's just like a little ring of foam rubber that sticks around the tube. And I can't imagine how applying a little bit of pressure on the outside of the glass envelope does anything at all. I think maybe people say it's for microphonics, but I can't figure how that would do anything. Snake oil. What am I missing? Thanks.

[Jason]

I love it.

[Skip Simmons]

Like an O ring, you know, like a really, really thick rubber band. Really thick that you slip over a tube. And the idea is that it's supposed to dampen vibrations, which can cause microphonics. But I would say of limited use to most people. You might have a high gain amp with a 12ax7 that's like ringing so bad that you can hear it through the speaker. And maybe if you wrapped your hand around it, it would stop. And maybe if you put that rubber gizmo on there, it would stop. But the end result of that kind of thing is people thinking that they have to have a rubber gizmo on their tube or they can't get the tone or whatever right. Which of course we know it's not true. Hendrix always used those things, the rubber gizmo? No, hell no. Nobody ever used those things. So of limited use, and I think. I'm not sure I'd go all the way to snake oil, but really unlikely to really make any dramatic effect to any of us. If you've got a tube that you could put your fingers on and it stops creating its own noise through microphonics, then theoretically enough damping on that tube might help. But I'd say get another tube. So personally, watch out for stuff that you just absolutely have to have, that everyone knows is essential. But when you stop and think about it, no one ever had that right. That transformer company is like. That's like, oh, you just put our tr. Get rid of those things. Upgrade, man. Make it better. No, because no one ever did that. And could we really go back to the thrill is gone and change a transformer or put a rubber thing on the tube and have it be any better? No. So if it works for you, great. But watch out for stuff that. That. The death cap, you know, how could it kill? How could it be bad? If you just think about it, everything had it forever. So I'm with you, dear listener. Next.

[Jason]

All right, we'll do one more and then we'll start our weekend.

[Skip Simmons]

Gonna run 100 miles this weekend?

[Jason]

Funny you should ask.

[Skip Simmons]

Not funny.

[Jason]

50. I'm hoping for 50, but it's a different kind of run, so.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. Is it like straight up and straight down?

[Jason]

It's a, it's a 12 hour loop run. The loops are two and a half miles on this horse property and it starts at 7pm and it ends at 7am and you just do as many or as few loops as you want. And I'm going to try to break my personal record.

[Skip Simmons]

What's with the middle of the night aspect?

[Jason]

Well, if you really want the story,

[Skip Simmons]

why doesn't it start at 7:00am instead of 7?

[Jason]

Well, I think it's for people who are. I think the original purpose was for people who were training for these hundred mile runs that are overnight to have a safe place to do it and try out their gear and everything. I signed up for this run five years ago. It was the first thing I signed up for because I thought, oh, this is great. I can go on a long run and not inconvenience my family. I'll leave while they're watching TV and I'll be back before they wake up on Sunday morning. And so I've done this a few times. I've done 30 and then 40 miles and I'm going to try to get to 50 this time. It's the last time.

[Skip Simmons]

Don't you know on Sunday morning everyone has to leave because you have to sleep for the next 16 hours.

[Jason]

Well, that's true too. There's a, there's flaws to my logic, but yes. Wish me luck, everybody.

[Skip Simmons]

You can do it.

[Jason]

Oh, thanks, Skip.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, I, to me, it's the being up in the middle of the night part. I, I did that for a while, but I don't do that now.

[Jason]

You drink a lot of. Or you consume a lot of caffeine and then you kind of have little hallucinations.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah. You get a little spaced out.

[Jason]

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's got a headlamp. So you'll see a headlamp like 200 yards behind you and you'll go like, is that another runner or is it a serial killer? Like, it's, it's fun.

[Skip Simmons]

That adds. That hasn't died yet.

[Don]

Okay.

[Jason]

Yeah. I'll give you a recap for our next episode. All right, this last question is on A tweed Fender Deluxe clone. And it's from listener Donald, Skip and Jason.

[Don]

This is don from Lincoln, California. I've got a Tweed Deluxe clone with a 5E3 circuit. I'm curious. On the plate voltage I've got on one of my 6V6s, I've got 370.8 volts. And on the other one I've got 354.8 volts. I'm just kind of curious as to. It just seems like that's a big difference to me. The resistance in the output transformer on one side is 331.2 ohms and on the other side it's 294 0.1 ohms. Could that be the reason why? I'm just kind of curious. Hope to hear my answer soon. Thanks.

[Jason]

Bye.

[Skip Simmons]

XDJ Everything is connecting together.

[Jason]

I know, it's crazy.

[Skip Simmons]

Switch this. Well, switch the 6V 6S. See if it's a socket issue or a tube issue. Power tubes, and this is hard to test on. A tester can draw grid current and when they draw a grid current, then that voltage is going to go down on that tube a little bit. In reality, that's not that far off. And if the amp sounds great, there's something to be said about just running it. But once again we come down to the level of quality in an output transformer and or issues caused by the way the amp is laid out. That's where you start getting into oscillation issues. Right. And since it's someone built it from scratch, it's certainly possible that they could have done something wrong. Right. I'd switch the tubes. If you're a builder kind of guy, get another output transformer and try it. If you don't want to do that. Understandable. Then I would just probably run it. I'd probably just run it. You could try another pair if. If this is your only amp and you're not into working on amps at all, I just say, I don't know, who cares? It still works. Fine, run it. But if you wanted to go down the tech guy rabbit hole, another pair of 6V6s. Some careful measuring of the grid voltages on the 6V6s. They should be dead zero on a tweed Deluxe. If there's any positive voltage on those grids, that means either the coupling cap is leaking or the tube is drawing grid current. And when that happens, it can make one tube measure different amount of current than the other. So I say, I definitely say if it sounds good to you, you could just calm yourself, just say, oh, well, that's how it is. Right? A little different. They're, they're, they're hardly ever exactly the same either. Measuring the transformer ohms, which is sort of a. Not really the right way. It's, it's, it's more like impedance. And we can only measure resistance, but sometimes they'll be a little different. And then when you light up the amp, one plate voltage on a push pull could be different than the other plate of the other tube. A little different. Now, if you saw zero or you saw a hundred percent different, well, that would be something significant. But I wouldn't worry too much. And thinking back to the voicemail, I got a feeling he is kind of into going down the tech rabbit hole because he's already got his volt meter out and all that stuff, you know. Right. So if you're that kind of guy. Check the grid voltages on the 6V6s. When the amp is on, swap the 6V6s, try another pair and try another output transformer. You said he was in Lincoln. That's really close to me.

[Jason]

That's really close to that nursery. I was gonna say that's right.

[Skip Simmons]

By Loomis.

[Jason]

What is going on with this episode? We're all connected. We should all hold hands.

[Skip Simmons]

But don't call me to fix that thing because, you know, there's only a. Well, except for the three things that happened in one week. In general stuff I work on, there's a limited number of things that are likely to be causing a problem, but an amp that someone built from scratch, there's just like almost an infinite amount of things that. Little things that could be the problem. Right. Too many ground connections or. I think I mentioned the last podcast, the fancy new amp where the guy put that power transformer right next to the 12ax7. The first preamp here. So the thing hums because power transformers are supposed to be away from the preamp circuit because they, they induce noise through the whole transformer action. And it's just a big lot. You know, sometimes there's foundational issues, you know, with something that's been built from scratch. Just saying. Yeah.

[Jason]

Shouldn't stop you from going to our sponsor Amplified Parts, though, and getting a kit or going to Emerald City Guitars and buying an amp.

[Skip Simmons]

Yeah, or we're buying a transformer. Yeah, exactly.

[Jason]

Gotta live your life, people.

[Skip Simmons]

Gotta get up, gotta get out there and start running at 7 at night. See you at 7am Exactly. I'm gonna be watching the. The live. The Live footage of that.

[Jason]

There's no live stream. This is very homebrew. But yeah, yeah, we did it.

[Skip Simmons]

And good luck with the run thing. Well, we don't need luck, but you'll be. You'll be beat to hell and glad you got another issue out. Now you're. Now you got the new deadline to meet. And one side note on threatening to have a barn sale. I have had a couple of people say they want to come before that.

[Jason]

What? No early birds?

[Skip Simmons]

Oh, no. I mean, like next month or something. You know, like still an early bird. This is like. Wait a minute. A bunch of people buying a bunch of crap. I think I'm going to go over there and buy some crap sooner, so I want to encourage that. That. Oh, and. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, the idea is to get rid of some stuff, put money in my hand. Okay, right, that's. Those are the ideas. But the idea of a little get together as just a lot of. A lot of calls on that, people. A lot of calls on that.

[Jason]

Skip a palooza.

[Skip Simmons]

So, yeah, that's what I was going to call it. How did you know? Now I. It's gonna be great. I don't party, you know, it would be. It's quite a. It's quite a detour out of my. My rut, you know, to do something like that. But obviously something like that at some point is gonna have to happen.

[Jason]

Well, give people plenty of notice because a lot of people from. From far away want to attend.

[Skip Simmons]

It sounds like six months minimum. Should be more like a year. And it's on. I mean, well, look at. Look at the Chicago gig. You can't just say that two weeks before, you know, you got to get. You got to have a date and you got to stick with it. So you'll notice that I have not thrown out a date. Once I throw out the date, oh, my God, it's on.

[Jason]

You might have somebody from Norway.

[Skip Simmons]

Fine.

[Jason]

I know. It's just a lot of responsibility to really entertain them.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, that's true too, because if we. Yes, the real goal is stuff is gone because we don't want the dumpster to come when I'm dead. Money in my hand. Because I don't. I don't have much money. But if you do something like this, a big concern to me would be that everyone feels like it was worth it. When I had my amp class many decades ago, that was the thing. I wanted to make sure that people thought it was worth the $50 or whatever it cost back then, you know, and that would be because, you know, I care. We've been talking about this since day one. If you don't give a shit, then don't bother getting into fixing Stu for people because you got to care that they like it, you know, and something like this. I would be. I would be really disappointed if somebody did it and didn't feel like it was fun or if. If. Or it was worth it.

[Jason]

Well, you've got me. I'll help you with the party planning and do all the work.

[Skip Simmons]

It'll be.

[Jason]

You just pull out your stuff. I'm good at this stuff.

[Skip Simmons]

I know, I know. Bringing people together. Right? I. I could show off Loma Rica a little bit.

[Jason]

I'm gonna send him one before this event, which doesn't have a date takes place. But it would be a really adorable documentary. If Yor and Eric flew all the way from Norway to Loma Rica to get a two prong plug, that would be.

[Skip Simmons]

Wouldn't it?

[Jason]

It would be a really cute short film. We could probably hit the film festivals with that.

[Skip Simmons]

I think so too.

[Jason]

But I'll send you one in the. I'll send you one between now and then. You're in, Eric. So anyways.

[Skip Simmons]

Well, we did it. Thanks to everyone for pestering me. Sending Garnett books Wine. I haven't drunk that wine yet. I gotta get. Put that away. I gotta get cracking. Yeah. From Boulder, Colorado. Bruce, I think should have written that down. Okay, but we'll do it again. As long as the. As long as the questions keep coming, we'll just be forced to answer them.

[Jason]

Yes. If you've already sent in a question, I have it in my little document. But please keep the questions coming. Podcastreportjournal.com thanks again.

[Skip Simmons]

It. Thank you. We'll talk.