Ep. 165: "There's an Ethos?"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Truth About Vintage Amps, Ep. 165 – "There's an Ethos?"

Podcast: The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons
Host: Jason (The Fretboard Journal)
Date: May 17, 2026
Episode: 165 – "There's an Ethos?"
Theme: On vintage tube amp repair, collecting – plus life lessons, listener stories, memorable interviews, and amp troubleshooting.

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Episode Overview

Episode 165 is a quintessential installment of The Truth About Vintage Amps: a spirited blend of vintage amp nerdery, practical repair advice, listener stories, and offbeat digressions. Skip and Jason celebrate the impact their community has on listeners’ lives, recount a brush with Spinal Tap royalty (Christopher Guest), unravel challenging amp repair scenarios, and field a host of technical and life questions from their devoted following.

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Featured Topics & Key Discussions

1. Brush with Spinal Tap Royalty: Christopher Guest & Amps

[01:02] – [06:20]

• Jason shares his recent interview with Christopher Guest (aka Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap), gifted him a hand-built El Pato can amp as thanks—and plays a short, exclusive clip with Guest discussing his own amps.

  • Notable Quote:
    Christopher Guest [04:41]:
    "I love the whole thing...It's a deep thing that I'll never ever—no one will get to the bottom of all of that stuff. But I find that really interesting."
  • Guest's gear highlights:
    • 1967 Princeton Reverb (“kind of the perfect everything amp”)
    • Marshall Studio 20W/5W tube amp

• Jason teases more to come in The Fretboard Journal issue 60.

• Fun aside: Guest enjoys YouTube pedal demos and fly-tying videos.

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2. Listener Stories: Inspiration & Life Changes

[10:39] – [15:32]

• Listener Joe Moore writes in with a heartfelt thanks:
  • The podcast & community inspired a radical career change after being laid off from tech; Joe opened a Denver amp repair shop after months of consideration.
  • Notable Quote:
    Joe Moore, via Skip [13:02]:
    "There's a TAVA community. It isn’t just the knowledge and resources you’ve shared, but your general ethos, generosity, and inspiration you share...giving me the confidence to get my ass kicked by projects all the time and persevere."
  • Skip reflects with humility on influencing such big decisions, urging caution but also expressing pride.

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3. Listener Technical Deep-Dives

The Princeton Reverb Repair Odyssey

[17:41] – [28:10]

• A listener documents his quest to restore a rough ‘67 Princeton Reverb:
  • Replaced suspect transformer, added mods, chased burning resistors—only to discover an intermittently shorted reverb transformer (an extremely rare fault).
  • Skip emphasizes the value and risks of DIY repairs, urges fixing problems before modding, and encourages perseverance even for tricky, rare faults.
  • Notable Insight [25:50]:
    "You can go down the wrong road—even I can—and see something that you've never seen before... Don’t be discouraged if you can’t figure it out, you know, right away."

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4. Troubleshooting, Bafflers & Repair Q&A

The "Two Hums" Mystery

[31:42] – [36:08]

• Listener Kyle describes a 70s Dual Showman Reverb with two distinct hums:
  1. Reverb hum when only reverb is up.
  2. Hum on channel one, but cancels out if both channel volumes are up equally.
• Community challenge: Listeners encouraged to send in their diagnoses.

Tube Terms: "Getters" and "Wings"

[36:32] – [37:58]

• Skip admits only surface-level knowledge, suggests inviting a real tube expert for an in-depth explanation.

Service Stories & Bench Tales

[64:54] – [68:56]

• Skip tells the story of a late-era Fender Tweed Bassman owned by Slim Dossey, a pro musician and Fender employee, and another rescued at a flea market—emphasizing the value and survivability of classic amps.

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5. Band, Gear, and Event Community

The Fretboard Summit & Amp Scene

[09:36] – [10:34]

• Discussion of upcoming Fretboard Summit, with hopes for a “vintage amp room” and a nerd roundtable.

Listener Tom's Super Reverb Tales

[44:17] – [53:57]

• Tom describes adventures with his Super Reverb—swapped speakers, dealt with fuses blowing, and even survived a dramatic fall from his car.
• Key guidance:
  • If a Super Reverb keeps blowing fuses, check for proper speaker impedance (should be 2 ohms).
  • Avoid removing the master volume pull-pot unless needed.
  • Blown fuses can hint at real problems unless truly a fluke.

Fretboard Community & DIY Resource Shout-Outs

[53:40] – [60:04]

• Praise for the ToneQuest Report magazine.
• Shout-outs to Tin Can Valley (letterpress posters for the hypothetical barn sale).
• Practical tip on gasket replacement for reverb tanks—use simple foam or weatherstripping.

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6. Notable Technical Q&A

Headphone Jack Mod for Princeton

[76:47] – [83:57]

• Advice for safely adding headphone functionality:
  • Use an 8 ohm, 10–20 watt resistor for a load.
  • Sound through headphones rarely compares to playing softly on a small amp.

Attenuators, Variacs, and Recapping

[72:24] – [74:16]

• Discusses whether an amp that’s been recently recapped still benefits from a Variac (slow power-up): yes, but less critical with new caps, still good practice for longevity.

Bias Pots in Silverface Fenders

[87:39] – [95:09]

• Advice on 70s Pro Reverbs’ bias balance pots:
  • Can leave as-is, add a bias adjustment, or convert to vintage-style bias circuit—whatever best fits your needs.
  • Don’t obsess too much over exact bias numbers; stay in a safe range.

Random Cooking Tangents

• Diners are encouraged to swaddle meat, make cornbread without excess sugar, and try inventive rice ball recipes—proof the TAVA community is as passionate about food as amps.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

"I'm just surprised and hope it works out for the guy. I would’ve never thought...that we could actually influence some important decision someone was going to make, but I don’t know. Kind of blew my mind, man."
— Skip, reflecting on a listener’s career change (13:32)

"There's a TAVA community? ...There's an ethos?"
— Skip (13:02), both amused and humbled by the idea

"You can go down the wrong road—even I can—and see something that you've never seen before. But ... don’t be discouraged if you can’t figure it out, you know, right away."
— Skip (25:50), on challenging amp faults

"If you listen to every episode, we'll plug your band once in a while."
— Jason (51:57)

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Timestamps for Noteworthy Segments

• [01:02] – Christopher Guest amp talk, special interview audio
• [10:39] – Listener Joe Moore’s radical life change and the TAVA “ethos”
• [17:41] – Princeton Reverb restoration & troubleshooting
• [31:42] – "Two kinds of hum" Dual Showman Reverb baffler
• [44:17] – Listener Tom’s Super Reverb story (fuses, speaker swaps)
• [64:54] – Tweed Bassman pro stories from Skip’s bench
• [76:47] – Headphone jack for small amps: do’s and don’ts
• [87:39] – Biasing advice for 70s Silver Fenders

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Community, Ethos, and Reflections

The episode closes with Skip and Jason marveling at how the show has shaped and connected their far-flung, passionate audience—whether encouraging career moves, soldering mishaps, or culinary experiments. As Skip puts it: "I don’t know. Kind of blew my mind, man." Even as they joke about their own influence and “double or triple” amp repair charges, it’s clear the TAVA podcast is as much about community and generosity as the nuts and bolts of classic gear.

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Quick Takeaways

• Don’t give up on challenging repairs.
  Even the pros encounter bizarre faults; perseverance and basic tests (like using an ohmmeter) are key.
• Be cautious with mods.
  Fix the core problem before adding modifications.
• Amp repair as a lifestyle:
  For some, this podcast is more than entertainment—it’s a catalyst for big life decisions.
• Community knowledge matters:
  Listeners often surface collective wisdom, rare parts, and advice—“there’s a TAVA community.”
• Great technical advice cross-pollinates with life stories and, yes, recipes.

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Closing

Closing Notable Quote:
"Keep the questions coming, podcastritboardjournal.com. Thanks to all our listeners and thanks of course, to all our sponsors. Gotta have it. Without that, we'd just be a couple of old geezers yakkin."
— Skip (97:40)

Transcript

[Skip]

Good morning.

[Jason]

Good morning. How are you?

[Skip]

I'm good. I want to see the last. Your last five minutes before the podcast.

[Jason]

It's.

[Skip]

Are you always running around like crazy, like, jamming in at the very last second?

[Jason]

I. I have those. Those Sony headphones that are in every recording studio, and they've got the coil cord, and usually it's just a lot of untangling and feverishly, like, trying to plug it in before I talk to you.

[Skip]

Yeah, I've done that.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

But, you know, lifestyle, I get to. I usually am sitting here for about five minutes just staring at the thing. What time do you call this? This is 9:02. Right.

[Jason]

As long as we start every episode of the Truth About Vintage Amps with you kind of mad at me. That's good.

[Skip]

Share the bitterness. I'm mad because you got to hang out with Christopher Guest.

[Jason]

I did.

[Skip]

That's pretty far out. What the heck was he doing there?

[Jason]

In my life?

[Skip]

Yeah, actually, I'll tell the story.

[Jason]

Okay, Sure.

[Skip]

I get this email from Jason, which

[Jason]

is a rare thing, as you know.

[Skip]

You remember, you called me the other day. I'm going, why did you call me? But I get this email from Jason, and there's this picture of this guy, and he's holding an El Pato can. And the email says, gave Nigel el Pato can amp. But it doesn't go to 11. And I went, wait a minute. Come on, go to 11. Spinal Tap. Nigel. Nigel Tufnel. And then I realized that it was the actual Nigel Tufnell.

[Jason]

Yeah. I'm not messing around.

[Skip]

Pretty amazing. Yeah.

[Jason]

Welcome to the 165th episode of the Truth About Vintage Amps. I, Jason, do a magazine called the Fretboard Journal, and I just was lucky enough to interview Christopher guest for the 60th, the forthcoming 60th issue of the magazine with Christopher Guest. And I didn't know what to present to him as a thank you, he's offering, so I gave him an El Pado can amp.

[Skip]

Well, we should have got him the feather thief book, Right. Because we found out that he ties flies.

[Jason]

He ties a lot of flies.

[Skip]

And he's very dry. Right. Isn't that what you said? He isn't. He isn't like Corky. He didn't start naming nuts, did he? That's from.

[Jason]

No, he didn't show. But it's. But it's very. We had a very earnest conversation about his. His love for guitars, and he's a sweetheart. It was a great chat.

[Skip]

Well, anybody. I mean, I've. I've had to go. And I've had to say, wait a minute, that can't be the guy. Who was that guy in that movie? I mean, that guy is just a chameleon. Right? So I could imagine when he's not at work that he's just, you know, he's not acting. Right. It doesn't do any characters.

[Jason]

He like some of the people listening to this podcast, I'm sure watches a lot of pedal demos on YouTube and he watches a lot of fly tying videos on YouTube because he likes tying fly fish flies.

[Skip]

Where does he live?

[Jason]

I have no idea. I didn't meet him at his house.

[Skip]

I wonder if that indicates that he's a real active fisherman or if he's just a fly tie in nut.

[Jason]

I. I think when you are at the level that Christopher Guest is, he probably has some mountain getaway somewhere. But we were. I mean, he lives in the greater Los Angele Angeles area. I know that much because he drove

[Skip]

to where just talk classic trout fishing books with him or something like that. Right?

[Jason]

That would have probably been a hit. Yeah.

[Skip]

Yeah. Well, that's pretty fantastic. And you had me going. I was. I emailed back like, what the hell are you? Why? Who is this guy? And then about one second later, I emailed again because I realized only Jason would have the actual Nigel Tufnel.

[Jason]

You know what, folks? This is a treat for everybody. Maybe not. I actually, in preparation for this podcast, just to show you skip that I do sometimes do some legwork here, I took a very short snippet from my interview out where he was talking about an amplifier. Do you want to hear it?

[Skip]

Do people want to hear it? Let's have some applause. I guess people want to hear it.

[Jason]

Okay, here we go. This is me talking to Christopher Guest on May 5, 2026 about AMPS. Do you enjoy the technical aspect of.

[Christopher Guest]

I love the whole thing.

[Jason]

You love everything.

[Christopher Guest]

And it's a deep thing that I'll never ever. No one will get to the bottom of all of that st. But I find that really interesting. And there are programs that do virtually everything now and they. Whether they're emulating amplifiers or whatever, it's interesting to me. It's not. I have a great old amp, a classic old amp. That's great.

[Jason]

What is it?

[Christopher Guest]

It's a 67 Princeton reverb and it's kind of the perfect everything amp. And then I have a Marshall that was sent to me by those people, which is their studio amp, which is a great amplifier. It's a 20 watt amp, but it can also be a 5 watt amp, and that's a fantastic tube amp.

[Jason]

There you go. Stay tuned for issue 60.

[Skip]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jason]

Yeah, that's. That's pretty much how the interview went. He, he kind of talked about his. You know, he records a lot at home. He, he likes technology and he's not playing 100 watt Marshall very often.

[Skip]

That was a long time ago for that movie.

[Jason]

It was. Although they just had a sequel which is, you know, you can watch now

[Skip]

too, with him in it.

[Jason]

Yeah, there is, there's a, there's a second Spinal Sound movie.

[Skip]

Oh, you know, that's right. I think I did read something about that. Well, I prefer the later movies myself, but I'd consider watching the second Spinal Tap. Just. That's an amazing actor right there.

[Jason]

Yeah, it was fun.

[Skip]

All right, well, sponsors.

[Jason]

Yeah. We are brought to you today by our friends at Amplified Parts who are currently having a Memorial Day sale. So go there, stock up on all the tubes, all the wires, all the parts that we talk about you needing on this, this show and get 10% off. So go over there. We're also brought to you by Gres Guitars, one of my favorite guitar brands. One of the most accessible and I think, how can I put it? Classic looking boutique electric guitar maker of our of our time. These guitars are so stunning. You should be following Grez on Instagram and Facebook. Barry will be at our 2026 Fretboard Summit in Chicago, which is taking place in August. I have the grand tour that Barry built for me and I play it all the time. It is a beautiful, beautiful guitar. And then last but not least, our friends at Emerald City Guitars here in Seattle, Washington have pretty much almost every vintage cool tube amp you could imagine under their roof here. And they do ship. And if anybody needs to sell anything, they have a great consignment program. I've used it myself. So go check out Emerald City Guitars online or in person. Tell them the truth about vintage amp sent you.

[Skip]

What's the. How do you get a discount at Amplified Parts?

[Jason]

Well, it's on their homepage right now. So it's some code. It's not the Tava code. It is mday26 and you can use that for the next 10 days through May 26, 2026. And Barry, no discount code for Barry. His guitars are already pretty affordable.

[Skip]

Well, if you're somebody that thinks that you can enter a very, very crowded field, very crowded, and somehow make something that people are going to want that they can't get already, and if you think you're going to start a business that isn't a hundred employees or even 10, but isn't just you by yourself. Right. Don't follow him because he may encourage you to do some really crazy thing like start your own amp repair business or something. Right. I don't know how he did, except for the fact that the product is neat and unique, but somehow the business niche that he's managed to figure out where he doesn't have a million employees, but it isn't just him out there with his plaid shirt in Seattle. And I just think that's also very interesting because making art is one thing, but making it so that you can pay somebody and pay you the rent stuff, that's a different thing. Yeah.

[Jason]

I mean, that actually might be, I don't know, maybe not an interesting fretboard summit session, because he is one of these people who can do a custom baritone neck on whatever guitar you want with custom finish, but he also has, like a dozen dealers, and there aren't many people who've been able to make that model work where you're talking. You're picking up the phone and taking orders. But you also can send people to the music emporium in Massachusetts and say, go check out my guitar. So it's kind of cool.

[Skip]

Beautiful.

[Jason]

All right. Yeah.

[Skip]

Fantastic.

[Jason]

We will have a vintage amp room at that aforementioned fretboard summit. So if anybody wants to attend, come, please. Brian McAllister's filling the room once again.

[Skip]

I better just roll into this.

[Jason]

If you made a surprise visit to the fretboard summit. Oh, my God. That would be like if Christopher Guest made a surprise visit, which is definitely not happening.

[Skip]

But I'd start naming nuts, though. No, I'd have to take the train. That's what I'd like to do. I know that seems weird, huh? I'd have maps.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And I just stare at them and can't you drink on the train? And. And I just stare out the window for what? To probably take a week to get there.

[Jason]

You know what I would love, mostly, I'd love to see you there, but I'd love to see you, like, chat with, like, Terry Foster is going to be there or Eli from T Rock. That would be super fun to hear you out of the house talking to some of these guitar amp nerd peers. I would.

[Skip]

Round table.

[Jason]

A round table. Yeah. That would be so fun.

[Skip]

Well, Joe Moore, listener Joe Moore.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

You know, I asked for a while back, I asked for a source for this certain washer that go under a switch. I just Wanted to know if somebody knew where to get, you know, a thousand or five hundred or something. Because I couldn't source them. But instead people just started sending me some from their stash, right? So I could. So I get this little package in the mail that has like some of those washers and. Two beers. Yeah. With this. Here are the half inch washers you requested. Plus a little care package, a Crooked stave, one of my favorite Colorado IPAs, even though I don't drink anymore. Plus a Budweiser to cleanse the palate. Anybody that sends you beers who doesn't drink anymore, right?

[Jason]

That's dedication.

[Skip]

On a personal and professional note, you, Jason and the Tav community. There's a Tava community, changed my life and my career. What? That's not hyperbole? Hyperbole, he says. When the podcast came out, I was an avid guitar player and collector, and you guys triggered my amp collecting and fixing gene. Fast forward to August 2024, the first day of the fretboard summit. I was listening to Jason's opening remarks. That would be you listening to Jason's opening remarks at the summit. Having just been laid off that very day from my high tech company.

[Jason]

What?

[Skip]

Suddenly, I was at a crossroads in my 27 year career in tech. What do I do now?

[Jason]

Oh, man, I'm not sure I've not heard this story.

[Skip]

After months of soul searching, spousal discussions, and financial wrangling, I officially quit my career in high tech and opened an amp repair shop in Denver, Colorado.

[Jason]

What?

[Matthew]

What?

[Skip]

Yes, for money. You must have heard me say, are you doing this for money? Blah, blah, blah. Never in a million years would I have considered such a radical career shift without you. That would be me, Jason. That'd be you. The Tava podcast and the Tava community. There's a community. It isn't just the knowledge and resources you've shared, but your general ethos. There's an ethos? Generosity and. Hold on. It isn't just the knowledge and resources you've shared, but your general ethos, generosity and inspiration you share, giving me the confidence to get my ass kicked by projects all the time and persevere. So enjoy a brew on me. I owe you more than that. Wow. Joe Moore, older Colorado, this Joe.

[Jason]

How does that make you feel?

[Skip]

If we get another letter from him in two years from now and he's single and he's living like in the back of a warehouse somewhere, then I'm going to not feel too great. But hopefully. And you know, I don't. I just. I don't know, I. Makes me feel too responsible. You know, my son's teacher and, you know, somebody comes up and says if I don't get a. If I fail in this class, my energy, my life's over. You know, most people don't have any sort of control over someone like that. No, that's not the best way to. I'm just surprised and hope it works out for the guy. And it was nice to write the note and send the washers, but I had. I would have never thought that I could see somebody getting interest, interested and deciding to, you know, make a canoe in their garage or whatever.

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip]

And that's fine. But career move.

[Jason]

That's so. That's so amazing. We should just end the podcast right there.

[Skip]

I. I couldn't. I would have to charge double or triple. You know what I do charge if I had to actually have like a little shop and a couple of grand a month, you know, in. Or more. And five grand a month in overhead and stuff like that, you know, and. I wish Joe. Right on. And I drank your ipa and I drank the Bud. Yeah, absolutely. You betcha.

[Jason]

So I'm looking at Joe. I mean, let's just give this guy a plug. The vintage tone dot com. The vintage Tone on Instagram. Yeah. Wow. Crazy.

[Skip]

Now, we are not recommending this investment. May not be for everyone. No, I, I would say. Well, just because he listens to us blab that hopefully his repair philosophy, you know, is similar to what I would do. I think I missed something. Hold on here. Since March 2025, I've fixed over 150amps.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

Wow, that's.

[Jason]

That's good.

[Skip]

That's. That's cranking it out and, and you're gonna have to fix, you know, Blues Juniors and, you know, modern tube stuff. Can't be as picky as me. Would be my one suggestion.

[Jason]

So he doesn't have an hourly rate. He charges by the job. He'll give you a quote

[Skip]

and we're to blame if it doesn't work out. Wow. I'm sure I can take the pressure. Could we.

[Jason]

Do you think there's a way we could do a bonus episode where we try to convince people to get desk jobs at a tech company? Maybe just talk about new boats that are available or ski vacations that are tempting.

[Skip]

My advice is don't change your life. Just keep getting up at the crack of dawn and going to work and just put your dreams aside.

[Jason]

Joe, congratulations to. See you at the next fretboard summit. Let's pull you Something.

[Skip]

Yeah. If he went once, go again.

[Jason]

That was back when he could afford to go to Chicago. Now he's running a small business.

[Skip]

All right, well, I'm going to try to do more reading. I have another one that could be even longer that I think is really interesting because it's an outline. Guy bought an amp and he carefully wrote down all the stuff that he did to try to get it to going.

[Jason]

I love this episode already because you're reading all the questions. Go for it, Skip. What did he send you?

[Skip]

It really. Is it time?

[Jason]

Oh, yeah. This is the truth about Vintage Amps, episode 165. Send in your questions like the one Skip's about to read to podcast fretboardjournal.com

[Skip]

hopefully not one quite like this. So this was a letter sent with an old Princeton reverb 67.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

I believe it has white lettering on a black control panel. Yes, it does. So Skip, thanks for taking on my project. I've been wanting a Princeton Reverb for years, but boy, are they expensive. I found this one at a decent price, but it was rough around the edges. Here's what I did. This is my channeling, my Jason. Today I cleaned it up, including knobs, pots, reverb tank and pouch, and reglued some loose Tolex scruvy. A visual inspection revealed no obvious burned or damaged components. It's a start. Can't always tell. I did notice that had a replaced power transformer. Stan Core PM8401. And someone had drilled holes in the chassis for the replacement transformer. Grr. Like a growl, right?

[Jason]

Hmm.

[Skip]

I noticed it had a vintage set of RCA 6V6s and a Mullard made GZ34, but the 12X7s were Chinese. Oh, well, that's some good tubes that you got there. I tested all the tubes and they're fine. Uh oh, this guy has a tube tester, right? Didn't say that at the beginning. After bringing the amp up slowly on a variac, this guy's. He's into it, right? I couldn't get a B plus anywhere close to the schematic figures. Mm hmm. The standcore power transformer that was in this thing has the specs right on the side of it. You don't even have to look it up in your Stan Core catalog. It tells you what the milliamps and the high voltage and all the important things about a power transformer. Right.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

They aren't anything like the one it's supposed to have. Right? I mean, before you Even turned it on, you could have said, wait a second. This standcor is only 470 volts center tapped on the high voltage Princeton reverb is 650 center tapped and 70 milliamps worth instead of 40. In other words, this power transformer is way too low of a voltage to be in this thing. Right. So putting it amp on the variac and couldn't get b anywhere close to the schematic. Well, that might have something to do with it, right? The next thing he says is I replaced the power transformer. Good. He bought a new Princeton one and the can cap. That's just guessing. I rebuilt the bias board. That's this little part board that controls the bias with new components and added a 10k trim pot. Judge me if you want, but these make biasing easier. So the guy is telling me that he's pretty into it, right? I mean, he's bought a lot of gear, he's biasing stuff and blah, blah, blah. I replaced the very stiff two prong power cord with a new three prong after finally locating one that was small enough to not necessitate drilling out the existing hole. Now that's. That's a huge part of why it was two prong cords, man. Part of it is I couldn't get any. It's really hard to find a grounded, skinny little cord like that until you find the source, which I did. So it's good that he replaced the very stiff two prong power cord. I mean, if the cord is crap, even if it's original, you got to replace it. You know, people say, oh, you're going to drive your car with these old tires on? No, I'm not driving the car with old tires. If the tires are bad, then you got to replace them. If a cord is all brittle and stiff and the plugs all messed up, then replace it. And he took a lot of time to try to find a skinny black cord. All right. I also used the ground switch to enable a switchable negative feedback loop. Yeah, I know, but I wanted to try it. Okay, well, it just makes them too distorted. If you disconnect the inverse feedback, you might like it, but before you commit to it, which meant disabling the ground switch, which I would never do, then it's a lot easier to build the thing, get it working, then try the little mod you want. All you got to do is reach down there and unsolder the negative feedback resistor and you can play the amp and push it on and off with a Sharpie or something. And you can basically see if it's something that you want to commit to and actually put on a switch. It's kind of like cart before the horse, you know, Fix the thing first before you start putting in your groovy mods.

[Listener from band 'in use']

Right.

[Skip]

All right, let's see. I biased it up and took it for a spin. It ran okay for 20 minutes, though it smelled faintly like a component was struggling. Then it blew a fuse. The fuse and the 1k dropping resistor were burnt. 1k dropping resistor is in between the filter caps and they overheat if there's some sort of big current draw. Right. Let's see. I replaced both and again burned the resistor once. A hundred volts or so was reached on the variac. Trying it again. I looked for the short, including checking the tube sockets, can cap and along the board. But I'm not familiar with this process and I likely missed it. I finally bit the bullet and replaced all. Well, he says coupling caps, he means bypass caps in the preamp. Now that's like my brakes in my car don't work. So I had the seats reupholstered. They're not connected at all. When that didn't help, I now regret all those new looking components that didn't seem to help the problem. I've wisely decided this is out of my league eventually. Thanks for the help. Don't care what it costs. Blah, blah, blah. Original as possible. If the old Stan Core transformer is a better fit, then put it back in. Okay. Dude, look at that transformer. Crunch the numbers. Crunch them again. You're missing a little part of the foundation. You know, you're working on stuff, but you can't tell if a power transformer is the right or wrong for something. Which is pretty basic. Right? The original can cath is also in the box and can be reunited since it may be fine and shows good outlook. And those old can capacitors are often fine. Let's see. I prefer the most original components as possible. Well, I'm glad he came around to that at some point. Right? But here's the thing. This is the amp that had a reverb transformer that was internally shorted. And since it gets power from a filter capacitor, that's what was making that resistor burn up. Because the reverb transformer was shorted. Listeners may recall that when I checked the reverb transformer the next day, day it wasn't shorted. It's like a coil of wire inside, real fine wire with insulation on it. And something was going on in there after it had been on for a while, when internally you'd have a. A spot in that transformer where high voltage and ground were touching. And so tons of juice flowing and parts burning. Right. And I've never seen that before in my life. Right. So not only did he do a bunch of stuff he didn't have to do, but this guy, this thing killed me, man. I was going. What. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on because that's a rare fault. And then to have it be intermittent like that. Right. So nice guy. Let's see.

[Jason]

That was less inspiring than the first letter you read.

[Skip]

But now this is. This is. This is more. This is the other side of the tava. The first thing is like all hearts and flowers. But this is. This is like. This is the history of an amp and the repairs that happened and the steps that were made good. And the steps that were made not so good. Right?

[Jason]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Skip]

And he says, I have a huge tube collection if you ever need anything. Super nice guy. Right. So he's obviously really into it. But don't forget, if you're going to get in there and start working on stuff, you got to have a little bit of knowledge about the basics. And then once in a while, there'll be something that's so hard that not even I can figure it out. So don't be discouraged if you can't figure it out, you know, right away. And I just thought his step by step by step thing was interesting. And it shows you how you can go down the wrong road with. Even I can and see something that you've never seen before. But I'll tell you, when this problem was happening, an Ohmmeter could have found it. You could have gone from ground to a filter cap and said, wait a minute, these two are connected. Because that reverb transformer was internally shorted at that point. So the simplest little test. In the right spot at the right time. An Ohmmeter. Come on now. Don't need the oscilloscope for that. Would have found it, but of course I didn't look for that. Sometimes, you know, you have a bunch of experience and that helps because you know where to look right off the bat. But sometimes it hurts you because you go, oh, that could never happen. That's not bad. Those are never bad. And yet sometimes they are. Next.

[Jason]

I was going to say next. Since you read the. It's all Tommy Listener Tommy.

[Skip]

Thanks a lot for that. And. And I hammered him nicely. Or on the phone, you know, but he's. But he was really, you know, he wasn't offended or anything. He knows a lot and I'm hoping that, that this will help him learn a little bit more. And now he has a Princeton Reverb, just. I betcha. Well, I just don't think there's much chance of an amateur being able to troubleshoot that particular problem. Ideally he should have just put a power transformer on it because the stand core was bad or wrong rather, and everything would have worked. And that's what normally would happen on a Princeton Reverb. They don't usually need a whole bunch of parts. But one thing led to another and it led to something that's so rare that you can't blame yourself for not being able to pick up on that. How's that?

[Jason]

Yeah, that was great.

[Skip]

So killed half the show already.

[Jason]

I know in best case scenario you just got the amp unmolested and figured that part out. Was it helpful that he wrote that letter to you or did that just. Were you just rolling your eyes going, like, I still gotta do all step 1 through 50 to get figure this out.

[Skip]

Yes, I still have to do. I never turn an amp on just to see what it does without a bunch of stuff first. Because I don't want to know what it does when something's wrong with it. Right. I'm going to try to see if there's something wrong with it before I get in the car, go down the hill, slam on the brakes. I'm going to check out the brakes, put it up on the rack there, see what we got. I just thought that the outline of what he did going through it was informative. Everybody wants to put in a mod, but fix the thing first and then try the mod temporarily rather than seriously rewinding or drilling a hole or something like that, you know, can't be doing that. Right? Can't be doing that. And I don't pay attention to something like this when I get started because I just go, like you said, I kind of roll my eyes and just go, yeah, yeah. Tested the tubes, they're all fine, whatever. But the real true bottom line is don't give up. And weird stuff happens. And I get people with a little experience all the time calling me and saying, I just can't understand it. This is the weirdest thing ever. And I go, what? No, it isn't. He tried to make some bread. The temperature wasn't quite right, it didn't want to rise, and now it's flat. You know, it's not, it's stuff like that happens all the time. Try another loaf.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Yeah. There we go.

[Jason]

All right.

[Skip]

I thought that, I thought that was good, too. And I was a little embarrassed about the first one because I don't. It's hard to think that, you know, we would actually influence some important decision that somebody was going to make, but I don't know. I don't know. Kind of blew my mind, man.

[Jason]

Totally.

[Skip]

All right, now it's your turn. Read me a, Read me a question.

[Jason]

Oh, before I forget there. Christopher Guest did recommend an amp. His amp tech is, goes by the name ampole.com and he's in LA. I, I did remember that. So I don't know who that is. It's Robert Dixon. I don't know who knows who that is, but that's who. That's who Christopher Guest has used.

[Skip]

I, that guy has been doing stuff down there for a long time.

[Jason]

Okay.

[Skip]

An unfortunate moniker. Needlessly. I mean, they might not really appeal to everyone. No, but. But I'm pretty sure if you look for Bob Dixon, you would see that he's been doing stuff in, in LA for as long as me.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Don't know him personally, though.

[Jason]

Yeah, I, I. It's a recommendation of one, but that's cool. Okay, so everybody please send us a voice memo that you record on your smartphone. So Skip and I don't have to read these long letters to podcastrepboardjournal.com. you can also email us a question there. Family rest, recipes, relationship advice, whatever you need from us, we're here for you. This subject line, two kinds of hum. It's a Baffler. Submitted by listener Kyle.

[Kyle]

Hey, Skip and Jason. It's Kyle from central Oklahoma, and I had a baffler for y' all today. So this is the case of the two hums. So I was recently working on a dual showman reverb head from the 70s, and it suffered from two distinct kinds of hum. So I'll describe them to you and give a little break and then I'll reveal the answers. So the first kind of hum was noticed when with all volume controls down, you turn up the reverb and you get an obnoxious hum and, you know, way more than you would ever allow. And an amp that you're actually going to play with. Just to check these off the list, the RCA jacks to and from the tank, cleaned, tightened, good ground connections, good continuity. Everything's good there. The reverb tank itself, measured. Good. Good grounding. And shielding from the tank.

[Christopher Guest]

Right.

[Kyle]

You know, and the tube that drives and the tube that recovers the reverb. All of them are good.

[Skip]

Right.

[Kyle]

So as the first kind of hum that this amp was suffering from, the second kind of hum, once again, start with the reverb and all volume controls down and don't necessarily have to have anything plugged into the front of the amp. You start to turn up, let's say, volume control on channel one, and you get an obnoxious hum. Sounds a little bit different than the reverb hum, but you know, it's obnoxious. And again, once, once more. Way more than you would want in an amp you're going to use. But then, you know, let's say you turn up channel one to five. If you turn up channel two to five, the hum disappears. Gone. So once again, to cross a few things off the list there, the input shorting jacks, they're clean. They're making good contact. We have good grounding on the input jacks with nothing plugged in. The tubes are good. They check good, you know, sockets. Everything is. Is clean and tightened and checked. The general servicing has been done already. But we have this kind of hum where you turn up one volume and then you turn up the other one to the same level. It gets canceled out. So two kinds of hum solution after this.

[Skip]

He's been waiting all day for that.

[Jason]

Should we. Should we play the second part?

[Skip]

Depends on how long that goes. Is that 20, like 20 minutes of him playing the guitar while we ponder it?

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

There is a reason why we read stuff.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

All right. But though he did, he has also. We'll pause as I said. Well, that's blah, blah, blah to myself, you know, or that's caused by blah, blah, blah to myself. He has addressed most of the things that I would suggest would cause these problems. So I am all a Twitter to find out the solution.

[Jason]

Well, stay tuned for our next episode. And if anybody out there wants to submit what is wrong with this thing? Podcastreportjournal.com I think I probably have another can amp I could send somebody if you're the winner of this Baffler.

[Skip]

Good one, Good one. We'll make it into a real Baffler.

[Jason]

Yeah, we'll make it a real.

[Skip]

I don't know when you turn an amp up when nothing's plugged into it and it goes, that's usually because the amp doesn't have a grounded input jack, switching jack like Fenders, or the little switches are dirty. So it sounds just like you plugged a guitar cord into an amp and you don't have the guitar plugged in, just the cords laying out there on the floor. Floor. If you turn an amp up when that's when you have just a cord plugged in, they all. It has. It can't just have an open hot lead out there. But the reverb noise, you bet. I would have said tank. And cables that connect the tank to the amp is the number one reason why when you turn the reverb knob up, it's noisier than it should be. But apparently it is not either of my two pat answers. So I will. I will look forward to it. I'm marking my calendar.

[Jason]

Yes.

[Skip]

No, I really.

[Jason]

Two weeks from now, right around 1st of June. We'll. We'll figure that out. But send us questions, folks, or send us the answers. Bruce in Seattle writes, Skip, I hear the terms getter and wings used in describing tubes. What are they?

[Skip]

I don't really know this stuff very well.

[Jason]

So is this another baffler?

[Skip]

Not. It's referring to different. Let's see, up on the top of like a 6L6, there's some sort of little structure. Sometimes it's a little halo thing, and sometimes it looks like this or it looks like that. These are inside terms describing the construction of a tube. And I'm not really too hot on that. I know that after they make a tube, they put some sort of electricity into it that burns off the remaining impurities that are inside the vacuum. And that has something to do with the getter and that chrome shiny stuff that's on the inside of a lot of power tubes inside the glass, either at the top or on the side. That has something to do with it, too. So we'll have some real smart tube guy like to get Eric Barber, man. He worked for Svetlana and he wrote a lot of stuff for Vacuum Tube Valley magazine. He'd be somebody that could really tell us a lot about that, but I'm kind of weak on that. I just want it to work, not how it works.

[Jason]

Yeah, get her in Wings sounds like a tube amp themed sports bar.

[Skip]

Oh, touche. That was the cleverest thing said today.

[Jason]

No, not at all. Bruce also asked me if I. Because he knows I run. Any chance of submitting for the Barkley marathon? No, that's not my thing. Although he mentions the documentary about it and it is, and says, I can see some parallels in the cultures between the amp world and the people who do a crazy ultra run. But yeah, that's all.

[Skip]

I don't know. What's the Barkley Marathon?

[Jason]

The Barkley Marathon is a marathon in Tennessee that this demented former runner named. He goes by Lazarus Lake has invented. Where you show up and you're not allowed to have a GPS or a phone or anything. And he kind of gives you a vague route that might be 100 to 150 miles and a very tight deadline of. And you have to go to these little stations and rip out a specific page of a. Of a paperback novel that he's left in the woods. And if you don't have all the pages of the book from every station, then you're disqualified. And he tries to make it so that it's impossible to finish the race every year. But usually one to three people do finish it. It's. It's very demented. It's a lot of like bushwhacking.

[Skip]

Yeah, that's a lot like the tube amp world.

[Jason]

Totally. Like two amps.

[Skip]

Same thing. When I'm biasing. That's. That's what I'm thinking. I got 80, 80 hours on the new lawnmower. So that's nine to five to 40 hour weeks sitting on that sucker. You'll notice, you'll notice the parallel to the Barkley Marathon. Right.

[Jason]

I'm gonna sound like I'm a real farmer. So when, when do you have to first service that thing if you got that many hours?

[Skip]

I've serviced it. Yeah, we'll be up for like the second oil. Third oil change here pretty quick. Okay.

[Jason]

Nice.

[Skip]

It's just this wet spring, man. The places that I haven't watered anything yet as far as irrigation, but we had such a wet spring that the grass just keeps growing and growing. And there's a big field that I don't irrigate that I use the tractor on and would be waist high and bright green right now if I hadn't. If I hadn't gotten after it. Of course, the goal being to get it so that it's not a fire hazard once it's dry.

[Jason]

Sure.

[Skip]

Yeah. Just like tube amps and the Barkley Marathon. You can see the parallel there.

[Jason]

Yeah, exactly. Listener David writes. Has anyone ever put the tweed Princeton tone circuit in a guitar?

[Skip]

Oh, that's a good idea.

[Jason]

I'm sure someone's done everything.

[Skip]

Well, there sort of is. Telecasters have a little capacitor on the volume control, so when you turn the volume down, it stays bright. So a treble bleed, which is basically the same thing as we're talking on a tweed Princeton. And Then all guitars have a capacitor and a pot to ground. That basically rolls off highs, which is also what the Tweed Deluxe and tweed Princeton tone control does. So I don't know. Yeah, but do it and see what happens.

[Jason]

David adds a cooking tip at the end. If you want tender meat, leave it swaddled in some tin foil and some towels for two plus hours to help the connective tissues break down. I'm sure some of the chefs out there can sound off better details and instructions. I've even seen people wrap their ribs in plastic wrap, foil blankets, then put it in a cooler to keep it warm for, like, 12 hours. Experiments. That's from David.

[Skip]

That's going to make vegetarians out of some people. Yes. You want the connective tissues to break down before you start gnawing on that thing. You had to hang meat in the old days, right? Like you slaughtered a lamb or whatever. You had to hang that thing. And it does break down, but you want to avoid the soft mold stage. It starts to get green or something. Right. But that's a good call. I like to just. If something's tough, I like to just cook it really slow. In cast iron. Yeah, cast iron. One reason why I like it is I have time. Now. I always had a few pans, but in my. Most of my life, I didn't have time to. They heat up slow, they cook slow, they cool off slow. And when. If you have kids and stuff like that. No, you just got to crank it out. Right. And now that I have time to go over and put the iron, the pan on the. On the stove and, like, just warm it up for 10 or 15 minutes. Like, wait a minute. I have to leave in 15 minutes with the kids in the gar. I ain't got time for this. So I was just thinking about that the other day. If you're into cooking with cast iron, remember, it takes forever to heat up and forever to cool down. And you got to use that to your advantage. And if you have a super busy life, forget it.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

Oh, and I found some. Jill. Jill has found some really good stuff lately. I have one. I have. I'm not sure I can get it serviceable again without a lot of work, because it's pretty rusty. But we're talking, like 1880, you know, old. Right. You'd like it. You. You'd know what to do if you had a pot with a lid. You know, things that you would cook in the oven. You can actually just cook on top of the stove for, you know, hours at a really slow temperature and the whole thing. That's why they call them like an oven. You know, it's different than just having a stainless steel pot on the pan. I don't know how I veered onto cast iron.

[Jason]

I don't know. I. I'm still stuck on the word swaddled for, for food and.

[Skip]

And you don't swaddle in foil. You need something soft, right? What if the baby Jesus was swaddled in the foil?

[Jason]

It'd be a whole different story. It would be a whole different story.

[Skip]

We do applaud the verbiage and a good, a good word. I'm down.

[Jason]

Okay, keep the questions coming, folks. [e-mail] Here is another voice memo.

[Listener from band 'in use']

Skip and Jason, this is long time listener Tom here. Just arriving home from work at the drum factory. Drums is in instrument. Drums rolling into beautiful Jamaica Plain. I wanted to travel about a super reverend that I got a few months ago. Found it on Facebook for 700 bucks. And it's a silver face super reverb that's been rehoused into a twin cabinet. It's got casters on the bottom. Just been needing a larger amp for my band in use and it did the trick. You know, I fell in love as soon as I tried it out. Bought it and started blowing fuses. Blew a fuse when I turned it up real loud all the way to like 8 or 9. Had some nice crunch to it because there's just 2 tens in it. You know, there's a little like wooden ring bolted onto the baffle to accommodate the 10. So initially when I got it, there was an original speaker to the AMP110 and then a modern Jensen P12 or a P10, I think. So, yeah, it started blowing fuses, blue fuses. At practice. Blew a fuse at a show. I bought a bag of a bunch of them. It's got a push pull pot on the master volume and that seems to make it a little brighter. That's all I can really hear from it. I haven't taken it out to look at what that does yet. But you know, I don't engage the push pull pot. I leave it as is. But recently I put a 12 inch speaker in it. Just one 12 inch speaker. I left the Jensen P10 in there and I took out the old original Fender 10 inch speaker and I put in a celestian G12 M70 and totally changed the headroom and volume of the amp. And just like the breakup and everything, you know, I think I was getting like A lot of speaker distortion just because of that old 10 that was in there. Now what I'm wondering is because I put this 70 watt speaker in there and it's like a 70 watt or 80 watt amp, you know, was overloading the speakers somehow making the fuse blow. I don't know if that's like a thing that can happen. Definitely curious, you know, I mean, I haven't blown a few since and I've been playing it loud. I haven't had to turn the volume up as loud to get that crunch that I want as a result of the larger, higher wattage speaker, which is nice. So I'm definitely not like working the amp as hard. But yeah, I mean, the thing is bulletproof. Last. Last show that we played, we played at o' Brien's Pub in Austin, a little part of Boston. And I drive a Subaru, I mean, a Volvo cross country with the hatchback, you know, and when I opened the hatchback, the amp just did a front flip out of the back of my car and landed upside down on the ground. And the impact was so great that it cracked the sides of the cabinet on both sides, like pushing them out.

[Skip]

Word.

[Listener from band 'in use']

But, you know, I flipped it over, I brought it inside, flip the switch, plug my guitar in, and still worked. So pretty sweet. Yeah, things bulletproof. But yeah, curious what your thoughts are on the speaker thing. Like I said, haven't blown a fuse since that happened. Maybe the fuse that was in it was a bum fuse.

[Matthew]

Who knows?

[Listener from band 'in use']

I will probably take that bright push, pull pot thing and take it out and revert it to the original as well. And I'm assuming that you'll probably tell me that that may be part of my problem here, but. Yeah, check out my band in use in between in and use there four underscores on our Instagram page.

[Jason]

And.

[Listener from band 'in use']

And it's in use on all your streaming services. And yeah, you guys are the best. I appreciate everything that you do. I've been listening to the podcast since day one. I've listened to it a few times through. Honestly, you guys are the best. I love listening to it while I'm working. It's really. The banter keeps me going. Wish I had a recipe for you guys, but I've been yapping for a while now, so I'll leave it at this. Thanks, guys.

[Skip]

Well, there is an advantage to having you or I read there's a little bit more, slightly more focused than that.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And we don't usually read while we're standing, you know, next to the freeway. It Sounded like he was hitchhiking to the next gig.

[Jason]

He works for a drum factory though his hearing might be.

[Skip]

That's cool.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

If an amp keeps blowing fuses, the right fuse, then something's wrong with it. If it does it once and it doesn't do it again, it could have just been doing what a fuse is supposed to do. Like there was some beef when the ice machine turned on and off. That caused a power surge and the fuse blew. The thing that grabs me is this is a 2 ohm amp, super reverb, 2 ohms. And I think he's running a single 8 ohm speaker or even a single 16 ohm speaker because it's a celestian now, 100% up or down. Okay, but four times. So I fix a lot of super reverbs where I don't have the cabinet and I still plug them into my 8 ohm test cabinet. But I can tell through experience if the amp sounds good. But a single 8ohm speaker just doesn't have the oomph of a 2ohm load on a super reverb the speakers it's supposed to have. So I'd say better check that out. Even a single 8 ohm speaker, I guess it quote unquote wouldn't hurt the amp, but it's certainly not what it's supposed to be doing. And I'd be looking into that. The pull switch on the master volume, you can't disconnect that, homeboy. Just don't use it. Clean the pot, dime the master. Because remember, on a Fender the master volume is only a cut. It doesn't really add any gain at all. Right. And if you don't like the sound of the boost when you pull that switch out, it should add like a little crunch and distortion to the thing. But if you don't like it, unless you really know what you're doing, don't take it out. Just don't use it.

[Jason]

And

[Skip]

we can't let everyone hype their band endlessly, can we? No, we.

[Jason]

We try to weed those out.

[Skip]

But yeah, but that's okay. He sounded and he did say he listened to everyone, which is still mind boggling to me.

[Jason]

If you listen to every episode, we'll plug your band once in a while.

[Skip]

We listen to everyone. We'll play your rambling message. It's like if you can eat this gigantic five pound porterhouse, you get it for free.

[Jason]

Swaddled meat.

[Skip]

No ice. Ice cream. If you can eat the huge ice cream sundae that they had it at Feral's ice cream in Sacramento, where I went one day. And later that day, a jet crashed into the.

[Jason]

I knew this story was coming. Oh, my God.

[Skip]

I was there that day. That day. Earlier that day just was not my time. I've. I have told this. The choir story, haven't I? The school bus.

[Jason]

Yes, you have told that story. That's. That's an awesome.

[Skip]

Yeah. If I hadn't gotten a C in chemistry, I'd probably be dead.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And if I had gone to the. To the ferals ice cream. It was an air show that they were having down at the old airport, which is in. Down, like in Sacramento, not out in the suburbs. And that's where it was. And we decided to leave whenever we left and went over there. And later that day, a jet was taken off and an old 50s jet at this air show and something went wrong and it crashed into that thing. Whoa.

[Jason]

I'm sure there's a Wikipedia for that because that was pretty. That was a pretty famous accident.

[Skip]

Horrible. Yeah. Anyway, also proof that we don't edit these.

[Jason]

No, not at all.

[Skip]

Hopefully this guy can listen to his voicemail a couple times. I should have rolled the window up. Okay. Okay, next.

[Jason]

Yeah, Federico, thank you for your pizza dough recipe. It was so long. I just threw it on our Patreon page because I didn't know where else to put it.

[Skip]

Homemade pizza.

[Jason]

Then we've also got Martin In Charlotte, N.C. just wants everybody to know about the Tonequest Report, another great magazine for guitar enthusiasts. So. Yes, we love the Tonequest Report.

[Skip]

Report. Obscure. Very little advertising.

[Jason]

Very little advertising.

[Skip]

Very interesting.

[Jason]

No advertise. Does it have advertising? I don't think.

[Skip]

Yeah, no, no, no advertising. A little click of people that are always in it. Right, sure. And so a. Some. A somewhat narrow view at times, you know, on what to do, but worthwhile. I ran into a big pot. I ran into like all of them at the house of a deceased amp tech nerd guy and got them all. I forget who has them. I think. I think the great Bill Cleland, who took the picture of me standing outside the Tyler Island Bridge house talking on the phone in the orange shirt. I think that guy has them. But if you ever see any, they're certainly. They're certainly worthwhile.

[Jason]

Speaking of community and cool stuff, Craig from Tin Can Valley sent a note about your potential barn sale that he would letterpress some posters for it, which is just amazing.

[Skip]

Yeah, I use this stuff all the time.

[Jason]

Yeah. So go to tin canvalley.com for all your letterpress needs. And I'm going to read this question from Portland, Oregon's Gil. I recently bought a 1974 trainer YGM3. This amp is the final piece to my trainer collection. How many trainer amps does one need for Canadian citizens citizenship? That's a good question. My question is, while taking apart the reverb tank, I noticed that there was disintegrated foam rubber around the lip of the reverb tank that I can only assume was acting as a gasket. I can only guess its purpose was to isolate or prevent a metal on metal vibration with the chassis to which it is directly mounted. My question is what should I use as a gasket when reassembling this amp? Thank you for the years of entertainment. I don't work on amps nearly as much as I used to. Your podcast is quite been a great help in retaining the knowledge I used to use every day. That's from Gil included a picture which I will share on our Instagram page.

[Skip]

It.

[Jason]

It looks like a. Like a valve cover gasket, but it's for a reverb tank.

[Skip]

So the reverb tank mounts on the chassis of this bad boy, Is that right? Not in the bottom of the cabinet,

[Jason]

right on the metal where the tubes are there where you. Yeah,

[Skip]

a trainer's one of the best made, most undervalued amps ever. Beware of getting stuff shipped from Canada. It's the worst either direction to or from and see what I would use. You know, I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen that. I know I've seen some trainers where the tank is just screwed to the chassis. I believe the idea would be to isolate it somewhat from vibration. So an old school way would be, I don't know, a gasket material, cork felt, even some corrugated cardboard that was, you know, thicker, not just like one layer thick or even something like, I don't know, you could take. That'd be messy. A little bead of silicone around the tank, be a nice little squishy thing. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I think I just use something that you have around the house that would, that would just separate the metal from the metal just a little bit because it's a head, I believe. And so it's going to be pretty immune to vibration from the speakers. It's combo amps you got to worry about. That's why they put the tank in the bag to try to isolate the vibration from the speakers but still go, train or go.

[Jason]

If I remember, I Think I used to live in some pretty drafty shitty apartments and houses and, and at Ace Hardware you can get that sort of adhesive backed foam that would be good with an X acto knife you could kind of make a nice little rectangle.

[Skip]

Yes, you could.

[Jason]

Look at me with the amp tips.

[Skip]

Nice going. And, and reminiscing with your drafty old apartment.

[Jason]

Yes.

[Skip]

Yeah, something like that. Weatherstrip material would probably be great and probably available.

[Jason]

That's what I was.

[Skip]

Local Ace. If you're ever in Vacaville, California, Pacific Hardware I 80 runs right through it. So if you're ever going from the Bay Area to Sacramento, you're going right past one of the last great hardware stores where you just walk in the front door and there's five grown men standing there going, you finding everything okay? And you hold out in your hand whatever it is and they go, huh? And you just follow them back through this maze that you could barely even find your way out of. And he opens up a little drawer and he hands it to you. A cork, say for instance, or a little spring. Or they stock all this stuff that they must only sell one of in a year, but they still do it. And they staff the place with a bunch of people at the cash registers and a bunch of trades guys. I mean you go to the paint shop and the guy has been a painter all his life and you ask him what should I do about this or that and he's going to tell you. Pacific Hardware in Vacaville, just in case.

[Jason]

Yeah, you go see Barry at Gres Guitars.

[Skip]

Yeah, you could, you could. Bill Kernard loves to meet me there because he, he says he's always finding something that, that you can use there. The housewares department is mind boggling. They have all these old fashioned cleaning products and stuff that you don't see. Full line of lodge cookware by the way, new cast iron, which will work if you're willing to take some time to get it seasoned. So an interesting place and a definite. There used to be a place like that in every decent sized town or city. And there still are hardware stores, but not ones that, that go to the minutia. You can get stainless steel sheet metal screws that I use all the time for the bottom plates of PA heads and stuff like that, you know. So anyway, moving on, moving on.

[Jason]

I'm going to play another voice memo. This is from Matthew in Atlanta. It's about a vintage Rickenbacker M11 and he added the PS I forgot to mention in my voice memo. But it is all original. So here we go.

[Matthew]

Hey, Skip and Jason, this is Matthew from Atlanta calling again. Big fan of the show. Thanks again for all your hard work. I wanted to poll Skip about an old amp I just picked up. I don't think I've heard him talk about before. It's a Rickenbacker M11. It seems kind of like a Deluxe 2.6V6S 212X7. It's got an old Jensen P12R in there. And let's see, the pot codes read IRC 6152 385. Not sure how old this thing is. I think late 50s, maybe early 60s. But I was curious to ask Skip if he's heard this amp, what he thinks of the circuit, if it's cool or maybe it'd be better off converted to similar kind of Fender Deluxe thing. I have an old Fender Deluxe, but I've always kind of coveted the 5E3 circuit. I'm always kind of curious because I've never really played one, so maybe that would be cool. So thanks for your input here. Quick music recommendation. I'm a huge fan of African guitar music. I don't feel like I've heard it talked about too much on the show, but one of my favorites is King Sunny Ade. I like this kind of compilation record, gems from the classic years. I think it's like old four track recordings, but man, just some super fun stuff. Great for warm weather and pretty different. So if you're hip to African music, you've probably heard this, but if not, check it out. Thanks again for the podcast, guys. Cheers.

[Skip]

Excellent music recommendation. That stuff is. That stuff's fab. If Jim Campolongo was on with us right now, he'd, he'd have some comments about that band and some. No, that's. That's some unapproachably cool stuff. So solid there. Now Rickenbacker M11. I bet you that the chassis is held into the cabinet with just four big ugly flathead wood screws. A straight up sign of the great Ray Massey. That's probably a Massey built amp for Rickenbacker and it just needs to be fixed and it'll sound killer. No, you don't take something like that because you want a 5e3. If you took that and did whatever to it, you still wouldn't have a 5v3. You know, I had a guy come who he bought a boutique new 410tweed baseman because he said he always wanted a vintage tweed basement. Well, he spent all that Money, he still doesn't have one and you don't have the stuff, you know, to make it. So The Massey Rickenbacker M11 is going to sound great. It may use some chintzy parts, it might have some bad capacitors, but a lot of those ones, date code sounds like it's from 61, 62. It might have the blue molded coupling caps and if it does, those aren't bad. So get that thing serviced and fixed and don't change it to something else. And if you really want a 5e3, just put it in there with like I, I want, you know, a vintage Land Rover, you know, sure, but unlikely. Those are really expensive. Even ones like yours are pretty expensive. So it's just, I mean if you got the money, they don't go down in value. But nowadays what's that? Like maybe five grand and up. And that's the only way you're going to have a Tweet Deluxe, in my opinion. Not that you can't have something that sounds just as good or not exactly, necessarily exactly the same, but there's loads of amps that sound like that or in that ballpark, heck, there's PA heads that sound like old Tweed Deluxes. But if you really want something old like that, you pretty much just have to have it. You can't get a reissue twin reverb if you really want a twin reverb, you know, can't get one of those Porsche speedsters with the fiberglass body and stuff if you really want a real Porsche Speedster. So just. Nothing wrong with wanting something you can't afford. I want more land. I'd like to own the Sutter Buttes but you know, gotta limit ourselves. What's on the bench?

[Jason]

What's on the bench?

[Skip]

Sweet basement. Okay, this one has a pretty cool story. There was a real professional musician named Slim Dossey. D O S S E Y His first name is Warner, like the Warner Mountains. Warner Slim Dossey. And I've seen pictures of him with his nudie suit and everything in his guitar. And he worked at Fender for 10 years in the late 50s. And the story is coming through a guy named Mike Black bigsby [e-mail] who's owned Bigsby's and has spent the last 20 or 30 years. Every chance he gets, he, he makes the effort to talk to, to western swing players. He lives out in the Bay Area and he's actually hung out and yacked with tons of old time western swing players, including this guy. And when, when Slim Dawsey died. Mike Black helped the family sold some stuff. Supposedly there was like a 59 jazz bass that was just really outrageous that this guy had. But the story is, is that Slim asked Forest White, Fender plant manager, about getting an amp. And he was used to the basement amps because they had had those earlier in his career. And Forrest said, well, this is the last day we're making them. You should go down and pick one out. So here's this basement as 61 speakers in it, which, you know, theoretically is too new. And the serial number is way up there. It's one of the. It's. I mean, might be kind of hard to prove, but pretty obviously one of the very last tweed basements made and owned by this. By a guy who you can see a picture of in his nudie suit, you know, with his guitar and stuff. Right. Like a pro. And that amp is in the shop.

[Jason]

Wow.

[Skip]

Yeah, so that's. That's pretty cool. Next to a tweed basement. That was at Alameda Flea Market, a huge flea market where hipsters had been going for decades. I remember that $2,000 and is there all day long because it was wasted. You know, the painted over tweed, wrong grill cloth missing the back panel, no tubes. I think it only had one speaker in it. But a guy gambled and he scored. I'm going to send. I'll get a picture of that for the Facebook page. It looks really old and funky, and it was all just filthy and full of rat poo and stuff. But that thing works awesome. And it's all original except for two coupling caps. That's all I had to put in it. Original filter caps. This thing looks like it was out in a barn. Not. Not quite in the rain, but definitely in a rough environment for a really long time. And once again, it just shows if you're gonna drop something out of the back of your. What that guy say? Out of Subaru? No, Volvo.

[Jason]

He was confused on what car he owned, which was a weird thing. Yeah.

[Skip]

If you're gonna drop something out of your Subaru or Volvo, first of all, it better be a Fender, because this thing just. This thing just took a licking. And. And the owner of it was all about, hey, don't change anything if you don't have to. So I did a very careful job going over it. I probably took six or eight hours at least on the Variac, charged up all the original filter caps and everything. And. And there you go. Ready? Still working. Yeah. The slimmed Aussie amp is dead original. And that guy is probably going to Sell that at some point because he's a fam. He's, you know, married. He's not one of those guys that has everything he's ever had since he was 10. You know, he has to pony, you know, he's gotten rid of some stuff. He's had some big speed pedal steels and so it's kind of amp that you want to tweed basement. That would be one to invest in right there. Just saying. That's what was on the bench.

[Jason]

Okay. Love it. Any more thoughts on the big barn sale?

[Skip]

Only dark thoughts, no. Gotta remember that I'm not just blabbing to you sometimes a lot of people

[Jason]

listen to the show, believe it or not.

[Skip]

I, I thought it was 10 people who listened 10 times each, but. But I, I still said it's a good idea. I've gotten so much response wildly. I mean some people that want to have it be a three day, you know, lollapalooza, and some people that want, well, every. We can have other people bring stuff to sell, like a giant swap meet. And some people saying, are you out of your mind? You don't want to do that. That's going to be terrible. But it's. I just letting our friends in on. I remember I take my time, I'm slow. My whole thing over all these years has just been to get up when it's dark and just keep chugging away at it right slowly. And we'll get around, we'll get around to it. And of course, if it inspires someone to come over and drop. Some guy came over, he spent. He spent like four or five hundred dollars, but he got some nice PAs and then a mountain of stuff. I, you know, I start when I get going like that, I just take it, take it. How about this? Five bucks? And so if you're looking to go the other way from me and inquire more vintage parts, more ingredients, then you just wind your way over to Loma Rica sometime and bring some money. And I can guarantee you that I can give you some stuff to get you started, get you some, get you some real parts. I can't, I, I'm. I don't see how you try to fix something and the. Not that we don't love amplified parts, but having to go buy brand new every time you need a resistor or capacitor or something. I'm spoiled, man. It takes me more time, but I can usually find the part if it's an old part that I want, just because it's in that organ chassis, that danger UXB brought me last year or whatever. So if anybody wants some parts, tubes, you know, I have things like I believe I probably have 40 or 50 EL34s that are, you know, probably good used poles. I'm never going to use that. But if somebody wants some EL34s for like 10 of them for five bucks a piece, then, well, maybe 10 bucks a piece, then, you know, something to consider. And that bill, when you go buying tubes and parts, boy, can, can add up. Whereas scrounging junk takes time, but it's not as expensive and storing it, you

[Jason]

know, I didn't, I didn't thank Matthew with the Rickenbacker M11, but he did send photos of it. So. Thank you, Matthew, everybody. When you send in a question, try to, try to include a photo.

[Skip]

Joe, if he sent a gut shot, if he sent a shot of the inside.

[Jason]

No, I didn't.

[Skip]

Well, that's what Tava people want to see.

[Jason]

I know.

[Skip]

Does it have the blue molded. Does it have the trademark Massey style of construction with the wood screws holding the thing in? Most Ricks from that period are done by him. And they all sound great. Rocking. Yeah.

[Jason]

This next one is from Phil on Long Island. Once you have had a vintage guitar amp gone over by a tech and it needed to be recapped and the electrolytic parts used are new, does an attenuator still make sense? For example, a Champ or a Gibson Falcon. That skipped it.

[Skip]

Do you think he really means an attenuator, which I, I call a gizmo that goes between the guitar and the amp so that you can turn down the amp? I think he might be talking about. Is he talking about a Variac?

[Jason]

Yeah, I bet he's talking about a Variac.

[Skip]

So the idea is, if you've replaced all the electrolytic capacitors, some of which were perfectly fine in most case, many cases. Does that mean that you don't ever need to do the slow warm up provided by turning the Variac up to power up your amp? No, you don't have to. I mean, nobody did the Variac forever. They just turned the dang thing on.

[Jason]

I would say most people still don't have a Variac.

[Skip]

No, you'd be surprised now that they're 75 on Amazon. You know, I know a lot of people who've gotten them and I recommend them for almost everyone. If you have amps that run too, that were made in the 70s, that run really hot, were made in the 40s, that run on, you know, way lower wall voltage. So that's the way to do it. And if you have so many amps that you haven't turned that one on in a year, then you're doing everybody a favor by powering it up over the course of an hour, say or even a half an hour, even five minutes with a variac, even if it does have new electrolytic capacitors. So I consider that to be now that they're not really expensive and hard to find. I would say don't buy another stomp box if you have cool old amps until you get an affordable little variac. They're pretty handy.

[Jason]

Phil adds Saw this great recipe for leftover rice. Put a handful of rice in a round ladle, line it around the inside of the ladle, leaving space in the center for any cooked, cooked filling of your choice. Cooked minced meat, chicken or veggies, cheese and seasoning. Take a little more rice and cap, creating a rice ball. At this point. You can deep fry until crispy in heated olive oil or oil of your choice. Or for a crispier crust, dipped in scrambled eggs and coat in a seasoned bread crumbs. Panko is good. Fry until crispy and sprinkle with seasonings and or sauces of your choice. Great for any kind of cuisine, especially leftovers. Rice balls.

[Skip]

Rice balls. Wow. You need a lot of oil to submerge that thing. You need a small pot.

[Jason]

I didn't know where he was going when he said put in a ladle. I was like, clearly this is. This is the wrong word, like swaddling. But no, he meant a ladle.

[Skip]

There's probably some swaddling involved in this, though, so. Well, just to form a little bowl so you could. Of rice. Cold rice, so you could put your junk in there.

[Jason]

Melon ball, but of rice and meat.

[Skip]

What a crowd.

[Jason]

I know. Wow.

[Skip]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, I still need the schematic for the epiphone belongs to Roy Rogers. I got a lot of people sending me schematics, but they're. They're all the ones I've seen a million times. It's a wooden epiphone with the E cut out. You know, the old bandstand style. And it's all octals and it has vibrato. It's like two 6sj7s. Two 6sn7s. A couple other preamp tubes, two 6l6s. And it's had some parts taken out of it. And I. I'm having a. It's going to be. If I had a Schematic. It would make it so much easier to get this thing going. And it's going to be a nightmare as it is because it's really complicated. And all the parts that I know have to be replaced are all buried underneath the part board. Like there's a part board, but all the parts that you want to replace are under it. So you still have to take massive disassembly. So if anybody has any of those, any one. If anybody even has an amp like that, and you could let me know. Epiphone, Electar, Zephyr with tremo, all octals, no nine pin tubes. So it's old, like 1940 anyway. Got any more?

[Jason]

Yeah. Oh, we have so many more, including some voice memos that I can tell by the file size are extremely long. But we'll go with a slightly easier one, at least for the listening perspective. Hi, Skip and Jason. Thank you for the Tava podcast. I've learned a lot about vintage tube amps since beginning listening in 2021 and gained the confidence to build from scratch a tweed Princeton clone. First, I'd like Skip's input on my 1964 Princeton C or 6G2. The tremolo stopped working after the amp sat unused for a while. I've cleaned the sockets, wiggled V1 and V2, and tried a different 12 AX7 and V2. Is the next step to replace the three ceramic disc caps in the tremolo circuit? Or is there something else to check before taking that step?

[Skip]

So this is what year? 64.

[Jason]

64.

[Skip]

So this would be what you call a tuxedo Princeton. It's really the old brown Princeton with just volume and tone. Not volume, treble, bass, like a. Like you'd think from 64. So it's really the earlier brown style Princeton with just volume and tone, speed and intensity. And I guess he's saying the amp works fine, but the tremolo doesn't work. If you've replaced the tube that makes the tremolo work, the next thing is either be smart enough to start testing some components or be a dope and start ripping out a bunch of shit and replacing it and hoping that that fixes it. Does that.

[Jason]

It's like a Goofus and Galleon.

[Skip]

So don't. No, don't. Don't take out all the caps that make the tremolo go. The three caps. Because that might not be it. What you should have. I was going to guess I'd say the little bypass cap involved in that circuit is bad. So should you just replace it? No, you should bust out your ESR capacitor checker and see if it doesn't even swing the needle. Then you got to take that part out and it might just fix the tremolo. If it does swing the needle, it still could be the capacitor, but it's a lot less likely. And you got to start thinking about measuring voltages, things like that, just knowing more. When a tremolo is working, you can put a voltmeter in there and you can see the voltage going, right. A guy who was really going down that road would consult Jack Dar and his, you know, two paragraphs on how to troubleshoot the tremolo. Right? Because that's right right there. One other tip I'll give them is sometimes those capacitors break because they put them really tight, real short leads right next to the part board, I think, to help with some sort of oscillation. So you can get down there and wiggle them and make sure that they're all there. A lot of times the wire, not a lot, but fairly regularly. I see one of those little disc capacitors will actually be physically broken. So the wire itself is snapped off right where it solders to the board. Now, if that's the case, you got to replace it. But I wouldn't take out all three of those and put in three new ones and hope that fixes it. Learn more or send me the chassis.

[Jason]

Okay, Mike's second question. I live in an apartment and want to be able to play through my Princeton clone when my neighbor is home. So I'd like to add a stereo headphone output jack, switchable in and out. Would adding an 8 ohm 5 or 10 watt resistor across the output connections be the way to go about this? Or would there be a need to for additional resistors involved? I found a schematic for adding such a circuit to a stereo amp. And it had two 100 ohm resistors in series with each stereo hot wire. Or is adding a headphone jack a bad idea? That's from Mike in Michigan.

[Skip]

My Fisher tube stereo hi fi amp has a jack that says headphones. And when you plug into it, it. It shuts off the speakers. But there is a dummy load, a fake speaker that gets inserted into the circuit, basically like an 8ohm resistor. In other words, a speaker that you can't hear. However, smart people know that a speaker is not 8 ohms. Its impedance goes up and down all over the place while you're putting different frequencies through it. So yes, you could put A you could just plug into your speaker jack with a great big ass. I'd suggest at least a 10 watt. 20 watt would probably be better. 8ohm resistor. And now your amp is on, on and it's working, but you won't hear any sound because the speaker's not plugged into it. Now if you have some little circuit where you've got a headphone that can now be plugged into that mess, then it would work. The 100ohm resistor thing is all about trying to take a mono signal and splitting it into two. I don't really think you'd need to do that. I think you just need to have the plus and minus. Wait a second. The left and right connected together. But you could put those series resistors in there and you want. And then. And the real key was the last thing he said. I just can't rock the headphones, man. I mean, it's a novelty to me that I remember years ago. I was like. I mean I'd have to be in some dire straits before I'd play an amp and listen to it on headphones rather than just barely crack it on and just sit there right by it and play it at fair, you know, really low volume. So you might not like the sound of playing through headphones. You know, that's not where. That's not how you hear it. You know, it's like having your head an inch from the speaker and it sounds kind of crappy compared to listening to it from five feet away in a room. So yes, you can. You know, there's probably a product that they make. Well, I know there is. That you plug in in place of a speaker that's supposed to be. And a real active load, you know, that change. In other words, an emulation of a speaker and those kind of products might even have a jack where you plug in headphones now. And it will do that. It'll work. But I don't know if you'll find that in a year from now. You've been listening, you've been playing that amp a lot because you can play it through your headphones. It's it. If that's the only way you get to play then, then I. You might look into that. But that little dinky amps, that's one reason why we like them. A little tweed champ sounds pretty cool when it's just barely cracked on, you know, and you're just sitting right in front of it. You can. And it can be pretty low volume. So I don't know Report back if you decide to do a headphone thing.

[Jason]

Yeah, all right, we'll do one or two more. This one is from Justin.

[Justin]

Hey, this is Justin, the electrical engineer behind the VHT Special 6 which has been mentioned previously and the author of the first hate mail to the podcast here. In my regular job I've been spending some time on the Jensen Transformers website because I've been using them to solve ground loop and other problems. I'd like to inform the listeners here what a great resource the site is. There are simple schematics available there for very useful gadgets that the DIY listener base here can make use of. Examples are a direct box amp schematic as 007, a two way passive guitar splitter schematic as 013 which can be made into an AB box balanced line level to unbalanced guitar level converter as 092 which is basically a reamp device. I personally have built and experimented with a two channel version of the isolated line output from guitar amplifier AS045 to use in home stereo applications. This is a circuit that connects to a stereo amplifier output in parallel with the main left and right speakers to isolate and convert the signal to a low level RCA left and right output to drive another system or a subwoofer. I gotta say this works very well and sounds spectacular in the correct setup. The intent of publishing that design is to convert a speaker output level signal from a guitar amp to a level to a lower level to drive another amp. Not unlike the resistor divider pad that many of us have added to guitar amps like Champs and the Tweed Deluxe. Go to Jensen. Then in the resources tab drop down and look for the schematics. Parts Express is a good resource to purchase the Transformers in the USA or I've purchased direct from Jensen in the past. Looking forward to the party in Loma Rica.

[Matthew]

Whoa.

[Jason]

Yeah. Did you know about that? No. Jensentransformers.com I'll include a link in the show notes.

[Skip]

I didn't know we ever had hate mail. I didn't know that the guy, he. He's the designer of the VHT something

[Jason]

or other which was like a special six.

[Skip]

Yeah, that's a tube amp that was super affordable that they sold a lot of. Yeah, well that stuff that he's talking about I don't know very much about at all except into very general way. But it sounds like a. It all made sense to me. Super nerdy and a cool thing. And if you want to. If you want to get into passive transformer coupling and things like that. Go, dog, go. And he's, he's talking, he's talking about some things that quite a few people would be interested in. So listen to it a couple times more and write down those schematic thing numbers that he mentioned and go and check some of that stuff out. And I bet, I bet you somebody is going to get some good, good use from that email. And so I thank you.

[Jason]

We'll do one more and then I think call it a day because this has been an action packed episode. And this is from Swaddled. Swaddled Slim. Slim. What was his name?

[Skip]

Slim Dawsey.

[Jason]

Not at all. Okay, this is from listener Sean Skip Jason.

[Sean]

Sean from west by God, Virginia. Although I'm sitting in Sarasota, Florida right now. Work trip. Anyway, hey went around with this one on the kegger a little bit. So short story. Found a 7645 watt Master Volume Pro

[Skip]

reverb,

[Sean]

opened it up. I'm servicing it virtually untouched down to the 100% RCA made in USA tubes. And some of them I could hardly get out of the tube sockets when taking a look at them. So anyway, servicing it, two questions for you. The first one is, so say this one's going to be gigged. I have measured what I can and everything seems to be working. Confined tremolo load is a little weak. But really who uses that when they're gigging anymore? Although you might. Anyway, everything measures out okay, sounds good. Low noise threshold. Nothing's been changed on it that I can see. Original caps all around. Resistors are checking. Good. And so I'm in Sarasota because we've had this discussion airline pilot. And in the airline world or the airplane world, there's some things that are time changing, some things are fly to fail. And so I'm really asking about, you know, there's stuff just, you know, with something that's 50 years old, you're in there, take care of this and you're good for the next while. That's the first question. The second one, you know, discussing. These are the, the bias balance pots on these silver faces. So I think there's two choices here. Well, there's three choices really. Leave it alone. If the biases checks out. Okay, add, add a bias adjust pot to it, you know, right there on the bias balance pot. And there's plenty of information on doing that. Or three, change it to the black face or black panel bias circuit. So what would skip do question mark? So those are the really the questions and then not a food Recipe. So my, my lovely wife is from southern Virginia. Cornbread cooks it in the cast iron and that's all that pan is for. But her cornbread is largely unsugared. So that's a whole bone of contention there whether you put sugar in your cornbread or not. But the two things to do with the cornbread once you've had the dinner are make molasses butter or honey butter. And that's basically equal parts salted butter with either molasses or honey. And then you stir that up to a froth and put it on the cornbread as dessert. You can thank me later. Anyway, Skip, Jason, thanks for all you do and have a great day out.

[Skip]

Thank you for flying Continental Airlines. I bet he talks like that when he has to talk on the.

[Jason]

I bet he does.

[Skip]

A pilot, right? Yeah, I don't make sugary cornbread or, I mean, there's a little. But it's not sweet. And I have a cast iron square pan right for that. And of course, tiny butter molasses butter on that after a big bowl of kale. Nothing better. So that's some good stuff. But the other stuff is all really. So he's got this 76 Pro reverb.

[Jason]

Yep.

[Skip]

If it was a 56 Pro, I'd say, what are you trying to do here? Do? Are we trying to maintain the value of it it? Are we trying to make it gig worthy? It's not. It's a 70s amp. If you want to, you can go ahead and replace all sorts of stuff in there that could theoretically go bad in the future. Electrolytic capacitors, say, for instance, if you want. It's not like the amp gods would really be upset with you unless you did a crappy job. But the tech gods would be slightly upset because we'd really want you to. To assess the components. I say this all the time. That's something that I've had to. That's important to me because just intrinsically I hate the whole thing of, well, I don't know what's wrong with it. I'm going to change all these parts or I'm going to replace all the tubes and hopefully that'll fix it. I want to know exactly what the problem is or exactly what it's going to take to fix it. So if you're really gigging and you're going to lay awake all night worrying about the failure of some part in the 76 Pro Reverb, go ahead, put some new filter caps in it. I'd say those little white Bypass caps in those amps are often are notorious. I'd say replace those. It might make the tremolo start working again. Now, the biasing control on those 70s amps sort of like raises one compared to the other. So that you could use unmatched tubes, really, but older ways. When you turn the bias control, both power tubes, you know, go up in current or down in current. The three options he rolled out are all fine. Leave it alone. Leave it alone. But add another little trim pot so that once the two tubes are balanced, you can then raise and lower room to the current that you want. Or three, which is change it to the way an older 60s amp would be more work, but all potentially doable. And my second Jack Dar quote today, biasing is. It's important, but people spend way too much time thinking about it. It's one paragraph in jackdar. You just want to be able to supply the negative voltage to these bigger fender amps, the right negative voltage, so that the power tubes that you have in that amp, those exact tubes are running within a range. You know, that's acceptable. Your tone quest types would be going, oh, no, it can't be 30 milliamps. It has to be 28 milliamps or 32 milliamps. I don't think that that's all that important. I think you just need to be in the ballpark. I've had lots of great sounding fenders that ran down at 20 and some that would run even as high as 40. But these are all fixed bias later amps, not. Not tweeds, stuff like that. They often run way more current than that. So any of those bias things would be fine. I'd ask yourself, do I really want to do this work? If it sounds like fun and you just can't wait to do it, then go ahead. But there's something to be said also is about just running it. You know, those things. Those things they can also run. Even though they're not perfect, they'll still keep running even after you dropped it out of your Subaru or your Volvo. You can't tell which they'll still work. So I think it's more like amp psychiatrist. If you really want to do it, go ahead. If you don't really want to do it, you don't have to. And make that cornbread. Don't put too much sugar in it. You can always put the honey on it later, right?

[Jason]

Yeah. Sean adds that he has an industrious family member who can make those fender washers. 200 washers for $500? Oh, I don't know.

[Skip]

Can't have somebody making them. It's a, it's a Carling part. Every Carling full size toggle switch has to have it. And there's, there's easily available ones that have a, a little notch that slips into the threaded part so that it can't move. There's ones that say on and off on them. I got tons of those. What we want is just the simple chrome thin washer that used to come with the switches.

[Jason]

Yeah.

[Skip]

And now, and now doesn't. And so what we want is somebody, somebody going, oh, well, Mojo Tone has got that Carling washer and they're 200 for 500 bucks. They need to be like a dollar a piece or less. Not that somebody who's making them on a lathe or something. Right? Well, yeah, if that's the only way we could ever get them, then I say, right on. And I, and I applaud whoever can actually make a washer like that from scratch. Very impressive. So, so far I haven't found a great source, but a couple people, Joe Moore sent me, I don't know, like 20 or 30 or something like that, you know, quite a few. So I just want to know where to go to buy them. And you'd think that like the washer for the input jacks is available, but the washer for the switches is not.

[Jason]

Weird. Oh well, Skip, we did it.

[Skip]

Yeah, we did. One more.

[Jason]

Yeah. Keep the question.

[Skip]

Still do the podcast. Yeah, we still do it.

[Jason]

We have to do it. We're changing lives.

[Skip]

Gotcha. I know. I'm not sure how. What I think about that. But anyway, we'll go back to your busy world and interviewing famous people and I'll go back to mowing and trying to keep, keep the amp pile from getting too out of control. I've been, I've had a few things that have taken a long time, but I've been doing okay. I, I don't want to be the guy where the amp is there for a year, you know, I just want to get it in, get it done. So I'll be busy.

[Jason]

Until next time. Keep the questions coming. Podcastritboardjournal.com thanks to all our listeners and

[Skip]

thanks of course, to all our sponsors. Gotta have it. Without that, we'd just be a couple of old geezers. Yakin.