The Amp Garage

Interesting that no fuse blowing has taken place! If you know anyone with a good tube tester like a Hickok 600 or such a test out in it for shorts would pick that right up. I would love to know what it’s internally arcing to. If that tube is removed from the amp does the bias voltage seen on pin 5 o...

Yes. With too high a wattage limiter bulb a SS amp may not turn on / power up enough to even idle.
Many times when the voltage is too low all you will hear out of the speaker is hum which might lead you to think that the amp has a problem when it does not.

If the 2nd 12 ax7 where missing then the amp would not play. V2A is the mixer for both channels and V2A is the phase splitter to drive the power tubes. In terms of any amp with just a tone control all it does is cut back the highs when turned down . The level of bass produced will only change with h...

The turn on current surge is much higher in a tube amp when the heaters are warming up then even what you would see with a 200 watt rms solid state amp getting powered up.

This might help.

And what in terms of your playing needs would as you say “ sound fabulous “?

If you start reducing the power supply voltage enough then what you like about the amps preamp section will be lost and at that point your truly better off to keep the amp as it is and open up your wallet to get a attenuator box on the output of the amp.

The only time I used 6V6 outputs at that high a voltage was in a Highwatt 50, and they where JJ brand since they are stated to be good up to 500 volts, and after having them in the high watt I do not question that.

All that has to be done is to remove a knob from the amp in question and compare.

This is front pot board and a chassis mounted pot for comparison.

Silvertone 1484 with KT66 outputs.

Just to be 100% clear, my reasoning for what I posted is grounded in many decades of replacing power transformers in amps that have only a mains Fuse. In terms of a vintage amp that’s seen 40 plus years of use ( effects of heat accumulation) and the situation of repetitive blowing of the mains fuse ...

A HT fuss will cover the whole DC side of the amp, but you mainly have filters that can go bad and output tubes. Filters will give you notice before they go south enough to pop the main fuse, but output tubes do not when they short . In light of this I would be more inclined to place in line with th...

The chassis I would say is not a one of since the nuts that will tie it up into the cabinet are tack welled in, so the amp started life as something else.

If your looking for any mid boost with aFender type tonestack the only way to get any of that or even get a flat response out of it is to turn the volume way up, crank full up the middle and set the bass and treble very low.

Well it’s got very hard to find knobs from a Heathkit from what I can tell. It’s got a T03 cased transistor mounted near the fuses so I would have to assume it’s DC powered heaters. It looks like it’s got a old paper cased filter in there and 2 other filters that could be old and out of a Highwatt o...