The Amp Garage

I do real silkscreening myself, as I make restoration grade front and back panels for JMP and JTM era vintage Marshalls. But what I need to start is the artwork to be silk screened. Very good quality photographs of the original panel, with measurements, are the absolute minimum to get started with. ...

Sure, you can get close using photos, particularly if you have enough of them. After that, if your skillset is sufficient, you can draw out the schematic of what you've built, apply your electronics knowledge, and try to fill in the blanks using that knowledge. And of course there's always the possi...

It varies from "challenging" to "absolutely ridiculously impossible". Try to derive a complete and accurate circuit from just a few clear photos of the internals of a Fender Champ. And then get a print of the schematic and grade your work. Unless you're already very familiar with the Champ circuit, ...

When I decided that ONE of my Marshalls should run KT66s, I had to learn what would have to be done to make that work. (EL34 amp previously.) Since that amp was going to be a total rebuild anyway, why not? Long story made short: Bias circuit resistor values were changed to reset the bias range to ac...

Given how much the situation has deteriorated since March, I'm not expecting to see any Russian made tubes hitting coming to market in the foreseeable future. With Russia getting close to "completely embargoed, sanctioned, embargoed, and ostracized...and generally screwed by its Madman In Chief" sta...

Charred spots are conductive. Sooty spots are conductive. Places where mice peed, are conductive. It need a good bath and cleaning of ALL char, soot, and carbonization. Clean and scrape it off until there isn't a trace left, no matter how deep you have to go to get there. Tube sockets, too. After a ...

I'm just going to point out that from a tube manufacturing standpoint, tubes for guitar amps and tubes for high fidelity applications are the same. All that changes is how they are sorted and graded. They don't have magic formulas for making SOME tubes that distort better than others. Every sought a...

The vendor of the other KT-66s came through for me. I bought three and one of them was a perfect match to my 3/4 set. Plus I now have one more that's close enough.

Unfortunately the third reads as shorted. Another case of inadequate packing leading to internal damage.

As I do work as an amp tech, I feel like I need a bigger tube inventory of new tubes than I have now. While I've got a very respectable stash of used and "pulled" tubes, and many of them are sought after USA and European made types, a working amp tech has to keep a supply on hand to serve the needs ...

"Did you put that in there?"

If the answer is "Yes" then my response is "Go find another amp tech. I'm done with you, idiot."

If the answer is "No" then I tell the customer to avoid doing business with whomever he got that amp from.

Notice how quickly existing stocks of new made tubes ran down to almost nothing. It wasn't a week from the announcement until most supplier's stock was sold out. Now it'll be another month or longer before any new shipments make it to those vendors. People will CREATE a shortage by panic buying when...

JJ will crank out tubes at their full production rate. If they aren't running 3 shifts, or even 2, they will probably add those shifts as soon as they can train up enough skilled workers to make that a practical reality. I don't think the Russian-Ukrainian war will last very long no matter what happ...

Got it. Some of the photos (the "before" photos) were the only ones that loaded for me. This time around I see the newer ones. I still prefer to see original untouched amps preserved even over fully reversible modifications. But a Bandmaster isn't quite on the same level of collectibility as say a T...

There can't be much life left in those original almost 60 year old Mallory dual capacitors. Change them out. You put all that work in it, why tie its performance to 60 year old capacitors? Nice as that amp may sound, I don't love to see such a clean original example being modified. Originality only ...