Jerry Garcia's 1969 Deluxe Reverb

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xtian
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Re: Jerry Garcia's 1969 Deluxe Reverb

Post by xtian »

Looks like those orange coupling caps aren replacements. And you should be replacing those electrolytic cathode bypass caps and the bias caps.
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telentubes
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Re: Jerry Garcia's 1969 Deluxe Reverb

Post by telentubes »

My brother has a Silver Face Deluxe Reverb which I would guess is from the early 70s (really no idea). It is all original and also has 1 Watt 100K resistors. All others are 1/2 watt, so this may not be unusual.
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martin manning
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Re: Jerry Garcia's 1969 Deluxe Reverb

Post by martin manning »

Looks like 1W was factory spec on both channels. This schematic has 1977 release date. I have another one (AB868) with a 1968 date that shows 1W for input stage only, no marking, and therefore 1/2 W on the second stage. Certainly looks like they were looking to reduce noise.
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dreric
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Re: Jerry Garcia's 1969 Deluxe Reverb

Post by dreric »

So this project is getting wrapped up. I got some more details on how my friend got the amp, in his own words:

"I was the mail boy at the Grateful Dead office and I was 13 when I got the Yamaha SG and amp from Garcia as a Christmas gift 1972. We were in the dead family at the time. John Cuttler the Grateful Dead's amp tech worked on the amp at one point and I can't remember what he did to it. I took the speaker out because as a kid couldn't move it with in the cab. To heavy! Joe Windslow gave me one of Jerry's old 2 12" cabs form the Hard Trucker Speaker Co., He was the owner. I worked there for 4 years after the office gig. The amp was re-tubed by and "beefed up" by Randal Smith in the late 1970's."

There a few things that don't make sense. The amp is a drip edge 68-69 era. To put the tye dye on the front they pulled the baffle, stripped it, REVERSED it so the out side smooth would be behind the tye dye. Consequently the inner surface now has the lip used to raise and support the grill cloth on the inside. I went to put a speaker onto the baffle and I can't because the lip interferes with the edge of the speaker. It really doesn't look look like there was ever a speaker after the tye dye. They also removed the tee bolts.

The pedigree in this amp is the tye dye grill cloth. It's a sheet and it's thin, already torn in a few spots. I couldn't install tee bolts or remove and switch the baffle around with damaging the tye dye. So the solution I recommended was to play the amp through an extension cab and or pull the Garcia baffle and have a replacement baffle made. He like this idea.

Any recommendations for a fender cab guy for period correct work?

The repairs I did:
re-capped electrolytics
Three prong cord
replaced the dropping string and power tube resistors
repair the reverb cords and got the tank into a proper bag
checked voltages and biased
cleaned her up
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The amp sounds great! A little bit of history!
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Eric
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martin manning
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Re: Jerry Garcia's 1969 Deluxe Reverb

Post by martin manning »

Interesting story. The reversed baffle explains the logon on the right ;^)
ChopSauce
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Re: Jerry Garcia's 1969 Deluxe Reverb

Post by ChopSauce »

Great amp, which comes with a truely nice story.

I'd be tempted to put back a grillcloth and a speaker inside, though - just for practical reasons.

Thanks for sharing, anyway 8)
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