The Amp Garage

Trying to keep this short...Yesterday I finished with the repair of one of my amps. It is a prototype Hiwatt DR504 front end with a unique Bendix 6384 tubed power supply/section, engineered and built by Toad Suck Tones. It had sat unrepaired for a year and a half because I was too intimidated and th...

@ the OP: Premise #1... a list of nice old stock tubes already in hand...so use them first. Chances are overwhelming that the tones will be better than new production stuff unles thee old stock tubes have seen way too many hours of previous use. V1 is easy...go to the Bassman roots, RCA. 12ax7a shor...

Not having much luck with the picture thang, so here's the link to the auction. There are some partial gut shots in the description. The preamp tube order is interesting... http://www.ebay.com/itm/200932600835?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT#ht_841wt_663 Will yank the chas...

Watched a military green 30w head on fleabay for over a year, then the buzzard swooped when price hit a dropped plateau and stayed over a few weeks. Stuck a C-lator in the loop. Hiwatt style tone heaven with Wreck-ish capability to go from detailed clean to Godzilla scream with volume knob or Hilton...

I have a '68 blackline silverface SR that I had some work done to and I do like the results as a reconfigured 1/15 using JBL G135-8 with a new baffle courtesy of fleabay... Sourced parts from Mike at vintagefenderamprepair.com and had the work done because my tech skills would have likely insulted t...

my .02 from my experiences... Contextually speaking, I'm more of a lazy hobbyist than a consummate virtuoso as a player, definitely a 2 on a scale of 10 as an amp tech/builder, I don't have experience or knowledge for recording clips other than a cheap video camera with a built in condenser mic, and...

Board standoffs are carved pieces of Chimay Grande Reserve corks. Lol... Genius! That's what a couple of bottles of that stuff can do... You start to see things differently! Tony Yep, for a while I ran a wire from pin 3 to a custom jaw bend alligator clip and stuck in an el38 Mullard. Wooooooeeeeee...

Vintage 5v4, 5r4, 5ar4 recs same heater draw as 5y3, pin compatible, 5v4 is indirect heated slower startup like 5ar4, at a fifth of the price and nearly as strong in current with voltage higher than 5y3, closer to 5ar4 levels as well. Tighter louder and brighter than yer 5y3 when dimed.

The most obvious reasons for low output is combination of too small an OT and the cited too low plate voltage. Tweed Princeton SE OT? Too competent of a builder for much anything else to be the culprit. My Champ type is my first, laughably horrendous looking turret board build, has a 30 watt rated f...

G125 in a d-style oval back cab should kick out what was in before 9 times out of ten, they are that good. I'm not worried about their value going up, they are so under the radar that the herd just ignores them in favor of what is being talked up the in magazines, forums, GC salesman, shop gossip, e...

...For what I have learned since joining, and for what has been learned the last year. Can't think of anything that had a bigger positive impact on my guitar playing other than practicing my playing and listening skills and playing out with others. Not naming names because I'm sure to leave someone ...

G125/G135 sound better than D or E series to my ears, also MI-12/MI-15 are the under the radar JBL secret weapons here.

Search "Vintage Pioneer Woofer 12" on ebay, at this post time a nice pair is going for 65 bucks BIN plus 2 year square trade warranty for around 15 bucks more, plus shipping. That's a moderate price for a single new production speaker, let alone two of these. Take a look and zoom in on the backsides...

I very recently scored a pretty fresh pair of original cone late 70's Altec 417c's, 12" 75w, 3" VC, insanely strong 13 pound coffee can alnico magnets, cast aluminum frame, they are as good as my late 40's early 50's vintage 600b's are on the cleans (PHENOMENAL) and dirty are very well balanced betw...

@leftystrat, Earliest evm12l were 200 watts, not 300. 300 watt came later. both types appear all the time on eBay, a friend of mine bought some there and they were not all that great, had been abused, he felt like some of the used ones there were pretty beat up/played to fatigue. Still staying with ...