Can dropping an amp damage the tubes?

[Hfan]

@Hfan, Here's an example of a vintage-boutique amp to be, it's arriving this week.

 

http://www.ebay.com/...984.m1439.l2649

 

It's supposed to be all the way there for originality, but frankly that original and wonderful tone this circuit kicks out is still only a large fraction of what the amp is capable of in quantity and quality. I just finished up an identical version of this amp running 6v6's built for another brand label, I got the base amp for somewhere between 89-91 bucks cash, and have less than 350 dollars into it, total. It's a monster with Russian PIO tone caps in it and now sports a late 40's-early 50's original cone Altec 600B, along with a full, vintage correct VOS retube. I got that speaker for less than 90 bucks delivered.

 

 

There are a few rules to follow for affordable boutique badassity.

 

1) Do your own due diligence research, at a personal time invertment ratio of 3 parts personal digging to asking questions of fellow forumites. Learn what is on the market and the circuit/tube type for each amp you are interested in. Find out what they are going for current market value. Learn the various construction methods used to make amps and be able to recognize them instantly in gut shot pics of the amp you are interested in. How are you going to spot a fake if you don't?

 

2) Look at the trendy ones the herd wants so you can learn to avoid them like the plague, anything all tube and vintage by Fender, Vox, Marshall will be high priced for what is obtained.

 

3) Look for sister brands of popular amps made by the same builders of the more popular, spendy siblings and cousins.

 

4) Realize that MANY, of these are going to be built in such a messy, unkempt fashion with wierd circuits too hard to work on with tubes too hard to easily find to be practical for the time spent, that will be up to individual's choice. Have heard a lot of this kind of talk about some of the vintage medium and higher power Gibson amps, and that is why they don't go for much money compared to better laid out and engineered competition.

 

NO PCB! NONE! and that inclued sub boards around the tone pots, filter supples, etc. An add on bias adjustment board is OK, though.

 

True ptp, terminal strips, eyelet and/or turret board is what to look for.

 

5) Changing out old parts in a vintage amp, doesn't that destroy the amp's "mojo juju-ness?"

 

NOOOOOO!!!

 

If you bought right in the first place you bought an amp with a great circuit built with intentionally, carefully chosen cost cutting cheesiness in parts selection for that time of original build. Respect the CIRCUIT, not the original cheesy parts except the iron, leave that alone if it is good because of you change that the aforementioned MOJO will be gone and something else (maybe but may not be better) will be subbed in with the new transformers. So feel to sub out resistors, the ones that frequently get hot will probably be out of spec due to use over time, and out of value is NOT vintage correct, is it? So respect the circuit and for boutique build get the nicest parts you know about for the various positions they fill, that is what it takes for making up one of these in to an affordable pet monster instead of an affordable, yappy ratdog. Learn what resistor types are and caps as well so to best interpret where you apply them on your personal electronic canvas.

 

This particular amp will have different tone caps and some tubes will be subbed out in the first iteration, and that Jensen is gonna go away for sure (yes, available for PP $$, PM me) and be replaced by a similar period JBL or Altec. Half of the resulting tone will be speaker choice, rest is guitar and tubes. I will have 700-800 bucks into an amp that sounds like a 3000 dollar handwired boutique, because in this example the circuit's build, wire routing/lead dress inside is of a handwired boutique style and quality originally. Second revision will be repinning the power tube sockets to run Bendix Red Bank 6094's out of my collection of VOS along with some circuit tweaking for optimizing the slightly different, more tonally capable tube type. And if that result ends up sounding less fantastic than the first iteration, all mods are reversible. It's OK to have to take two steps back after a single forward one as long as some victories are obtained along the way, knowledge attained through personal experience is part of the victor's spoils.

 

6.) Appropriate tools and the ability to use them safely and effectively are prereq's. Practice on easy projects first and know what good work is supposed to look like before you pick up that soldering iron and again after you put it down each time.

Never heard of that brand. More good advise, thanks Marvguy. I think I heard of that seller in the past. Down in Yoslate's neck of the woods. Let us know how it comes out.

 

I refurbed my old Silverface Twin Reverb some years back, came out great. Then I attempted a blackface conversion from what I could learn on the web. That came out pretty good. Brought it to a tech (t bone's guy) who has been working on amps for many years, now it sings. I worked on other equipment for many years so I can solder and turn a screw ok. Tube amps are still a bit of a mystery. Every time I spend some time working on one, I usually go 6 months or a year without working on one and I get rusty re the theory end. Don't know if I'd want to devote the time for a total build but a refurb may be doable one day. It is fun to tinker. And when something is not working, when you find the culprit it is a rush for sure.

 

I think that in general we obsess way too much over our guitars (I'm guilty) while neglecting the amp part of the equation.

[212Mavguy]

Yep, but I have it the other way, spending not enough time on the fingers and too much on the back end. Fingers are getting better.

 

BTW, +1 million on the big power Traynor thang. Has all of the required attributes for becoming your very own affordable vintage based tonal Tyrannosaurus. These have huge, way over spec'ed iron everywhere. Sweet and warm like the Mama keeping the nest for the hatchlin's and also capable of raging like Daddy on the hunt.

[Guest HRB853370]

Slammer, you are 100% right. I did go off, way more than what is normal for most posts of mine here. I'm standing 100% behnd it, extemporaneous words and all. You did get your question answered and then some. You're welcome!

 

Now I'm going back down to my workbench to take apart a '65 vintage tube amp and redo the tone caps and hope that I don't drop it while carrying it down there.

 

PS Fredzepp, thanks for your post, my fave kind of humor there.

 

Ha! We are all set now. And yes, I did appreciate the extra knowledge you bestowed upon me!

[brentrocks]

they make kids wear them now-a-days.....maybe for amps?

 

[Trouble]

I was getting my old marshall repaired, the repair shop was down a flight of stairs

 

I had sprung for some real NOS GEC KT66 power tubes from the '60's ( 4 of them, it's 100w ). very $$

 

after i picked it up, I climbed up the stairs, but the very top step was about 2" shorter than all the rest....I tripped & dropped the fuggin amp down hard...luckily it didn't tumble all the way down!!!

 

 

but I didn't hear any breaking glass...got it home & it fired up ok

 

*whew*

I was " puckered" all the way to the last line, didn't think there would be a happy ending on that one!

[Blunote]

Hey, if you remember my thread NAD X2, one of the amps (the Guytron) was shipped all the way from Winnipeg. Deal was:Seller pays freight. So seller sent via Canada Post. it arrived about a week later, seemingly ok, but fairly noisy on the B channel. Fortunately for me, Guytrons are built right here in Michigan and I had Graydon look it over.

 

Turns out that this amp took a hit hard enough to bend the steel feet of the main power transformer. Granted, it's a pretty massive transformer. Even so, the tubes that were shipped installed in the amp, were fine. Graydon spent a few hours on it to get the transformer off, straighten the feet, put everything back together. Plus he checked everything out, replaced a faulty resister, biased the tubes, added a heat sink and did a couple of other updates while he was in there. When he checked it out on the oscilloscope he was able to get 98 watts of clean signal, and 200 watts distorted. This is one powerful beast -even after getting beat up by Canadian and US postal services.

 

One thing worth mentioning. As much as I like P2P wired amps, some, like this Guytron have very complex circuits -much more so than a vintage circuit would. Getting all those wires attached in just the right way would be unworkable, certainly unfeasible. There's nothing wrong with a well built circuit board.

[bolero]

212mavguy that's awesome that you make projects like that...I wish i knew enough to do that but I don't have enough time to play, let alone tinker with circuits!!

 

ps that amp looks like an old Harmony? is that an off-brand of theirs? I have an H305 with that same cardboardy cab, and the chassis design looks almost identical...but mine is blue

 

one more Traynor plug: Andy Fuchs started out modding old Traynors initially

[bolero]

-->sorry kidsmoke missed your question...yes I believe the new Traynors are locally built. the cabinetry is top notch: I had one of the new 8x10 bass cabs and it was all heavy duty birch ply, very solid

 

here's a tip: they are about to reissue the YBA-1 like they did with the guitarmate, so expect vintage prices to climb some, in the future

[212Mavguy]

@Bolero,

 

Yes! you got it! That is the point, knowing who made the various brands to find a diamond in the rough. Harmony was made by Lectrolab. So was Supro and Valco. And those are not all the brands Lectrolab did up. That first Harmony I did up is the H-306-A. It came out so well as a small-medium club amp that I am going to have to sell 3-4 of my other amps, and they are ones that I personally pimped out. The bang for buck on that project is flabbergasting. I defy anyone to find a modern production 2x6v6 tube rectified 1/12 with bias modulated tremolo for 350 bucks, and for the sister amp with vintage tubes and purchased in great working condition for around 500?

 

Closest would be the Ampeg Jet RI, and those, while being nice amps, can't match the girth or richness of the real vintage examples here by a loooong shot.. And I know that brand new amp is hundreds of $$ more, even coming out of GC than what is arriving soon here. These old amps can be dimed with no problems once looked at on the bench to verify all good inside, I have pushed the living snot out of my Harmony to try to break it, dimed with lots of boost into the input jack, and it seems to easily tolerate that kind of treatment. Have read online about an Ampeg Jet RI not being able to take the continuous dimed thang, but that was only one example. If I remember right the build style on that new Ampeg is supposed to be old school. Would like to see a gut shot of that one.

 

I watch ebay for deals on VOS speakers with original and re-cones. I have a thang for Altecs and JBL's, a few models work fantastically in these amps. Sometimes you can swoop down on an auction of one of these closing at a seller's poorly chosen day and time, I have gotten screaming speaker deals lately in vintage Altec and JBL for WAY less than equivalent build, inferior quality new manufacture speakers, like less than a c-note delivered yesterday for a JBL G125, which is kinda unbelievable, and they are like money in the bank, if you buy right they will not lose value. That JBL had a few small holes punched through the cone paper in non serious places, biggest was smaller than a pencil, a bit of liquid electrical tape applied mainly on the back of the cone with a fingertip or q-tip and those areas are stronger than the rest of the cone with no tone impact. I have no problem dating a beautiful singer with a few acne scars... And a pair of freshly custom reconed for guitar pair of JBL D123's for 200 bucks delivered are soon to arrive. Celestion blue, go run away and hide, yer Yankee low wattage counterpart is gonna kick yer butt!

 

JK. C-blue is a wonderful speaker. It had better be, it is almost triple the price of those 50+ year old JBL recones, but there is no 3x advantage for the Celestion in the tone department compared to a '49-'52-ish Altec 600B original cone in clean, great shape for 88 bucks delivered 6 months ago, I think quite the opposite, that Altec is one amazingly articulate and musical sounding speaker clean and has a great distorted voice as well. My experiences with certain obscure Altec and JBL models are among the best I've had with any speaker used with my guitar amps.

 

Great, uber-wonderful sounding vintage gear does NOT always have to cost lots of $$.

[Guest HRB853370]

Gotta love the Mavguy, his replies are SHORT and SWEET!

 

[bolero]

212mavguy, that totally kicks ass!!

 

I wish I knew enough to do that stuff..you should post some pics of your other projects

 

plus you are sort of resurrecting gear that has probably been written off....must be a good feeling to bring things back to life. those old amps sure have a lot of character.

[koula901]

 

I think that in general we obsess way too much over our guitars (I'm guilty) while neglecting the amp part of the equation.

 

Amen to that, brother. I agree.

[bolero]

someone wrote a book called "amps - the other half of rock and roll"

[mad dog]

Tubes are fragile, so I suspect dropping the amp would damage one or more. I shipped a tweed twin some time back. Pulled the tubes, bubblewrapped carefully, inside the amp. Took great care packing the amp. The amp got there no problem, but three of the pre-amp tubes were microphonic. That box must have been bounced around rather well. Can't imagine what would have happened had I not pulled the tubes.

MD

[212Mavguy]

212mavguy, that totally kicks ass!!

 

I wish I knew enough to do that stuff..you should post some pics of your other projects

 

plus you are sort of resurrecting gear that has probably been written off....must be a good feeling to bring things back to life. those old amps sure have a lot of character.

 

It sure is! I was up til 4am finishing up the Harmony 420. Had to yell some bad words a couple times in the middle of the night, those occasionally frustrating moments happen with more frequency than the completely satisfied ones. Going to that thread now to tell the story.