Newly acquired Bearpaw Growler

[kbp810]

I was looking for a 5-10 watt amp again, something high gain that I could get some nice home level saturated tones... came across a Bearpaw Growler, 7 watts switchable to 3, all tube, spring reverb tank, effects loop, 12" Weber speaker, power tubes are switchable on/off, nice cherry cabinet, made in Ferndale, MI by Jim Barrett (I usually try to stay informed on local amp shops, but this was the first I have heard about Bearpaw)

 

Only downside, the tone knob had been snapped off - looks like the pot shaft was plastic... which is odd because everything else looks like top-notch quality; so my first task will likely be to replace all the pots and knobs.

 

Tone wise, it does exactly what I was looking for - goes from a great warm and full smooth bluesy breakup, to some nice down and dirty crunch - the only thing it lacks is a good clean, but then again, clean was not what I was looking for with this amp.

 

So far I'm very pleased - and was good timing because I was close to pulling the trigger on buying a Marshal Class 5, which I'm sure would have been cool too, just that I'm a big fan of boutiques, local builds, and homebrews

[Steiner]

Be4arclaw is a name that has recently hit my radar. I don't know much about them. Being local makes them just that much more interesting. Being small so that one might have it tuned to one's desires makes it Real attractive ala "The Note".

 

The maple cab looks beautiful, the chassis appears well organized. If you purchased it for about the same price as a class 5, I better get busy before they become the next Matchless!

[kbp810]

Just got done putting in new CTS pots, huge improvement! Of course the feel is 100x better now, but each control is much more functional too.

 

With the old pots the gain jumped all over the place and the volume didn't seem to have much range at all. Now it all seems to work great - and might sound crazy, but the pot change really made the reverb come alive too; if I didn't know better, I'd swear it was a whole new spring tank in it. The old pots weren't just cheap due to plastic shafts, these things were garbage all around. Two more of the knobs actually snapped off when trying to loosen the screws; One of the wire connectors snapped off when pulling the pot out (was not pulling it by the wire!); one of them the casing was partially seperated; and on top of all that, oddly enough they had some sort of part number stamped on them, but absolutely no value or type indication what-so-ever - turned out they were all 1 meg (audio taper of course)

 

While I was at it, I swapped out a few tubes as well (okay, this could have helped in the reverb department too...); went mostly modern this round - 2 SED SV6L6GC's, JJ EC803's gold pin, NOS JAN phillips 12AY7, left the original 12ax7 Mesa, Sovtek EL84, and Sovtek Rectifier in for now (this thing has a lot of tubes for a 7 watt)

 

 

While I had it apart I took a few pics of the wiring as well as a couple of after photos...

[212Mavguy]

Just got done putting in new CTS pots, huge improvement! Of course the feel is 100x better now, but each control is much more functional too.

 

With the old pots the gain jumped all over the place and the volume didn't seem to have much range at all. Now it all seems to work great - and might sound crazy, but the pot change really made the reverb come alive too; if I didn't know better, I'd swear it was a whole new spring tank in it. The old pots weren't just cheap due to plastic shafts, these things were garbage all around. Two more of the knobs actually snapped off when trying to loosen the screws; One of the wire connectors snapped off when pulling the pot out (was not pulling it by the wire!); one of them the casing was partially seperated; and on top of all that, oddly enough they had some sort of part number stamped on them, but absolutely no value or type indication what-so-ever - turned out they were all 1 meg (audio taper of course)

 

While I was at it, I swapped out a few tubes as well (okay, this could have helped in the reverb department too...); went mostly modern this round - 2 SED SV6L6GC's, JJ EC803's gold pin, NOS JAN phillips 12AY7, left the original 12ax7 Mesa, Sovtek EL84, and Sovtek Rectifier in for now (this thing has a lot of tubes for a 7 watt)

 

 

While I had it apart I took a few pics of the wiring as well as a couple of after photos...

 

First of off congratulations on the successful completion of this part of your Growler project! I'm surprised after looking at the build pics with the short wire and signal paths used by the point to point/terminal strip building method................ that the builder would screw the whole amp up by using substandard quality parts in important positions. Good pots aren't horribly expensive or difficult to obtain. Glad that worked out for you.

[212Mavguy]

Just got done putting in new CTS pots, huge improvement! Of course the feel is 100x better now, but each control is much more functional too.

 

With the old pots the gain jumped all over the place and the volume didn't seem to have much range at all. Now it all seems to work great - and might sound crazy, but the pot change really made the reverb come alive too; if I didn't know better, I'd swear it was a whole new spring tank in it. The old pots weren't just cheap due to plastic shafts, these things were garbage all around. Two more of the knobs actually snapped off when trying to loosen the screws; One of the wire connectors snapped off when pulling the pot out (was not pulling it by the wire!); one of them the casing was partially seperated; and on top of all that, oddly enough they had some sort of part number stamped on them, but absolutely no value or type indication what-so-ever - turned out they were all 1 meg (audio taper of course)

 

While I was at it, I swapped out a few tubes as well (okay, this could have helped in the reverb department too...); went mostly modern this round - 2 SED SV6L6GC's, JJ EC803's gold pin, NOS JAN phillips 12AY7, left the original 12ax7 Mesa, Sovtek EL84, and Sovtek Rectifier in for now (this thing has a lot of tubes for a 7 watt)

 

 

While I had it apart I took a few pics of the wiring as well as a couple of after photos...

 

First of off congratulations on the successful completion of this part of your Growler project! I'm surprised after looking at the build pics with the short wire and signal paths used by the point to point/terminal strip building method................ that the builder would screw the whole amp up by using substandard quality parts in important positions. Good pots aren't horribly expensive or difficult to obtain. Glad that worked out for you.

[FredZepp]

The poor grade of pots is a surprise....

Seems like a really cool amp .

 

I LOVE the cherry cabinet....