The Amp Guys

A VHT 2/90/2 on the bench. Stereo power amp with a quartet of KT88s. Blown power fuse and an obliterated bias resistor. Sorted the bias section and tests fine with an old set of tubes. Noticed the fan wire was going to interfere with the new set of Gold Lion KT88s. Rotated the fan 180* to allow a safer route for the cable, then noticed this: 120volt fan with exposed wiring. So easy to do it correctly, so dangerous when not. One more thing done before it gets back to the customer.

Magnatone M10. 1964 time machine, virtually untouched (had an IEC socket added to provide a ground). True point to point wiring. Even the Estey tagged tubes are in it, and test strong.

Marshall DSL100. C’mon guys, at least bend the leads over so this resistor won’t rattle on its standoffs and break the solder joints. Had to reflow the solder on this and a couple other spots to put it all right.

Vintage tube ad!

Fender Rhodes... the continuing. Say the power supply fuse has popped and you want to change it so you can finish the gig: should be easy. You have to remove a dozen 2 screws holding the speaker grille, then set it to the side. Then you have a dozen screws holding the amp chassis in place (6 of which are hidden behind the box). Then struggle with the adhesive tape holding the box to the cab. Remove another dozen sheet metal screws holding the box sides so you can access the ...circuit board. Then fight with two nylon connectors to release the board so you can actually replace one or both of the soldered in fuses. Then put it back together. That should take at least an hour, perhaps more if the connectors are corroded and don’t want to come apart. Oh yeah... all the parts are labeled with Delco in house numbers, so CBS execs farmed out the assembly work to a GM subsidiary. Lovely. See more

On the bench, a Peavey Classic 50 head. Nice little amp, but making some weird noises. The output impedance selector switch is fine, but the output jacks have some broken solder joints. Touched them up and sorted some noisy controls and she is ready to rock again.

Ahh... Sunn Model T land. Fixing the problems that someone else created.

Yeah, I still love this little amp. Just nice enough for the living room that the Mrs won't complain.

A Garnet stencil amplifier, tagged as Piper. Reverb, bias driven tremolo and a pair of 6V6 drive a pair of 10 speakers. Needed some tlc to make it go, several carbon resistors were more than double nominal value. Electrolytics changed. A lot of contact cleaning to finish up. Another fun Canadian amp revived.

One of the many reasons I dislike anything between a tube output transformer and the jack: in this case the impedance selector switch with crimp connectors. All the connectors were loose on the switch, but one had broken and completely failed to make solid contact. Fortunately this was on a rarely used option, but still a recipe for disaster as it could allow either the tubes or the output transformer to fail.