Saturday, December 7, 2013

1961 Gibson GA-5 Skylark

Here is an amp I picked up last week, one of my favorites. A 61 Gibson Skylark. It's the model closest to a tweed Champ and in my opinion has a bigger sound, I like these much better and they cost half the dough.

I bought this on Ebay and didn't read the description thoroughly till later. When I did read it I regretted it, I knew it was as is but didn't read it had a bad power transformer. I wouldn't have bought it knowing that. But.... turns out it's perfectly fine. The bolts were missing so the transformer buzzed horribly. Put new bolts in ans it's dead quiet. There was no sound and that was solved by re-soldering the leads from speaker terminals to the voice coil. It has a decent sounding old "Realistic" speaker made in the 70's. Sounds nice with my old Vega hollow body.

I'll update as I do the restoration. When this is ready it will have new filter caps and a real Jensen speaker. I'll be selling it for $550. Hard to part with cause these are so easy to fall in love with. Perfect bedroom amp or studio amp though they belt out the volume way beyond that little flea power 5 watt rating.

2 comments:

  1. Love it. I picked up a near mint one last year for $400 and it is worth every penny. Mine has an amazing rock overdrive tone. A screamer. Someone buy this!

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  2. True that Kent! The best!!!! Mine sold to a guy who didn't even want a new amp, but after a few notes....

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