My personal 1969 Deluxe Reverb

This is my personal Deluxe Reverb. I just bought it from Division Street Guitars in Peekskill NY. Great shop, give them lots of business!

I added the blue jewel on the light bulb. Blue on silver is just right for me.

This post is just about general routine stuff. Amp had the rectifier tube removed and replace with a couple of 1N4007 diodes. Gross...... Well, at least not for me. 

Fortunately the power transformer is intact, easy fix. Clip thise sad diodes out and put the yellow wires back to pins 2 and 8:

Next was just the filter caps. Sad, old and leaking. I didn't keep the sleeves this time cause, well, who cares? It's a silver panel amp! You can see they are leaking badly. Please don't leave stuff like this intact for the sake of "collectibility." Remove and replace.

I like to put two 80uf@450v caps in series with two 220k 2 watt bleeder resistors in the first filtering stage. Keeps me from getting zapped! And if you have an amp that has 500+ volts sitting there before you hit standby, this is safer. 80+80 in series is 40uf....... Perfect for a tube rectifier where you do not want to go over 50uf.

Next is the 470 ohm grid resistors. One was replaced but I just did both. You can also see those .001 capacitors from pin 5 to ground. Gone. Never needed them! The AB763 circuit is just better.

So I'm not the biggest fan of those "Brick drop" capacitors. A bit harsh. I replaced them with a mix of Sozo blue capacitors (lovely!!!) and some old Ajax caps and Sprague Black Beauty caps. 

In the phase inverter I went with a .002 cap feeding it from the preamp. The silver panel amps use .01 which I don't like much and the black panel amps use .001. I like it somewhere in between. You can freely experiment with values there and see what you like. 

This is my first amp with reverb since 1992! New sounds for me. Absolutely beautiful voice. I used all American and European NOS glass. So hopefully the public will get to hear this some day when Covid has passed. And it shall pass like everything else. Let's keep it real and get through these times together. God I miss live music!

Of course, these old Fender amps have a way of getting away from me. So as long as I don't sell it.....

I should add, the late 60's Fender amps with the removable baffles like this one are some of my favorites. They're consistently great sounding. I'm not a fan of the tweaks they did but those are minor and it's a piece of cake to put them back to the black panel glory. The transformers are pretty much the same, this uses a 5AR4 rectifier rather than the 5U4. That's important. The amps made soon after this are very good still, right up until the 1980's. They're all hand wired. But these late 60's amps, you have more fun options. If I wanted to I'd replace the baffle with Baltic Birch. Mojotone makes those ready to install. I've done this for clients and for a couple amps I owned that had cracked baffles. The later ones the baffle is glued in. Bah! Why???!!! 

So do consider one of these if you have fancy champagne taste on, well, a good wine budget. No they ain't beer sadly, but still priced more reasonably than the vaunted black panel amps..... 

DaVinci 2x12 "High Fidelity" amp built by Magnatone (model 260)

Here's one that was intimidating. A true barn find full of dead bugs and mouse faeces.... effing gross!

It was sold to my friend Dave at Sonic Circus for $50 a few years back. We weren't expecting much since it had spent so much time growing uglier due to neglect.

But once I cleaned it up, re-capped it, fixed the tears in the speakers it came back to life. And it has of course a gorgeous voice! I'm not a fan of the stereo Magnatone amps, too complicated, oddball expensive tubes, but these simpler ones are the bomb. It's about 25 watts with 2 6L6 tubes. Nothing expensive or difficult to find tube wise either. Just a 5u4 rectifier, some 12AX7 tubes and a 12AU7.

These 'stencil' amps built by Magnatone for other companies are a real bargain. Not exactly cheap but not what you pay for one labeled Magnatone. See my other post for the Panoramic amp I still have.

This amp is basically a Magnatone 260. It's now making music again at Sonic Circus. Dave has a beautiful Vox AC-30 with the copper panel. With the pitch shifting vibrato in the amp the 2 seem spiritually connected. Though, I prefer the Magnatone amps myself. Straight up Bo Diddley tone! Less noisy than the AC30 too, though, no diss on Vox. Those are amazing too.









Do notice the Celestion 'Guitar Center' model speaker I threw in. Not a bad choice but fortunately I was able to get the original speaker going again!



Bowl o' spaghetti construction:





And there you go! Get out there and try one of these. They have quite a sound! J

1955 Fender 3x10" Bandmaster, 5E7. Yes, rare as can be.

This was a fun project. A 1955 Fender Bandmaster with 3 10" Jensen P10R speakers. This is the first original one I've had the pleasure of playing, I built one when I had my shop in Portland and sold it soon after. If I ever need to go 'big' again, I may build another one of these for myself, this may be the candidate for what I need.

What do I like about these? They are raw and primitive. They are part of the evolution to the more refined legendary Bassman amp. They don't work nearly as well in other words. The tone controls are a bit weird and the transformer to speakers is a good mismatch! (4 ohm transformer into a 2.6 ohm load!) That's a part of the sound for better or worse. Plus, I love the size. A Bassman is just a bit too big for any of my needs.

Speaking of that mismatch, you almost never find one with the original output transformer. They simply burned out. A friend had an even more rare Brown 3x10" from the early 60's and that had it's transformer replaced just like this one. I believe only Mercury Magnetics makes a proper 2.6 ohm transformer for these. When I built one that's what I used. Great part but I was a little let down. It was a lot more iron than I expected. I think they call it the "Fat Stack" or something like that. I prefer to have a smaller part, I don't need all that clear bass! So hopefully someone out there makes a trashier part now. A great sounding amp is a mixture of excellent quality parts and frankly, crap. Too much of either direction and you lose me.

This amp belonged at one point to a rhythm guitarist who played with Muddy Waters. When it came to me I saw pictures or the insides and outsides. I could see it had Orange Drop Sprague capacitors throughout, not my favorite, and the work looked a bit sloppy.

It also had a solid state rectifier and just okay modern tubes:

Once I played it other than a bad distortion (one of the speakers had a bad voice coil) I had to wonder what could I do to improve it besides the obvious: better tubes and a proper tube rectifier.

Once I opened it I could see the Orange Drop caps weren't the icky 715 type, but old polyester. I like those. They are nice and warm. You can identify them by the black stripe on the outside foil side:

Notice the blue resistors and the 2 "Chocolate Drop" capacitors in the preamp. Those do have to go. Not acceptable parts in a Cadillac!

Those blue metal film resistors are ok for load resistors, in fact they work better and are more stable. But stable isn't what were after here, we want that extra push over the cliff into special!

The only drag with modern Carbon Composition resistors is they seldom have long enough leads. So I had to extend the 2 watt cathode follower resistor:

Tone stack complete:

I use Mojo Dijon caps as these are my favorites. I also opted for a 250pf 500V silver mica cap for the treble cap. For the phase inverter I left the Orange Drop caps intact. I like them there. The Mojo caps are more like an old cap. Nice soft edges, warm. Mixed with the polyester Orange Drops I think it's a good balance.

Next was the tone caps on the pots themselves:

These were really poorly soldered. In fact the one on the treble pot simply came off then I touched it with a chop stick! You really need to have a high quality iron to get that joint right. Don't cheap out with your economy iron! Buy a Weller already!!! Also hit the back of the pot with sandpaper and use rosin. You'll have a much easier time of it and some pots you simply can't solder on to the back without sanding or using a scratch awl!

The caps themselves here don't matter as much, they are only bleeding some signal to ground, but I replaced them anyway cause, why not? The Mojos look more like the original Astron caps so....

Now the switches. They were fine, just not a classy part in my opinion. I can't stand seeing some big ass disco switches on one of these amps. It just looks stupid!

The one on the right is the replacement. I'll use the old ones for a Plexi, which likes the big bats!

Also on the standby switch I needed to add a .047@600V cap to ground. Not entirely necessary but it's in the schematic so:

And if you notice in the above photo the original wire had oxidized badly. I needed to replace that length with some nice cloth stuff as well. If I wanted to be all picky I'd age the wire with coffee, but who is going to see it???

Then the bias circuit and the grid stop resistors. I did add a trim pot to adjust bias:

Next the sexy part... The tubes. These amps sell for a lot of dough. Sovteks are nice, and I do like the Chinese 12AX7 tubes it was loaded with but, let's reach for the top shelf. Sovtek 5881 tubes replaced with Tung Sol made RCA!

Also that blasphemous solid state rectifier replaced with a NOS Sylvania 5U4 made the same year as me, 1968:

Those scuzzy preamp tubes are replaced with Mullard made "Phillips" branded tubes. And the first gain stage replaced with an RCA 5751. A bit less gain but that's what Fender wanted. Want faster breakup? Use a 12AX7, or....just turn the volume knob up!

Photos of the transformers:

The power transformer and choke are original. The output is from 1961. It's a proper Schumacher Bandmaster transformer.

And a nice chassis shot:

I did use a bigger (30uf @ 500V) cap in the first stage of the power supply. Personal preference. The rest are proper 16uf and an 8uf for the preamp.

So how did it turn out? Was all this work worth it? The amp did sound great but yes, it sounds better now. That extra color to the tone, and it's a more defined. Warmer. So I say yeah, it was worth it!

So if you own one of these, you know how lovely they are. One of the most unique American made amps that ever was produced. It's unusual cause Fender knew how to build an amp like no other, so why the mis match with the transformer. As the drive to produce cleaner tones and more powerful amps to achieve this ensued, I wonder what he was thinking with this one?

For those of you who don't have the dough for an original, I see Fender is making them again. They are pricey but not as pricey. My opinion? Pay someone else like myself or maybe Victoria to build you one. We'll do you better!

-JB

Sprague Vitamin Q capacitors. Old school paper in oil magic for your hi fi!

Hello there tube amp heads.....

This is a little post about the legendary Sprague Vitamin Q paper in oil capacitors. I used to have dozens of these and at one point used to swap caps in and out of my hi fi amps when I had that kind of time. I was never all that impressed with the Vitamin Q caps in the past myself but decided to give them a go again now that I only have one system that I know quite well.

These arrived yesterday and I threw them in to my lovely single ended 45 tube amp.

When you have such a simple circuit like this, every little change makes a difference. For instance, the 6SJ7 driver tubes pictured lived in this amp for a day. They are Sylvania. Really nice tubes. I prefer my 5693 RCA Red series tubes by far so they went back in the box! The Sylvania version I love in a guitar amp. Big, open sound but for my hi fi I found them a bit harsh.

The signal caps were Sprague polyester PS type, .1@600V. I hate the 715P series that has been so popular for the last 30 years. The 716 is better but if I gotta use Orange Drops they gotta be PS types. I find them to be smooth, detailed and musical. Plus they are warm which I need and they don't sound harsh like the beloved 715.

Now the 715 in a mushy old amp? That can work. Not saying they are trash, remember, everything is a relationship so they work for some amps just great.

So when I audition a new cap, tube or transformer, the first thing I do is pick a record I've been listening to for many years of my life, preferably something with vocals. In this case it was "Rastaman Vibration" by Bob Marley. First question is how does Bobs voice sound? Can I make out the words clearly? Second is how does Aston "Family Man" Barrett sound? Does his bass sound natural.

First listen is terrible. No definition, crap bass. But, the amp had also been on a mere 3 minutes. When auditioning a cap let it burn at least an hour. When you rebuild an amp, you must give it time!

So I went about my business and came back to it after a few hours. Liquid.... That's the word I use. Bobs voice sounds clear and natural and the bass is big and fat. The bass however, does have a bit of flab I didn't notice before. These are bigger caps than what I had in there (.15 rather than .1) and I could go down to .05 and get my bass needs met. But I will continue to listen to records and see if it works itself out. As I recall, these Vitamin Q caps got better with weeks of use.

So the jury is still out. Do I spend $30 a cap on Jensen Paper in Oil? Are those worth it? (the answer is YES in my opinion. Those sound beautiful.) Or do I keep on keeping on with these surplus store gems? Time will tell and I will tell you later. For now I dig them about 85%.

And on a final note. Are paper in oil caps worth it in your guitar for tone caps? No.... Those merely bleed a little high end to the copper pipes in your walls. You can get a 50 cent ceramic to do that job. That's all marketing ladies and gentlemen......

JB



And instant update....That was fast!

Listening to my favorite Coltrane record, "Crescent". Side 2..... I wore out my first copy ,I love this side that much.

Jazz has a wonderful way of mixing itself. At least in a quartet fashion. The bass and low drums are the lows, the piano and sax are the mids and the ride cymbal are the highs. Coltrane sounds like he's hanging out in my little apartment playing. How the hell did he get that sound is beyond me! So warm and beautiful on this record. Jimmy Garrisons bass has authority and clarity and McCoy Tyner....crystal clear. The second song on side 2 is called "The Drum Thing". All about Elvin. Such a beautiful, dark drum sound. That piece moved me to change the way I make music. Oh yeah, this is about some caps.....they've been burning in all night. I'm in love.......

1976 Fender Super Reverb, end of the good ones.

This came in last week, belongs to a recording studio. The complaint? Harsh distortion at any volume.

First note, just a low E revealed this to be true. I felt annoyed. Sounded like bad voice coils. I did not wish to box up another four speakers and send them to California, not after the last 4x10" amp ('67 Marshall Bluesbreaker combo) had four bad voice coils. Made that telltale "THWACK" sound. Ruh Roh.....

But after opening the amp up I could see one electrical problem. The screen grid resistors were fried. I believe they were 1 watt resistors. Never use less than 2 watt.

After installing them I checked the bias. Each of the Sovtek 5881 WXT tubes were drawing about 4 milliamps. So, I re-biased for 35ma and the amp came to life.

This amp was rebuilt by someone years ago, new caps etc. They also did the black panel Fender mod which is pretty extensive. Worth doing. These amps have nothing really special about them so why keep a rather mushy sounding amp 'original' when it can sound great, and this amp does sound great. It's one of the last of the 45 watt models. They went to 70 watts about a year later. I really don't like those! The 70 watt amps are heavier (these are plenty heavy!) have an ultra linear transformer which I'm not fond of, lacks the power supply choke and no tube rectifier. The result is a harder sounding amp. Okay for country music if you need to play really loud. But for me? I prefer the softer compression a 5U4 or 5AR4 rectifier tube offers. These earlier models just have nice color to the sound, more warmth and more compression when you hit a note at high volume. Amps from this era can be a bargain. Still hand wired, still very high quality and easily modded to be close to the coveted 60's black models.

One more problem was noise. The reverb recovery tube was bad and the 2nd channel preamp tube for volume and tone had a good hum. That part was easy. The first channel had a good amount of snap crackle pop going on. And to make matters worse after replacing the load resistors and cathode cap, it didn't go away, it just became intermittent. Ugh. Some 70's Fender amps I've found the wire to oxidize and go noisy. I really hoped it wasn't that. Not up to replacing wires but if you do find this, start with the anode wires going to pin 1 and 6 on the 12AX7.

Fortunately it wasn't this. I found when it was in full crackle mode if I turned the channel all the way down it was gone (duh!) but also found if I turned the channel all the way up is went away. It only crackled in the middle. So I threw in a brand new CTS 1meg volume pot. Let it play for 2 hours and no noise. It's rare I get a volume pot that does this but I remembered my man Steve at Angela Instruments telling me this back in 1990 or so. Worthy of a try and it worked.

This amp has the original master volume and distortion circuit accessible through a pull switch. If I did the mods I would pull that bullshit out of there! The master volume never really gets dirty enough to justify having it in there, the distortion is comically bad sounding and the extra wires running around add a bit of hum. But like I said, this amp sounds great so if it ain't broke.....

For some ideas on Super Reverb prices, click here:

https://reverb.com/marketplace?query=fender+super+reverb

The 1967-1969 ones are some of my favorites once converted. But even the 1967 black panel amps aren't awfully expensive! You can spend way more on a boutique amp. Heck, I even built one for a client that set him back $1800 initially. He had every ultra expensive component mapped out for the thing. Top of the line Weber speakers, big ass Mercury Magnetics output transformer, every cap and resistor mapped out from years of "research" on internet forums. The result was the only amp I ever built that I didn't like. It was anemic. Another $1000 later it was exactly as I would have built it. Run of the mill Sozo caps, carbon comp resistors, cheap Weber Chicago series speakers, and the amp sounded like an old Super. Really great! And I was was baffled as to why anyone would go to the expense when an original is just not as expensive! Though, I sure appreciated the business, and he was a great client. Learned a lot about cap differences through his OCD tendencies. Literally, he would have me change one cap due to some jive he read on the web, but that one cap did make a difference....

I remember the first Super Reverb I ever heard. It was a Berklee Professor named Jim Kelly who had one and I saw him on a gig. I was floored by his tone. The second was my man David Lyons who now owns Sonic Circus (http://soniccircus.com/) in Vermont. After playing his my "new amp" phase abruptly ended. He had such a lovely sound. I no longer really play gigs big enough to justify using one of these but if I did, these are excellent workhorses. Tough as nails and really cut nicely.

Let's see. One these plus that Bluesbreaker equals 8 ten inch speakers....... Yeah, that's the ticket....

JB

1951 Fender Pro.... terrible looking, sounds like gold!

This was a fun and interesting project. Came from Division Street Guitars in Peekskill, a great lil' shop run by my good friend Paul Decourcey. When it came to me it was, well, truly a barn find. Translation: absolutely disgusting. Barns are no places for instruments and definitely not a place to store an amplifier. This amp was badly water damaged on the bottom with plenty of mud to prove it. Some of the plywood had separated so much gluing and clamping was needed. Very time consuming and rather educational. I never realized how many layers of stuff are between the wood and the tweed exterior. More than I thought! And I also know, I'm not the man to do a re-cover job. Used a lotta Simple Green on this one.

He bought it on Reverb from a store in the midwest as a project amp. At least 2 other very good techs turned down working on it. I don't blame them either. If I wasn't a little nutty myself, I may have made the same choice. Amp was full of dead egg sacs from some unknown bugs and some of the wires had been chewed by mice. First order of business was to use a couple cans of compressed air outside just to get the nasties out. Next was the black mold. That and the mud is where I used a lot of Simple Green and a lot of towels, old toothbrushes.....gross man.

It also came with a replacement output transformer that was nice, but the wrong type. This amp had the transformer mounted to the speaker originally, but that old Jensen was long gone. So since this amp is so ugly and we're not re-tweeding it, we decided to just make it player friendly. I replaced the output transformer with a Heyboer tweed 8 ohm Bandmaster transformer availble through Mojo Musical Supply. Not terribly expensive and they are fantastic sounding transformers. I believe Mercury makes the proper '51 Pro part but it's much more expensive and we want to keep this amp affordable for re-sale. And truthfully, I like the Heyboer Iron I've used a bit better though my own amps are loaded with Mercury.

Power transformer was the original Triad. Bakelite fuse holder was broken in half and the power cable and switch were done. Replaced all that and grounded the poor thing!

No tubes came with it. Had to buy 3 6SC7 tubes. A word about those: at this stage of the game, they are risky to purchase. Most of the remaining tubes suck. A decade ago when I was really doing this I could buy a dozen for $60, reject 1/2 of them and still make my money of the remaining ones. Now they set me back at least $18 a bottle. Most I come across are microphonic or have a good hum going on. This one 2 outta 3 were passable, the third I used as the phase inverter. RING! It works but I advised Paul to get another one or buy a 6SC7 to 12AX7 converter on EBay. Other octal preamp tubes are plentiful, like the 6SL7 or 6SN7. For some old Gibson amps 6SJ7 tubes are cheap and plentiful. But, I'm not rewiring this amp for those.

The filter caps were all leaking. They had to go. Don't even bother turning an amp on with those old caps still in it. Throw them away right away. All the electrolytic caps had exploded in this amp. Also the original signal caps were all leaking, badly. I use polyester Orange Drop Spragues in the phase inverter and my favorite Mojo Dijon caps in the preamp. The input caps I left alone. No DC on those so why bother. I'm sure they leaked when they were new but that's a part of the sound so, leave them be!

Also replaced the power resistors with 10k 5 watt wire wound types and the load resistors with carbon composition like the originals. Amp was making those telltale spitting sounds. It's dead quiet now.

When he got the amp it had one of those ugly ass 70's Disco square magnet heavy 15" CTS speakers that belong in an Ampeg cabinet. Nope! Not for a tweed amp! Paul fortunately had this beautiful sounding and great looking Jensen from a 60's rather useless Epiphone amp that lives in his window. He bought the thing for the "someday I may need this speaker" factor. That someday is today and this amps just gives up a beautiful tone now....

It really needs a Telecaster. That is what this amp was built for. My '58 Jazzmaster loves this amp as well. That's a combination from heaven. Big, warm with lots of bite.

Nice and simple 2 channel amp with a single tone control. One channel is nice and dark and is set up for a microphone, the other has plenty of bite. Whenever I get a chance to show a Mesa Channel Switch reared youngster one of these amps I take it. They usually plug in and wonder where the 27 other knobs are but when they start playing something always happens: they start playing better. More grit? Turn the tone knob up and play harder. More clean, back off that pick.

I wound up bolting the new output transformer to the chassis and adding a 1/4" Switchcraft jack so you can plug this amp into any 8 ohm cabinet of your choosing. Also this amp is cathode/self biasing. You can simply drop in any matched pair of 5881, 6L6 or KT66 tubes of your choice and jam out. That's the fun/madness of these early tweed amps. Endless choices! You can make decisions about your tone on the fly. New amps they pretty much make the choices for you. No thanks. But ya know, those new amps are good for getting you there. A real amp like this is good for the one who has already arrived dig?


                                                         Mandatory photo with a Tele:

So if you want to see this amp, hang ten and make the drive to Division Street Guitars in Peekskill NY. Great shop and Paul may even sell it to you!

JB