My "64" Stratocaster next to Dave's real one!

So I have this opportunity to sit and play my good buddy Sonic Dave's real 1964 Stratocaster. He bought it back in the 80's out of someones closet in Rochester. I've known Dave for 30 years now and I've gotten to play this workhorse many times. It's been around the block and arrived with a fresh re-fret from Division Street Guitars in Peekskill. His guitar is the one that inspired me in the first place.

So how does mine stack up? First some photos....

Aside from some little visual things, location of the 'football' jack cup, where the tuners sit on the headstock, I gotta say Musikraft did a stellar job making this neck. The body by Guitar Mill is first rate as well. The contours are a little deeper, more like an early 60's body. People obsess over the whole "One piece body" thing and that cracks me up. Mine is 2 pieces, the real one I count four!!! But, who really cares about those things. How do they play side by side?

Really I can sum it up quite easily. His is old. 53 years old. It sounds 'experienced'. It's warmer, lacks a certain glassiness to the tone. Acoustically as well as electrically. This is to be expected. Wood mellows with age, pickup magnets mellow with age.

Other than that I'm still delighted with mine. I don't feel the need to obsess over an old one. Give mine a few more years on the planet and it will sound as warm. Really, the difference is splitting hairs. Impossible to quantify but I'd say it's just a bit warmer than mine.

And understand, his may possibly be my personal favorite Stratocaster. It's a truly great one.

I have faith that mine will grow into that warmth. My Esquire was kind of awful the first year but last week I got to play some great old ones. I came home and played my Esquire and forgot all about those expensive guitars.

How does the neck play? They are quite close. Mine is slightly bigger but if I actually had a career in music and one was my backup, I'd make the switch in 30 seconds flat.

Only other differences will happen with age. Yup, his pickguard is greener. Mine is the same color as his on the underside. People can't smoke in clubs any longer so that is a factor. But give it time.

Both are fantastic Stratocasters. Both feel rather hand made, hard to describe. A lot of new ones feel factory, something missing. I've felt that way about them for a long time now. If you can roll your own I think you are making a better guitar. So get out there and give it a go! It's fun and worth it. And now I have something I coveted for a long time in replica form, and I dig it.

J

1978 Traynor YGM3 revisited. Well, that didn't work!

So my last post was about this lovely Traynor YGM-3 and specifically what to do about that high EL84 eating plate voltage.

The solution I tried was to use the Sovtek EL84M, rated for higher current and a whopping 500V on the plate. The amp left here sounding lovely.....

But, well, that didn't work. In this business one is always experimenting, largely to keep the cost reasonable. This is an expensive business. And I don't like seeing a customer return for a long time. It's not ideal for them especially.

And I'll just say it. I'm not here to sell anything, not even my services. So I can be honest here.

New tubes suck. It's just a fact we need to live with. The world will never produce another RCA, Mullard, Tung Sol, Western Electric, General Electric, Mazda, National Union, Amperex, Brimar or genuine Telefunken tube again. There is absolutely no incentive to do so. We need to live with the mediocre in this world now. Music is changing, the world is changing. There will be no exceptional tubes ever made again much like there may never be another platinum record again. It's over. Music is free, the population of guitar players and audiophiles is diminishing. I love tube amps. I find them fascinating so I carry on. And I will play music till the day I die and I will sound my best till then so that is that.

So what happened? My client got home and rocked it out for a couple rehearsals. It sounded great then it ceased to sound great. One tube totally died, the other test about 1/2 on my TV7 tester.

Not acceptable.

There are several ways to drop voltage. Zener diode, dropping resistor. But I don't like those methods. Since my client wants this to be road ready we opted for the most expensive route: changing the power transformer.

I used a nice Canadian made Hammond, part number 270DAX. I write this so I can have a record of it. If I see another amp I can just tell them their options if they want reliability.

With the original transformer the B+ sat around 425-440vdc. With this part depending on bias its between 329-345vdc. About the same range as your Blues Jr. Those run hot but they are reliable. I think this is a safe range.

You do lose a few watts. But the amp sounds as good as it did before, a tad warmer my ears say.

Nice thing about this part is it's the same size as the original. You need to get creative with some washers to run the heater wires around to the chassis hole, drilling is not an option here, and with that I had no need to drill anything. It's a 520 vCt transformer so you'll need to take out the 2 diodes going to ground and put the red/yellow CT wire to where the diodes terminated otherwise you'll have some seriously high voltage problems!

Once that's done you'll need to change the bias resistors until you get an acceptable range. In this case I changed the 18k coming off the AC feed to a 10k and replaced the 22k  with a 7.5k tied in series to my 20k trim pot. Now the amp is sitting at 329vdv with 22ma on the output tubes. That's about where a Blues Jr sits.

So in conclusion, if you have one of these this is a good path to reliability unless you have the dough for genuine 7189 tubes. It's worth doing. I still maintain this is a great amp. Now it's a great amp for modern times.

JB

1978 Traynor YGM3 Guitar Mate from our northern neighbors

Here's a bargain amp. A late 70's Traynor YGM-3 Guitar Mate!

These were built in Canada. I've worked on plenty of Traynor amps before and am quite fond of them. They are built to last and can be had for a cheapish price. Much like Jim Marshall who was motivated by building a cheaper amp than the Fender amps around London, Traynor did the same thing in 1963: let's build local, high quality affordable amps for the new music being made. All in the name of problem solving. All in the name of service. The best stuff is motivated by those 2 very important human things.

This amp is all hand wired just like a boutique amp. My client bought this on Craigslist for $400....

I believe this to be the Canadian response to the Fender Deluxe Reverb. It has a single 12" speaker, tremolo and reverb with a bright switch. The biggest differences are the lack of a power choke, no reverb driver transformer (cheaper to use a capacitor!) and a pair of 6BQ5/EL84 power tubes rather than the American 6V6. The result is it sounds like an English Deluxe Reverb, more chime and accented mids like a Vox.

Hand wired guts:

One of the nice things about working on these old Traynor amps is you don't even need to pull the chassis. You can remove the 4 bolts holding the top on and simply pull the hood off. Then you're ready to get to work! Though I can't help but think of brain surgery....

These amps boast the famous Mullard "Mustard" capacitors. Those are almost always still good so I'm leaving them alone. The amp hummed badly and sounded harsh. I knew right away what was up: bad filter caps and one dead power tube. Turns out one tube was completely dead, the other was very weak.

So a word about the tubes in these. They tend to get eaten alive. The new JJ or Sovtek / Electro Harmonix glass? You may experience shortened tube life. Those tubes are rated for around 300 volts. This amp boast around 420 volts! Luckily my client wanted more headroom so I just ordered some EL84M tubes from Sovtek. They are rated for 500v. They are the modern version of the 7189 tube. More for hi-fi like my old Fisher SA-100. Linear and clean. I find them to be very punchy, strong sounding tubes. They are a bit maligned by the guitar crowd, people prefer the sweeter tone of an EL84 but just keep in mind these are an option.

Cool Russian boxes!

 I re-capped it and added a bias pot. Due to the layout Traynor made the job so easy.... I used a 20K trim pot and changed the 22k bias resistor to a 15K cause the EL84M / 7189 biases a bit differently than a JJ EL84.

I also added a couple 1 ohm resistors from the cathodes (pin 3) of the EL84 tubes to ground. You'll read millivolts there which correspond to milliamps. 25mv=25ma. Easy and convenient:

I hate the bright switch in these. They use a .001 cap. It's like shaking a can of nails by your ear! I replaced that cap with a 100pf NOS silver mica cap. Now it adds a bit of smooth bite:

I ran it tonight with a set of JJ tubes running at 25ma each. I didn't get any red plate stuff but don't really trust them to last. The amp sounds great now. No hum at all unless you add that beautifully lush but humtastic reverb.

So if you want boutique quality at a crappy new amp price, don't turn your nose up to one of these. They can truly hold their own with the best of them. I actually like the rather mod styling too. Fender, Marshall and Ampeg went full industrial unattractive by this era. But these Traynor amps still have a touch of class. They look nice, and looks matter to me. If you buy one do keep in mind you'll want to get it checked out and possibly set it up with the beefier tubes. Unless you don't mind burning them up that is.

JB

1963 PANaramic 1210 amplifier, Magnatone psychedelia!

This amp was gifted to me by a dear friend in Vermont. I just got it running tonight. It's a somewhat rare PANaramic amp built by Magnatone.

These are the "after" photos. I changed the badly stained grill cloth.... Before:

Gross!

This poor amp sat unused for probably more than 2 decades. It was a part of Indigo Studios vast collection of 400 amps. When it came to me it was DOA. Bad power transformer. So I figured I'd replace it and change the filter cap as well, ground it yadda yadda. The usual.

The part I used was from Triode Electronics, their Classic Tone line:

http://triodeelectronics.com/40-18066.html

My concerns were: I don't feel like drilling any holes. Actually, that was my only concern. I just wanted an easy fix today. The original part, dated 1962, has all wires on one end with the end bell right up against the chassis. Fortunately the replacement part gives you plenty of room to run the wires on the other side of the transformer across and put it all through the chassis hole.

What we are replacing:

On the chassis, Magnatone generously gives you these nice, long, oval holes to fit many sizes of transformers, Good for me as the part I ordered was a bit too big.

With parts installed:

With the bigger transformer I get a B+ of 417VDC, perfect. I imagine the original is less, please correct me if you know. The replacement part is the same as a Deluxe Reverb only with upright bells. My main amp is modeled after a Tweed Deluxe and I use the Deluxe Reverb part for extra juice. I've used that amp for a decade now and haven't had any issues. Good tubes last a long, long time.

In this particular amp I was happy to find it was loaded with Telefunken 12AX7 tubes, the smooth plate variety. There was a missing 12AU7 vibrato oscillator which I replaced with a nice RCA. The power tubes were Sylvania, still good, and I dropped in a Westinghouse 5V4 for the rectifier.

I used a C.E. Manufacturing 525V Quad Cap for the can. Makes for a tidy job and worth the expense.


It still retains the original Oxford speaker:

Still good! No need to replace or re-cone.

Other shots:

I know very little about the PANaramic line. These were built to match Robert Pancottis' PanCordian. Yes, it's an amp for the accordian, once an immensely popular instrument like the Hawaiian lap steel. It's similar to their Troubadour model 213 but with a different preamp layout and an odd "stereo" input. It's a mono amp folks, one speaker, one phase inverter, one transformer.

Here's a bit about Magnatone and their wild market:

http://www.magnatoneamps.com/otherbrands.html#davinci

So how does it sound? I ain't gonna lie. I have a thing for Magnatone amps. You can buy one of these for about a grand, sometimes a bit more, sometimes less. It's still a lot of amp for your money. I would gladly pay that much for one. It's lush yet very clear and that true pitch vibrato? Better than Fenders lovely Brown panel era, better than Vox and their true pitch vibrato as well, which is also quite lovely. It's the sound of Bo Diddley, Johnny Cash's guitar sound on "Walk the Line". I believe Magnatone was the first to get this sound. Straight it's just a great tube amp. More 'creamy' than 'crunchy'. More refined I would say.

I don't know yet if it's a keeper, I have a small place and too many amps right now! I don't like things to compete with each other. But if you read my post about the Magantone A-646, that's the best sounding amp I own. So now that's a keeper. Tracked with it all weekend using a Les Paul. Heaven! Better than a tweed Fender that amp is.

Here's a bit of my roommate playing his electric oud through my PANaramic:

And Bo Diddley in my favorite track:

Johnny Cash:

These are beautiful sounding amps. I also like the fact that all the tubes are quite common and easily sourced. The bigger Magnatone amps are a chore to restore though well worth it. These cute little ones for me, they are where it's at. Cute and compact and easy to enjoy.

JB

Early 40's Oahu Amplifier, beautiful!

Not much to say about this amp except it was a thing of beauty. I bought it dead off a table at the Dallas Guitar Expo, got it home and got it working. Had a bad power cable and it wasn't hooked up to the power switch! Power!

After that changed all caps as they were all dead. Really pretty sounding amp delicate. Not your little rage box, more mature. Perfect for clear slide.

Amp had a little water damage and the cabinet needed gluing. When all said and done, these are very cool rare amps. It's now living with a serious collector in New York.

Beautiful Rola field coil speaker:

Of course, Western Electric patented circuit!

JB

1966 Ampeg B15, your studio requires one.

Simple job today, just re-cap the power supply. Amp was running quiet but now it just sounds better with a stronger low end. It will be mated with a beautiful P-Bass soon and ready to cut phat tracks. You have a studio? It's not a serious studio without a real B15!

Stick o' dynamite cap, 30uf@600v, replace with a C.E. Manufacturing 25uf@800v stick:

Also replace the big can with a C.E. triple 40uf@525 volt can.....

I left the audio circuit alone. I like these green .02 Cornell Dubilier capacitors. They're still good and the amp sounds great! Ampeg in those days didn't skimp on small parts. They are built to last.

My client and I bought this amp from a new shop in Brooklyn called Rock N' Roll Supplies. Great place and they have a great tech working there. Give them a visit! Some mighty nice amps hanging out there and reasonably priced!

http://www.rockandrollsupplies.com/cm/

https://reverb.com/shop/rock-and-roll-supplies-inc

JB

Early 50's Magnatone A-646. Perfect tiny amp!

Just finished this one, a very rare Magnatone A-646 amp from about 1951. This one us a real gem and is visually striking as well.

I bought this amp by mistake on Reverb this winter. I put an offer on a Varsity that I wanted as a backup to my main one and the owner declined. It wasn't a bad price and I love those early Varsity amps and it was pretty enough that I was willing to pay his price anyway. This one came up in my feed and I was curious so I put an offer on it. The owner said he would think about it. First amp wound up coming through at my price so I bought it then.......so did this one!

This one arrived first. It was noisy, had some really poor tech work done to it so I got it going. I wasn't all that impressed with it though and even after re-capping the power supply it had a considerable amount of hum. I even added another filter stage. I knew there were other solutions, maybe filament, maybe ground loop but I shelved it. If it's mine I tend to just put it away and forget about it.

So today I did a better re-cap, with a nice expensive C.E. can, an additional filter stage and while it got better and was certainly tidier, still hummed at an unacceptable level. So I disconnected the center tap of the 6.3v filament and added a hum balance: 2x 100 ohm resistors, one on each side of the filament, the other sides both going to the cathode bias resistor on the 6V6 tube. Looks like this:

When I brought this up on my Variac I thought "dammit! I killed my amp! Time for more troubleshooting!" I just wanted to be done with it. But reality is, the amp is just so quiet now! Hum free with only a little bit of noise when it's turned all the way up.

This amp I believe is the precursor to the Varsity Deluxe I reviewed here. Similar circuit, 40's style box, single 6V6 and 5Y3 but driven by the darker more euphonic 6SL7 tube rather than the snappier 12Ax7. It has a single 8" Alnico 5 Jensen speaker.

More pics:

How does it sound? Like the early version of the Tweed Fender Princeton. It's a similar circuit, but this plays cleaner and more articulate. It has a big sound for such a small box, warm but not fuzzy. Ideal Wes Montgomery or Charlie Christian sound. I'm a big fan of the Magnatone amplifier, especially the early ones. They are a bargain. I may sell this one but not for cheap! I like it a little too much.

The only drawback is the 6SL7 tube can be microphonic. If you turn both the volume and tone all the way up it may sing a song. The 12AX7 is a better tube for guitar amps. You could simply use a 6SL7 to 12AX7 adapter available on EBay, or you can just roll a little bit of the tone control back and enjoy that big warm sound.

If you like something different, give one of these a try! They are lovely little amps!

JB


8/29. After tracking with a Les Paul all weekend I've decided this is my best sounding amp. Bigger tone than a tweed Champ, smoother top, goes to tape beautifully! It's a keeper! Do look out for one of these. I did some reading about the hum and one tech mentions he struggled with his as well. he resorted to installing a big ass choke and extra filter stage. That should do the trick but try the hum balance first along with adding one filter stage. Quite happy with the results here. JB