The Fault A nice Tone King Imperial Mk1 ( http://www.toneking.com )arrived with a strange fault. When you turned up the reverb control there was this horrible buzzing sound which increased as you tried to increase the wetness of the reverb. Faults like this are usually the reverb cables, plug and sockets not being earned correctly or even a faulty reverb pan. Not this one! Read on ….. Background on the Tone King Imperial Amp Mk1 and […]
A two rock Gainmaster 35 arrived for a service. It is manufactured by the Premier Builders Guild LLC. A fancy name! The amps are made in California and are around £2000.. They are built on a printed circuit style board which looks very like tagboard . See in the picture below. This amp is extremely well made and is a relatively simple straightforward design having two pre-amp valves, one phase splitter driving the two 6L6GC
A Laney VH100R amp head came in for a service. While “nothing” was wrong with it, the owner decided just to have its health checked out. This is a really high gain amp with 6 ECC83/12AX7 pre-amp valves driving 4x EL34B to give a 100 watts out. On switch on it was clear that a couple of the pre-amp valves had gone microphonic and the bases of the EL34B were all burnt. A sign of
As its a new year I thought I should share links of interesting folks who you could find useful. Juke Box Genius This is nice guy who is based in Bristol and he travels to customers and fixes jukeboxes. He does all the mechanical and electrical servicing and total restorations too. The Juke Box Man Continuing the juke box theme, here is a site where you can find all those important bits to keep your
Many folks ask what the difference is between the standard EL84 and the more expensive Sovtek EL84M. There has been no data available and I see lots of questions on forums etc asking about where you can get a data sheet. I worked with the Sovtek team and pulled a product information sheet together out of Russian documents etc. First of all here is some background info as to why this was done The EL84
Sovtek EL84M More Headroom More Power Longer Life Read More »
A Fender Supersonic 60 arrived as it plainly liked to sing is own praises- when the volume was turned up it howled like a banshee! The issue was that the amp was totally microphonic. It would work at lower volumes but started howling at higher volumes The Fender Supersonic is a complex design for a 60 watt amp. It has 10 valves, comprising of 2 x ECC81 ( 12AT7), 6x ECC83 ( 12AX7), and 2x
Following our blog on testing the 6L6 and the El84, we have now done a burn test on a JJ El34. The test got delayed as our Avo Mk2 tester developed a fault with a worn out “backing off” pot and I had to come up with a good repair not having the benefit of any replacement part. I guess this part has not been made since the days of Harold Wilson being Prime Minister
