Amps Amps in the shop

CapnDenny1

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
Well I bid fairwell to the Bassman100T and the JBL equipped VT50 speaker cab. I will miss it, man it sounded good!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Hyxb7LCus
I will miss it, but I sold them to two different people, for $1150 total, so..

I also have a Marshall JCM900 that a customer brought in with lightning in the tubes. It had a bad power tube, so I told the customer it needed a matched set. I had a couple single 6L6 tubes, but they were too hot for the 3 that were in it. He works as a bartender, so he was pretty broke, so he decided to trade the amp for a Crate Palomino 16 that I had. I let him take the Palomino home to try it and he liked it. I held off doing any work on theJCM till I was surehewanted to trade. He said yes, so I’m a Marshall JCM900 owner.

F763DE58-DBF3-4CAE-A5C1-F4CF991BAD31 by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr

I put a matched quad of Sovtek 5881 tubes, which is what came in the amp. I adjusted the bias and put it back in the head cab,only to discover te reverb wasn't working. In the midst of tracing the reverb, it started working.


792D8C53-A150-4EFC-ADA0-17BAC57C99A0 by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr

93A51782-9D96-4E31-A0E5-BED06D7EE86A by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr


There is some talk that this JCM900, a 4100 from 1994, isn’t very good? Something about having diodesfor distortion? It sounds pretty nice to me? Similar to the JCM800, except alittle more refined, not as raw sounding.
 
CapnDenny1

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
I also have a Crate dx212 in the shop. Customer reported he broke it by plugging in the foot switch cables wrong.

592F47B5-F6A0-4F6B-9187-9DF2303B66D3 by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr

It was silent. I traced that to what I thought was the FX Return jack. So Icleaned and deoxit’d it. But it worked for a while and the quit again. It turned outit was the external speaker jack, which wasin series with the internal speakers. So I ordered a new jack. I tend to just replace them, once they fail you just can’t get it to be reliableby cleaning.

It alsohad a bad transistor in thechannel switchingcircuits. It looked like abad pot at first. You couldonly turn the Rhytm gain down to 50%. It turned out the Lead channelwas always on. It had me going for a but I finally cyphered it.
 
CapnDenny1

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
I’ll keep that in mind as a troubleshooting aid.

I listed the amp for $700 on about 3 sales websites. That’s about average for Reverb. I put it on Reverb and the local craigslist and facebook marketplace.

I will give that a chance. It really is a fine sounding amp, so if it doesn’t sell that’s ok.

I could put it on top of the Ampeg 4x12 next to the Lee Jackson Ampeg VL-1002 and it’s other 4x12 speaker cab. I could do a comparison. Or chain them and run both at the same time. I bet the neighbors will be able to hear me now!

My Ampeg Reverberocket is supposed to be a poor man’s Marshall, so I could compare that as well?

So many amps, so little talent!
 
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CapnDenny1

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
A couple more. I’m not that busy, just haven’t been posting.

This guy made this for his son. But he couldn’t get the electronics to work. He had a short and a miswired pot and jack, and the humbucker used a different color code?


D836B4AA-6F23-4110-9017-A764DCA17E1A by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr

And I fixed another Egnater Rebel 20. Nice little amp, with both el84 and 6v6 output tubes. All jj tubes, so it doesn’t sound as good as it could. But if I buy all new tubes for $200. I would have to get $450 to break even. Going price is $350 maybe. If I was keeping it I would spend the$200. But I have a Blackheart 5w tube amp that sounds great, and is slated for bedroom use.


B2D996E2-ABD9-424E-B76B-358FA20F81EA by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr


B1B039C6-B150-4D45-8592-B8E988D9806A by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr

I really like the Egnater Rebel 30. Same idea except it has ss reverb, and is set up as a 2 channel amp. My main amp is a Rebel 30, but you can be it doesn’t have jj tubes. The carry bag is real handy too.
 
CapnDenny1

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
I got a tentative deal to trade the Egnater Rebel 20 for a Marshall JCM900 1960A speaker cab, with G12T-75's in it.

Then it will be Marshall vs Ampeg around here!
 
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