Description
This is a great-sounding amp. It still has the original RCA rectifier and 3 RCA preamp tubes. The power tubes are Sovtek and the V1-3 are JJ’s. It has the original CTS Alnico speakers that still sound great. The tolex has several minor bumps, tears, and abrasions. Most cuts were glued back down and touched up. The grill cloth has a few minor tears. It was recently serviced. A 12′ 3-prong cord was installed, and all the electrolytic caps replaced. F&T in the dog house and Sprague everywhere else. The amp was scoped to determine if the CBS snubber caps on the power tubes were necessary for oscillation due to this eras poor lead dress. They also leaked high frequencies to ground, had less distortion and cleaner tone. This one was early enough that the lead-dress was clean and no oscillation observed so the caps were removed per AB763 spec, as were the cathode bias resistors. A pot was installed in the bias circuit to make it adjustable. The hum balance was left intact so it now operates as a adjustable balance/bias. Handy if you need to run mismatched tubes. All the pots were cleaned. Everything else was left original. I retained the original cord, caps, and resistors. The only things left to make it a blackface would be the Phase inverter plate resistors changing from 47K/47K to 82K/100K, the Power tube grid leak resistors from 100k to 220k, and running a GZ34 instead of 5U4GB. None of which I think is necessary because it sounds great as it is.