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The Truth About Vintage Amps, Ep. 125


It’s the 125th installment of the Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons!

Want to be a part of our show? Just email us a question or voice memo to podcast@fretboardjournal.com.

Some of the topics discussed this week:

:51 Skip works on a Jim Kelley Amp, built-in attenuators, the magnetic field caused by a Tweed Bassman speaker

3:30 Skip needs an RCA MI-12155 schematic

3:56 Making stuff for the Bay Area Guitar Show

6:51 Our sponsors: Emerald City Guitars, Amplified Parts, Stringjoy Strings, and Grez Guitars.

8:12 The Dad joke that won the Voltic DTF pedal: Keith F with “Why did Skip have to marry Mrs. Simmons? From the day he solder, he couldn’t resistor.”

9:34 A basic servicing check-list of what to do when you get a vintage amp

15:36 An early 1960s Tweed Princeton branded Harvard, tensioning the input jack

22:22 Modar-branded guitar amps; tube lineup of EF86, 6BQ5, EZ81

23:51 Trainwreck amplifiers; the tone difference between a single 8 ohm secondary winding vs four separate 1 ohm coils wired at 8 ohms

25:47 Should I buy this Peavey Triumph 120 combo?; five-pin footswitch replacement

28:15 Dummy load vs speaker when working on amps

30:55 How to replace the battery circuit on a Bogen E66 portable PA, ice cream truck-specific amps, the Fretboard Brewery

35:45 5Y3 rectifiers, demystified

39:00 Rancho Gordo beans, redux

39:46 An inspiring 1966 Champ and a vegan pumpkin pie

45:24 A hi-fi Eico ST-84/Dynaco ST-70 with the balance way off, RIP Earl Yarrow

55:22 Servicing a Carr Mercury; 12AT7 versus 12ZX7 pre-amp tubes

1:01:04 What to do with a 1980s Fender 30 with a weak second channel? a rare Ampeg B-15N

Hosted by amp tech Skip Simmons and co-hosted/produced by Jason Verlinde of the Fretboard Journal.

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Above pic: Listener Bryan M’s tweed Harvard/Princeton, as discussed on this week’s episode.