The Electra Forums

I just sold a peavey classic 30, same circuit as yours but a little newer with the black striped tolex so it is a different color. Very good amps, especially for the money. Lots of session players use them. They put a Celestion in there for a little bit of an improvement and go. A really good sounding amp.

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Thorny

Musicman 65 pushing an old open back Teisco cabinet with a 15" spkr...

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2253w, its not a MPC or a set neck, but it is a sweet tele custom tribute.

I've been using a Line 6 Flextone II for quite awhile. I also have a bunch of pedals that I play around with and I am currently messing around with the Line 6 M13 effects stompbox. It has delays, modulations, distortions, reverbs, etc.... I play rhythm guitar in our church band and for Celebrate Recovery. It is fun to throw in some non-conventional sounds into the mix and see where it takes us. As I am always changing things up it is hard to say what I prefer on a constant basis.

I've got this Kustom amp for practice.


My brother bought this Earth Producer at a guitar show in town, he played with it for awhile and forgot about it when he quit bass and went to banjo. The volume pots are scratchy, but the amp is loud as hell. It plays through a homemade cab with a single 12 speaker from an "Ampro" cab that was falling apart.

In front of that is a late 60's Silvertone 1464. the clean channel sounds great, but the reverb has a squeal/screetch/feedback to it. the cab is loaded with two 12 inch Jensens. Now to get good player over to try it out. BTW, can anyone recommend a place to send it who can fix the reverb?

Jet City JCA20H head pushing either a 2x10 cab with Eminence Copperheads or a 2x12 with a Celestion G12m and G12H 70th anniversary.

I am EXTREMELY impressed with the JCA20H! I figured with the Soldano name on it it wouldn't be bad - but WOW! Killer amp.
I finished, grilled and speakerized the 2x12 and built the 2x10 from scratch - a fun and rewarding project that can be done for well under $100 not including speakers.

Nice!

I have been buying and modding some of the JCA amps. I came up with a mod for the picovalve and sold a bunch of them. I have a 50H I just modded to the SLO specs, and it KICKS. I also bought one of the 20w combos and modified it as well. I am happiest with the modded 50H (which is closest to your 20H, as the 20w combo model has reverb and a different preamp). Good stuff -

I just rebuilt a 70s twin, and I have two amps I need to finish building, a 2xEL84 amp and a 4x6V6 one. I will probably sell the twin. I have a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in that amp - literally - I worked on it in my garage with the temps about 106 outside here, and I sliced open my pointer finger on my right hand right at the end knuckle in the metal shield under between the cabinet and the chassis (dang thing was as sharp as a razor). So while having that taped all up, I was stripping the insulation on the new AC wire and managed to stick the pointy end of the end cutter (small pointed type) right into the end of my thumb on my left hand. It was not a wide cut (like the one on the finger) but it was deep. Bled like CRAZY. So I have both of my hands taped up. If I don't, they get bumped and start bleeding again. Both did earlier today. The twin is done except for a few cosmetic details. It needs a handle on it yet, and needs the upper back panel but not sure I will bother. This one is almost a record. I had a recap, changed some resistors, and most of the tubes, but also the speakers, regrilled it, replaced a bunch of knobs, fixed a pot that came apart, and changed the reverb tank, the power cord, and stripped the nasty non-tolex covering someone put on it, and sanded and put poly on the beaten up wood. If I didn't already have some of the parts here it may have been sold for parts. It would have probably been more cost effective to do so. But - it is completely overhauled and should last another 100,000 miles or so. Probably only worth about $600 though. I put two 80w Celestions in it I forgot I had and was not using. They are really a good match for it power wise and were clean full range speakers. It is BIG and Clean sounding. A twin has a new lease on life. It sounds HUGE on only 3-4! Put a pedal with it and it can ROCK. It look like junk still, but it looks a lot better than it did. It sounds great, and that is what matters. It PROJECTS too - no problem being heard when this puppy is turned up. My ears are still ringing! If I had a Rat pedal I could do metal with this thing.

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Thorny

That's a save to be proud of Thorny! Any time there's blood involved it brings it a new level. That's a lot of effort for a 70's twin - my first amp ever BTW - complete with a TON of cold solder joints and JBL's. That thing weighed about 400 lbs. Traged it to my brother about 20 years ago for a Marshall half stck. The Marshall is long gone but he still has the twin.

IIRC the mod for the SLO specs is a couple added gain stages?? I just ordered a choke for the 20 and plan to do the depth mod as well. The thinh I'm most interested in is a 5751 maybe in V2 trying to get a little more clean headroom and still retain most of the gain - not real sure about the best position for that tube though. At first I thought V3...... It's a real nice amp stock and doesn't really seem to need much but naturally I can't leave it alone. I'll probably lose the front blue panel and add a wooden one yhat matches the cabs too.

I got the 20 yo replace a 5w Epi VJr that I just hated. It really did nothing for me. I love many of the older 5w combos from the 60's but not the VJr. I assume the picovalve would be twice the amp the Epi is.
What is your picovalve mod?

the slo mod is changing some values in the preamp and two pots from 1M to 500k, and I did the depth mod, with a switch as well (like to be able to switch it out). The picovalve basically re-voices the preamp - it is way to dark and muddy stock.

My first "real" tube amp is my super reverb - I still have it! Actually, I had a cheap western auto amp "trutone" that was tube, but it was a little bitty thing. As I recall we plugged in a bass into it and ruined it. I wouldn't mind having it now again but it was thrown away back then.

My friend had a twin like this back then. I didn't appreciate it like I do now. I remember how excited we were when he got an "ice cube" that plugged into the reverb in and out to convert it to be a preamp. It didn't sound good, but we thought it was an improvement back then. FX pedals were quite expensive, not like they are now.

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Thorny

I haven't heard anyone talk about the 'Icecube' in 20 years man, thanks for bringing back that memory. I had one plugged into my Pro Reverb for years, it was a primitive way of adding a gain stage to a Reverb Fender amp. I still have one:



Basically it has a pair of RCA connectors spaced perfectly for a Fender amp, and you plug it in instead of the reverb tank send/return lines. They had a deluxe version too that allowed you to plug the reverb tank back in line. It adds gain, but tends to be really middy, and muddy. Raunchy or not, it was a pretty clever idea. Plugged it into my Princeton when I first got it, and it just didn't do it for me, so it's continues to gather dust.

All I can remember about my Twin (with JBL's) was it weighed around 100lbs, and didn't start to sound like rock until it was WAYYYYY too loud to blend with the rest of the band. That's when I traded it for the 40 watt Pro, and all was well with the world again. Mike.

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

I used to have an Ice Cube! With the little plastic retail box, instructions, everything-- essentially it was NOS. I think I must have ebay'd it years ago. They look to me like they were actually molded in ice cube trays.

In my '74 Vibrolux Reverb (and any other amp I ever tested) it sounded spitty and harsh. But it DID add gain that was adjustable via the reverb knob AND switchable via the reverb footswitch.

I think I sold it to cash in, as the exact same results can be obtained by wiring a resistor (forgot the value) in series with a couple RCA jacks. So for about $1 in parts you can make this thing. That's based upon a trick I read in Gerald Weber's book A Desktop Reference of Hip Vintage Guitar Amps (highly recommended, by the way).

Somewhere in my tool box at the studio I have the one that I made after reading the book, thinking it might be useful in a session some day, but honestly almost ANY decent distortion/overdrive pedal gives more useful results. I'm quite sure that I never actually recorded a track with it, although I'm sure I pulled it out a couple times just to show it to someone.

Agreed. Just about ANY distortion/overdrive pedal is a lot better. And I bet you guys are right, someone just built a fixture and mounted wire and resistor connecting both jacks soldered and hung them into a ice cube tray full of goo. Got to admire a clever and simple idea! They didn't sound very good, but we didn't have every choice under the sun back then.

I remember a friend plugging his LP deluxe (minihumbuckers) into a peavey TNT (later found out it was a bass amp) and it sounded amazing (lots of distortion, and I thought it sounded great). I could not understand why it sounded like that. He had a battery and a preamp inside it (possibly alembic? that was a pretty advanced thing back then). I was also amazed.

Just traveled to Nashville and back today, traded a nice guitar for some cash and tubes combination. I nearly sold out of my stash of favorite preamp tubes and spent a boat load and bought a bunch more from 3 people recently - so now I have some mullards, telefunkens, amperex, tungstrams, RCA, GE, and other 12AX7 types again. A few are NOS, but many are tested OS. Good stuff! I also picked up and restored a 1978 EH Golden Throat (series 1) talk box. It is fantastic! I can pretend I am Peter Frampton or Joe Walsh. Wife thinks I am nuts. But she married me, so that speaks highly of her judgement!

If someone needs a twin that works 100%, but looks like the bride of Frankenstein - I have it. It is so ugly, it is cool (that is what I keep telling myself). It sure sounds good.

TTYL

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Thorny

Right! Here it is... (click to enlarge)

Wow! Yup, I never took one apart or made one, but as I understand it that was all that it was - that in a cube of material a lot like the early MPC modules were encased in.

Hey, I have been modding a lot of amps lately too. I modded a Jet City 50H to Soldano SLO specs, and it ROARS. I modded one of their 20w combos (the one with reverb) and sold it already. I modded several picovalves, and I am now selling a kit to modify those (have sold a pretty good number of them). I modded two of the Fender Champion 600s recently with weber alnico speaker and changed the voicing and filtering extensively so now sounds like a mean tweed beastie. I also just got a Bugera 5V, and just now modded it to make it brighter (because the amp is rather dark, fine for a tele, but not good with humbuckers). Now it sounds great with humbuckers too. I have resorted to modding these cheaper amps because that is what is selling now, the expensive $1500 hand made amps aren't selling very well in this economy. No use to make something no one wants to pay you for, except maybe for reasons other than payment.

I just got in a x960 ultima and fixed it up. It is great. Not added greatly to the Electra guitar list lately though. I worked on that bass I won as a prize at the Electra Fest that was in St. Louis a while back. It had the finger board separated, I re-glued it down, and wound up eventually having to remove the frets to level out the glued down fret board. I can fill in some cracks in finishes with superglue, scraping, and buffing until any flaws can hardly be seen. It does take a lot of time though. I put new jumbos on it. It turned out NICE. I can do a pretty good job at that stuff, but since I don't do it all the time it takes me a very long time to do a good job. My near vision just keeps getting worse and worse. Hard to see even with my glasses and bright light, but impossible otherwise. You all would be proud of me though. Hard to tell that bass ever had a problem. It always was a NICE bass, and the only way to make it cost effective was to do it myself. Now it is killer. Guess I have to learn to play (just got a fender bassman 200 SS combo because I fixed it and the customer never paid the bill, so now I have something to play it on).

You all have given me an itch for an endorser though. I am looking.

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Thorny

You mean this one (taken at EF2010 St. Louis):



I know that Bass had some issues, but I got it for a song, and it was a Giveaway item after all! One just recently sold for 2 bills on eBay, which is about the most I've ever seen a X650 go for, which is still a steal if you ask me. They are versatile, well-built instruments, but I think the low to midrange Bass market is pretty much flooded, which keeps these from appreciating.

Thanks for keeping this website alive and kicking John... it does not go unnoticed! Cheers, Mike.

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

Yup, that's it. Dang that dude holding it is a homely one! But he sure looks happy.

The bass is really nice. Great bass, so now I have one to test out the bass amps I work on. And I actually have a bass amp (not a great one) that I fixed. Yeah they are not worth a whole lot, but they are fine for the money. When I glued it the first time, it was not entirely level afterwards. My first repairs were not sufficient. Thus prompting some gluing and the pulling of the frets and leveling the board and re-fretting. I can't imagine a non-active 4 string sounding much better. The MMKs are really good pickups. The P/J pickup config was a fairly new thing in basses around that time, and all the Japanese makers were doing it. This is a good one.

Now you all make me want an endorser. Will it ever end? Maybe when I am dead...

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Thorny