Guild tubes

coastie99

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capnjuan said:
What all you got in that 'Valve Case' anyway?

Well, first an overview.

Goes like this......

The kid is in his fifties and has a (vague-ish) desire to play acoustic (mostly slide) like his Blues heroes.

Muso-nephew convinces the kid that he should go for it, since the kid has extensive music/blues knowledge to draw upon.
Kid's a bit doubtful, 'cos he's not a very driven kind of guy but, what the hell.

Buys nice Maton, and sets about learning. Sort of !
Wants resonator guitar for that authentic sound. Wife's encouraging, so buys Fender FR48. Since modified with Gotoh tuners, National cone and (soon) carbon fibre biscuit/saddle.
Sets out learning. Sort of !

Kid gets desire for "once in a lifetime flash guitar", and purchases F47RCE. Guitar Dr. fits FWI nut/saddle/pins.
Learning continues. Sort of !

Kid convinces wife he needs a Fender Acoustasonic Jr. Purchases said article.

Kid sees BB on German Ebay. Falls in love, and subsequently purchases one on American Ebay.
So now the kid needs an amplifier, and that of course must be a valve amplifier !
Re-enter muso nephew who enthuses at length about his THD Univalve !
The kids gotta have one of these babies; enter a Univalve, and learning about electric guitar / valve amp. begins. Sort of !

Now, the Univalve allows you to swap around a great variety of pre and power valves, so we must have some of these. And they must be "vintage" valves !
So, the kid ferrets around and puts together a nice little collection of vintage valves.
Now, learning to "drive" the Univalve with different valve combinations begins. Sort of !

Now, the kid could really do with a valve tester to make sure any valves he has, and buys subsequently, are in decent condition.
Enter an Avo valve tester, and another learning experience begins. Sort of !

Now the scenes going nuts !
Enter two F4CE's.
The kid sees a gorgeous black SF4 Custom on Ebay. A bit of negotiating and it's his !

The kid thinks that a re-issue Dano U2 would be just the biz for sliding on.
Naturally, he acquires one.
He decides that customizing would be fun, and modifies just about every damn' thing on the Dano.
Has such a good time, that he buys a second one, and modifies that, too.

Sometime, along the way here, he decides that a Supro Ozark would be fab. to slide on !
Come in Ozark !

Meanwhile, the kid's guitar learning process has kind of hit a neutral !
Could he be spreading himself a bit thinly ?
After all, all he wanted to do was plunk around on an acoustic, somewhat in the fashion of his heroes !

Whoops ! Missed a bit !

Rewind to Amplifier antics.

We need a speaker cabinet, don't we.
What better than a Celestion Greenback in a home-made marine-ply cabinet, with Purple Elephant tolex and Marshall biscuit weave grill ? Perfect !

OK, here we are, back again.
What could be better now, than building your own ?

Enter an Ebay neck, and a great slab of NZ native timber.
And that's where we're at........... Work in progress.
One of these days, perhaps even by the turn of the decade, I'll have a home-made guitar !

And hopefully by then, I'll have learned how to play the bloody guitar !!

So, what's in the box ? At last !

A nice selection of, mainly, Mullard and Telefunken ECC83's/82's/81's.
Ten or so nice RCA 7025's.

A dozen or so Mullard & Telefunken EL84's.

A heap of RCA 6V6G's/GT's.

Various 6L6's - RCA, Kenrad, Transvision, Philips USA.

Several Mullard/Philips and Telefunken EL34's, including a very early, and very sweet Philips metal-based one.

A couple of old Tungsol 6550's.

Two GEC KT88's.

A Mullard EL37.

Several RCA and Tungsol 6F6/6K6's.

I've actually sold a few treasures, over time, to Tubeworld; mostly El34's, EL37's, KT66's and ECC83's.

It wasn't too long ago that I was picking up stuff off our NZ Ebay equivalent, but it seems that now, quite a few others have become hip to that trick !
 

doc

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I remember when you could get the 12AX7s for around $4.00 at Lafayette Electronics. How's that blast from the past! :lol:
 

capnjuan

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In the 1980s, my oldest bro got me interested in valve stereo gear; started with some old copper-plated HK gear, moved on to Dynaco Model IVs, ST 70s, due to good fortune a Marantz gear 7C preamp and 10B tuner, and finally a AR D-76 which would have made a fine home for your 6550s or KT66s. All this stuff was sold when we moved to Florida and a smaller house.

I had put the guitar down in the early 80s and didn't buy/play another until last year when I bought the F212. About the same time, I renewed my interest in valve amps starting with a wall-shaking Fender 75. I rebuilt the power supply, updated the caps, did some cosmetic stuff with the cabinet, and sold it; bought as a project, sold in good condition but too much amp.

As with your guitar-building, I can't / don't scratch-build amps but one day I'd like to try; there are several good sites with smart people who can help with pieces, parts, and hand-holding. I've read about the THD products; never had the pleasure but understand them to be a great platform for audtioning valves and tweaking sound.

That's a 10-4 on a valve tester; I used to have a nice Hickok; it went with the rest of the gear in the early 90s; letting it go is up there on my list of dumb moves.

These days I've settled in on older Gibson amps; more affordable than same-era Fenders. Warm, broad, round, chimey, very musical and receptive to pedals to compensate for their lack of built-in variables. They were built and sold as student amps; well, that's me.

The Gibsons are fixed-bias amps and require matched outputs; sort of ironic in that what isn't clear is how long it takes for the matched pair to become unmatched and without a tester and an inventory of spares to match with...I think you can see where I'm going...but if you come up a matching pair of 6V6s...

I'm also a big fan of the EL34; except for the Mark III, nearly all the Dynaco gear ran them; indestructable with a very fine sound. The Marantz 8b, regarding by many as the amp of the centuy, ran them too.

cj
 

doc

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There is no hard rule for when the matched output becomes unmatched. I haven't check, but there might be a amp kit you can buy just to get started and get some of the hang of it. Of course you can take one completely apart and then put it back together again for that experience. I use to find junk electronics and then rebuild them years ago or modify them for experience. With the solid state electronics it becomes difficult to do anything with them as they are basically pull toss and plug and play repairs now. I remember in the mid 80's I built from scratch hard drive controllers. What I mean from scratch is that I hand built the circuit boards using designing circuit boards, put the connections in and parts on the board for two hard drives for a Amiga Computer. I still have it, if I can remember where its hidden maybe I will post a picture of the controllers. I have a Ham Radio license since I was 12 years old. I was a officer in MARS, Civil Defense, RACES, and some other emergency organizations working with military and government officals. I use to direct code traffic for the whole Eastern US and Canada every morning for years, some time ago. It was fun. Aw....enough of the old days stuff....... :lol:
 

capnjuan

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Weber and others have amp kits mostly modelled on early Fenders and there are sources for Marshall designs as well; they look like a lot fun but probably not for me. I don't work my amps very hard and they all have fresh bias caps and grid resistors. After cap jobs which ought to include all the power resistors anyway, I think it makes sense to start with a matched set...yes, they're going to drift but at least after they burn in, you can clearly hear what the amp has to say.
 
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