Ep. 125: "Put Your Hands on the Hood"

The Truth About Vintage Amps with Skip Simmons

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 [e-mail].

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 Our 2023 Voltic DTF pedal Dad joke winner: 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. Happy holidays, everyone!

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