Famous guitar amps?

[Mike K]

Jack White's Silvertone 1485

[Chuck H]

Jack White's Silvertone 1485

I always like his tone. He experiments enough that the amp is only one part of a bigger signal chain but even when he's out of the box I can hear something "honest" in it. I didn't know an old Silvertone was a mainstay in his arsenal but it doesn't surprise me. This is a guy who could play through ANY boutiquey amp he wanted to and he's using an antique made by the cheapest possible vendor of the time (Valco? Harmony?Danelectro I think?) and distributed by Sears! Artists are finicky about their sound to be sure. I don't know a lot about Jack but it seems to me he's sort of a purist that likes to experience life and make new art with original vintage stuff. In a mind that we tend to leave the best of what we have behind in the name of progress regardless if it's actually better.

While I suspect his 1485 is stock if you have more information you should post it here.

[Mike K]

I think it's bone stock, AFAIK... he says the "magic" of it is the 6x10" Jensen speaker cab.


I saw him live - this was later on when he was with the Raconteurs and he wasn't playing this amp anymore. He did have some 8" combo (maybe a boutique amp) that I would have guessed was something like a GA-5. I didn't like the tone of it. It was really ratty, but he was doing his thing with it on a couple tunes.

I think at that time he and the other guitarist, Brendan Benson had moved to stereo Magnatones. They sounded great live (if that is what they were using).


I agree with your comment earlier - most of it (for a musician) is just finding something that works. You might find that in a dumpster, on Craigslist, or at a pawn shop. Good artists know how to turn something funky into something unique and interesting. Also I don't blame musicians for evolving. There's so many "paintbrushes" out there, it's hard to stick to just one.

[Chuck H]

...most of it (for a musician) is just finding something that works. You might find that in a dumpster, on Craigslist, or at a pawn shop. Good artists know how to turn something funky into something unique and interesting. Also I don't blame musicians for evolving. There's so many "paintbrushes" out there, it's hard to stick to just one.

Many here have expressed that sentiment. Though very few get to realize it. Art is art. It's not a formula, it's a creation sprung from the mind in a time of inspiration. Sometimes using the tools that inspired the artist. Other times the artist might use whatever tools are at hand to express their sentiment. But at it's root it is art. Not always about the paints, brushes, amps or guitars.

On the forum here we discuss what it means to make amps, guitars and pickups. Sometimes that means authentic reproduction and sometimes that means idealizing for a goal. Most of us full well knowing that searching for tone in the things we build means very little to the real musicians. They just make music no matter what. A good musician might be able to blow minds with a comb and wax paper. Finding the musical properties and playing the hell out of them until you have to believe.

[Mike K]

I think "One love" is pretty iconic. Most guitar players know about it. I friggin' love Keef's tone, particularly his live tone these days - but that's Tweed Twins with custom Celestions, not something I'm going to be playing in my living room (even if I could figure out what the speaker specs were). Honestly what I've read about "One Love" is that he mostly slaves it - so I think that means he's running the preamp of something else and using it for just a PA (makes sense for a Tweed Champ, that's about all they are, and how I suggest people use them). Also a (modest) champ is a cheap way to run stereo at home. Sounds great but I thought it was hard to record. In room tone is very full and 3D though.

I should note "One Love" is not Keef's champ, it's his Harvard/Princeton modified with a 12" speaker and 6L6. Apparently his champ doesn't have a name.

[Mike K]

Many here have expressed that sentiment. Though very few get to realize it. Art is art. It's not a formula, it's a creation sprung from the mind in a time of inspiration. Sometimes using the tools that inspired the artist. Other times the artist might use whatever tools are at hand to express their sentiment. But at it's root it is art. Not always about the paints, brushes, amps or guitars.

On the forum here we discuss what it means to make amps, guitars and pickups. Sometimes that means authentic reproduction and sometimes that means idealizing for a goal. Most of us full well knowing that searching for tone in the things we build means very little to the real musicians. They just make music no matter what. A good musician might be able to blow minds with a comb and wax paper. Finding the musical properties and playing the hell out of them until you have to believe.

I questioned whether or not to post a clip of my friends univox he pulled out of a dumpster. Perhaps it'll show up on another thread that is more appropriate. He's a good guy - he has everything from my idealized boutique level builds to junk he collected. He seems to like it all for what it does best and likes to bring me old junk and have me build cool new stuff in it.

I tend to build stuff with the intention that it might get sold - not really to make money, but so I have room to work on something new To me that means using parts I feel comfortable with in terms of reliability. But if someone brings me junk and is OK with the risk, I'll build it into something else. I have a nice old 20W or so PP radio in my basement that some nice iron, an EF86 and a cool enclosure that I'd like to rebuild. The owner wanted it fixed but it needed a full recap and the can caps to fit it were more than he wanted to invest.

A friend of mine who got me into amp building used to make everything from junk - he started doing that when you could get tube radios for nothing. Now people have valued them more. Anyway, his stuff was always hit or miss. Some of it was REALLY good - like once in a while he'd just have a cool set of tubes and some really good iron, other times it wasn't all that great. But even using top dollar parts, you can expect that to some degree. The art for me is really trying to find what works best for me in any given circuit. I never know what it's going to be - sometimes I make assumptions that are completely off and usually what I do is just try to tweak it until it's the best I think it can be. It's like cooking - it's just the matter of getting the right blend of ingredients. None are particularly bad, but sometimes trying to make something you *think* is superior work in a certain situation doesn't give the desired overall result.

[Chuck H]

We actually come from similar ideologies. I've built A LOT of stuff from/with salvage because I recognize the condition and value and can't bring myself to call it junk. Example: A friend was tossing a trashed and old The Fisher stereo amp that ran 7199 tubes. The OT's are 7.6k primary rated for 30 watts. Well... That's 30 watts "hi fi" and things are different for guitar amps with their much narrower frequency demands. So I saved both OT's I still have one. The other went into an amp I sold. That amp uses a pair of el34 tubes with 470Vp making a full 50W. I wired the amp to half the secondary indication so the primary reflected on the pair of el34's is actually 3.8k. And it works brilliant and sounds better than I could have hoped. Happy accident. In that light I'm reserving the other OT for something special

That said, I've never been afraid to just source and buy whatever I need for a project. I've even managed to get both Heyboer and Edcor to customize transformers for me that weren't in their offerings. Not as big a deal as it sounds like though. They were both small magnetics shops at the time and, so, flexible.

I make NO profit on my builds because of the time for design and refinement aspect. They are mostly custom order one off's with only one or two in existence. But it funds future projects and so far I've kept it at a zero cost avocation

Anyway. We don't seem to be that different. At least with respect to how we approach this genre.

[Mike K]

Yeah man - for the amount of time I put into stuff, I'd make way more working the drive thru at Wendy's. If I want to go make the big money, I'll go work in engineering in corporate America. I did that for 12 years and ended up with 3 kids at once, so things changed. I've always done the music electronics for a hobby but I have no issue selling something. I like working on collaborative projects with other people but I gotta say, some are just nightmares and if they throw me red flags, I just walk away. I've been burned a couple times by crummy customers so I just work with who I want to work with.

You know I'm a proponent of some of the boutiquey stuff, but mainly these days it's a few pickup and transformer winders. Most of the other stuff I can't really find any value in. And I don't take anything from them as gospel, just from my experience there is some differences there, and ones that I don't have the expertise on, so I'm willing to pay them for theirs. I've bought custom stuff too, from Heyboer and Merc (never Edcor) and will continue to do so. If I have the budget to test a couple things out, I will. For what I'm doing and where I am with relationships with these guys, everything costs about the same. That wasn't always the case and I can understand trepidation and cost considerations for projects. Parts for any build are crazy high and it doesn't leave much to cover all the labor to get something worthwhile.

I won't throw stuff away - but also I don't want to see someone invest $200 in an old tube radio when they could get a SS device that would perform better. For a guitar amp, yeah, might be worth it...

[Chuck H]

Regarding costs... That's changed a bit in the last three years. And it's been longer than that since I've been in the game. I have to reimagine these matters for a future venture but right now things are so nebulous that it's impossible to get a bead on it. At the same time Fender and Peavey are having amps built outside of US borders that actually sound really good. Can the current demographic of musicians hear the difference between this and the five or ten per cent improvement for a custom, slaved over design with ear selected parts? And would they ever be willing to pay the five X cost to make that a priority? Probably not if they're mostly concerned with just making music. Which I actually hope they are. But something is certainly lost when the culture no longer allows for the priority and product recognition of the best quality tools. Rant over.

We don't do this for them anyway, really. We do it for ourselves just to learn we could.

[Mike K]

Yeah - I played a SS Peavey Bandit a month ago that blew me away. Those amps sound incredibly good for what is a very, very cheap to produce amp. I'm still considering buying one...


Cost is nuts right now. I didn't buy much of anything during Covid and had plenty of parts around to keep me busy. But mostly I didn't really build much, just reworked a lot of stuff I hadn't quite perfected. Heck I have a couple amps I've changed no less 20 times, and not small changes, like kept only the tube compliment and transformers.

Not to denigrate anyone in this hobby, but I don't think building amps is really all that hard. Building an amp company, and making it profitable... that's another story. Anyway I always try to encourage people to DIY - their ear knows best and they can try more stuff practically that way than trying to explain it to me. That's why I did it. And I understand a lot more that the perfect amp doesn't exist - there's always some tradeoffs here or there.

[nosaj]

Anyone can build an amp but not everyone can troubleshoot it.


nosaj

[Chuck H]

Anyone can build an amp but not everyone can troubleshoot it.


nosaj

Or design it to their will, desires and needs! Because that's all I ever started doing this for. Once I did it the shine sort of faded. And as mediocre as it seems, yes, I'm still playing through THAT amp whenever I do play. But Then I had developed these skills that were useless now. So I started making amps for other people to get what THEY want. This is the only way my appreciation for tonal aspects in multiple styles could evolve. Apparently I'm egocentric. But I do what I can to break free of that

[Mike K]

Anyone can build an amp but not everyone can troubleshoot it.


nosaj

I suppose the first supersedes the other. If you can build, but you can't fix, you can always just "rebuild" until it works. Not efficient, but effective.

[Chuck H]

Anyone can build an amp but not everyone can troubleshoot it.


nosaj

That's actually A LOT of what we do here on the forum isn't it.?. Guys build amps and they don't work or eventually require repair and WE help them fix things based on symptoms. This goes better or worse depending on the amp owners personality A builder with a temperament that can handle parts placement and soldering isn't always able to handle inference to possible mistakes or take a back seat to their own project and allow someone else to direct the troubleshooting. There are A LOT of amps collecting dust because of their thin skinned owners lack of humility. And we're usually gentle about it too, at first. We start with something like "Perhaps there's something miswired." or "Sometimes tubes don't perform like they should even when they're new." or "That seems like a grounding fault." This typically goes well enough but sometimes you meet that person who becomes instantly defensive. Refusing to hear that ANYTHING could be amiss with their skills, knowledge or purchased parts. Too often the only results are discord and personal attacks that end up with us saying "Well why did you ask if you don't want to know." And then they go away. Sometimes they come back, even years later and the cycle repeats. I've dug into some of these cases and seen these builders on a couple of other forums with similar results. Destined to look at their precious door stop until the end of time.

[Chuck H]

I suppose the first supersedes the other. If you can build, but you can't fix, you can always just "rebuild" until it works. Not efficient, but effective.

I'd argue that it's NOT effective, overall. Something we see WAY TOO MUCH here is a builder with a new project that doesn't work or now needs repair who is given advice about tests to do and report on or a specific part of the circuit that might be responsible, but then decides to do some kind of shotgun repairs like replacing ALL the capacitors or a circuit modification that "reduces hum in this model" (say, if hum was the problem). Then new symptoms appear because, well, they didn't know what they were doing in the first place so why would future work go any better? Now the number of symptoms and their interactions has increased and trouble shooting is greatly complicated. The moment I recognize this builder type I ask them not to do anything we here on the forum don't prescribe to avoid complicating matters. But they run ahead anyway. We see these sorts of members and their projects reappear in successive attempts to achieve a repair only to fail each time because even though they can rebuild, they can't LEARN anything more complicated than placing components and soldering them. So they go on placing components and soldering them arbitrarily without ever addressing the actual problem. If you build something wrong the first time and you don't LEARN your error then rebuilding it three more times the same way DOES NOT triple your chance of success. It triples the chances that new errors will be introduced. More door stops to go with the ones I mentioned above.