silvertone 1474

[leftyjay]

hello, i'm new here.

i recently received a very nice silvertone 1474 that has been put away for over 30 years. it looks showroom new and everything about it is original.

i took it to my local amp tech to have him go over the amp and give it a tune up. he recapped it, replaced some of the resisters that faded out of specs, and replaced the 2 prong plug to a 3 prong. he also had to replace one of the sockets for one of the 12ax7 tubes.

when he got it finished, i went over and picked it up. the tone sounded great and was suprisingly loud. the only thing that came to my attention was the amount of HISS that was present. it didnt matter if the knobs were turned up or down, the hiss is always present.

i'm going to call him next week and ask if there was something that will silence the level of hiss, but i thought i'd ask you guys since you seem to know what you're talking about with tube amps.

also, i have found it hard to find the schematic for this chassis 185.10411 and any info would be great appreciated. thanks!

here is a link to my silvertone 1474 pics

[leftyjay]

thanks for ALL the replies. great forum you have here

[Jag]

Without hearing your amp, it would be very hard for anyone to say if the amount of hiss is normal or not. A certain amount of hiss is to be expected. Assuming the plate resistors are carbon comp, original or not, replacing them with metal film resistors of the same value will help reduce the hiss. Excessive his can e due to a number of other things as well but, like I said before, it would be hard to tell if your amp has a problem without hearing it. Your best bet would be to ask your tech, since he can actually hear it. It sounds like he's already done a good job.

I don't know about you guys down there but, up here we just finished a long weekend which also included Valentines Day which also was on a Saturday. It could be that, given those circumstances, your post was missed. This topic has also been discussed on these forums many times before, you might try doing a search for "amplifier hiss" or words to that effect.

[tboy]

.i have found it hard to find the schematic for this chassis

The schematic is available on ampix. The chassis number differs in the least significant digit, but I'd expect it to be close enough.