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These old 50's and 60's boxes are speaking to me and telling me to make tweed amps...

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  • These old 50's and 60's boxes are speaking to me and telling me to make tweed amps...

    .. out of them.


    They are very convincing in this manner.







    ~Semi-No0b Hobbyist~

  • #2
    Those are totally awesome

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    • #3
      Work on the first one has begun. This will actually be my 7 year old's first guitar amplifier. He recently got a mini-Strat so he needs an amp

      Anyway, I had this chassis made up to fit. The box is pretty small so it's gonna be a pretty tight layout. The speaker you see is just for reference. A nice little 6" Weber alnico is on its way. But this is how it will lay out, and the tube sockets will be sticking out toward the speaker. 5F2-A is the circuit I chose but it will be diode rectified as the tiny little PT doesn't have 5V taps.




      The volume and tone knobs and jewel lamp will stick through the grill cloth on the side of the amp.... here:




      And for an input jack it's going to get a Fender Strat style recessed jack plate installed somewhere on the cabinet (I'm proud of that idea )


      And then the speaker will be mounted into a hole that gets cut out of the front. I'll cut the hole, trim the edge with some brown "C" shaped trim to cover the cut, and then have wheat grill cloth behind the hole with the speaker mounted behind the cloth. I'm going to try to "age" the grill cloth a little to make it look as natural to the cab as possible.

      Here's the front where the speaker hole will be. It will stand on the little metal feet that you see:


      ~Semi-No0b Hobbyist~

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      • #4
        You know what's cooler than the boxes? The fact that he can say "my dad made this for me!"

        --Jim


        He's like a new set of strings... he just needs to be stretched a bit.

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        • #5
          Judging by this and what you posted here: http://music-electronics-forum.com/t28461-3/#post347002 , I'd say it's definitely time to update your signature .

          Nice work, and unique to boot!
          Originally posted by Enzo
          I have a sign in my shop that says, "Never think up reasons not to check something."


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          • #6
            Thanks! I even made a website recently... check out my slogan

            mortatone.com

            It's all for fun. And I always let people know that I'm mainly an educated assembler, not any sort of amp guru or wizard tech. And I'll still be asking stupid questions
            ~Semi-No0b Hobbyist~

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            • #7
              Love the slogan. Can't wait to see the finished product.

              "Building Hand Made Guitar Amplifiers Since at Least Yesterday"
              "I took a photo of my ohm meter... It didn't help." Enzo 8/20/22

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              • #8
                You know what's cooler than the boxes? The fact that he can say "my dad made this for me!"

                Yes, indeed this.
                Education is what you're left with after you have forgotten what you have learned.

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                • #9
                  A little has been accomplished on my boy's amp. He got to pull the handle on the drill press while making the eyelet board. That's HUGE fun for a 7 year old

                  It's gonna get a nice straight piece of grill cloth over the speaker. And I was right proud of my idea to use a strat jack plate as the amp input.






                  ~Semi-No0b Hobbyist~

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                  • #10
                    I love those old early 1960s phonographs. My neighbor has one in baby blue tolex that is like-new -- I've been trying to pry out of his hands for years... no luck so far...

                    I really like the Strat jack.

                    On a similar note, I once built an amp out of an old Bell and Howell 16mm projector that had a small single-ended 6V6 amp inside, and a removable alnico speaker with a long cord that you were supposed to locate under the movie screen when showing a movie. Instead of gutting it, I left the innards intact, so the main reel would spin when it was powered on. It sounded like a tweed champ. I loved playing through that thing as the reel turned. It's probably the coolest thing I'd ever built. Too bad that I let it go...
                    "Stand back, I'm holding a calculator." - chinrest

                    "I happen to have an original 1955 Stratocaster! The neck and body have been replaced with top quality Warmoth parts, I upgraded the hardware and put in custom, hand wound pickups. It's fabulous. There's nothing like that vintage tone or owning an original." - Chuck H

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                    • #11
                      That looks great, Mort, your boy is a lucky kid! Nice touch with the jack.
                      I think we owned a record player like that when my wife and I were first married.

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                      • #12
                        Cool, I like it.
                        Education is what you're left with after you have forgotten what you have learned.

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                        • #13
                          Spent some of the evening putting the chassis together. This is one teeny chassis. Just need to wire in the input and power cord and it will be ready for power up.

                          Since I'm only using one input instead of two, am I correct in assuming I would simply run the tip to a 68K input resistor and the sleeve to ground and forget about the 1M resistor on the jack?


                          ~Semi-No0b Hobbyist~

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                          • #14
                            Nice work, mort!

                            I'm at a summer school right now; one of the guitar players built his pedalboard into an old green plasticky suitcase thing... Thought that was pretty cool, too. I love repurposing wacky old stuff!

                            Justin
                            "Wow it's red! That doesn't look like the standard Marshall red. It's more like hooker lipstick/clown nose/poodle pecker red." - Chuck H. -
                            "Of course that means playing **LOUD** , best but useless solution to modern sissy snowflake players." - J.M. Fahey -
                            "All I ever managed to do with that amp was... kill small rodents within a 50 yard radius of my practice building." - Tone Meister -

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                            • #15
                              For anyone still interested, here is the finished project and a clip. I'd apologize for the sloppy playing but that's the way I like it.

                              https://soundcloud.com/mortatone/princeton-clip-2



                              ~Semi-No0b Hobbyist~

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