All posts by admin

check out our Crown torture test video here:   The pictured Crown MA 5000vz delivers 1300w  into 8 ohms, 2000w into 4 ohms or 2500w into 2 ohms per channel in stereo mode and 5000w into 1 ohm in mono mode!   They are fan cooled (the fans aren’t quiet) they weigh a ton, and  can last for decades. When they…

  Here is a little video to accompany the upcoming ToneQuest Report Ampeg V series article:

Jim Marshall died on April 5, 2012. Imagine the guitar amp world without this man. Marshall was a music store owner and drummer who gave lessons to Mitch Mitchell. His 100W amp was requisitioned by Pete Townshend who wanted an amp loud enough to keep up with Keith Moon. Hence the birth of the infamous Marshall Stack which became standard…

The mother of all EL84 based combo amps.  It’s the Beatles amp.  I’ve been an AC 30 player for many years though mine were never top boosts. Vox made about six or seven varieties of this amp all with minor differences not counting the reissues.   Not an easy amp to keep alive: The internal voltages tend to run too high when you…

With plate voltages at 660 volts and multi section fp type can caps this one wins the most expensive to restore award. If it’s an old one and the caps are original, it’s definitely time to replace them.    The tube compliment is about half obsolete types (preamp) and the power amp uses a sextet of 6550’s or perhaps 6146B’s…

  Here’s one that follows the old car analogy pretty well. We had a GA 20 in for repair. The amp generally sounded sick which we determined was the result of a very low B+ supply, which is a typical symptom of an amp in dire need of new filter caps. We also located and replaced a few noisy resistors. …

Problem/symptom: “Reverb sounds bad, amp loses power and makes crackling noises, blows a fuse now and then”. We plug in, play it, put it on the bench and look, check, sniff, and shake it around a little. We find some loose ground connections. We also find that one of the springs in the reverb pan is broken. You would also…