Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
I stumbled across this while looking for something else – so had to drop it in here. It’s a pretty weird looking circuit, and there are some really strange ideas about fuzz mentioned – including placing clipping diodes across the speaker terminals of an amp. I would not try that at home.
Just some historic speaker info from 1967 – although I had to leave a page of advertisements in, as it has a kit for a fuzz box available from Moody. For those not from Australia, Moody was a guitar amp brand, which was one of the big names back in the day. I had no … Read more
I picked this one up from a factory in an industrial area – apparently, it had been sitting there as long as anyone can remember, and it was actually used to play music at one stage. I know one thing for sure – they never opened it up to dust it. PHILIPS EV4437 … Read more
This four-channel beast is a hybrid valve PA amp, built by a bloke named Jim Farrington in NSW sometime in the late sixties or maybe seventies. From what I can tell, they mostly stayed local to where he lived, and you don’t see many pop up anywhere. I picked this up on eBay, and it … Read more
Another addition to my AWA valve PA family. I hesitated on this one at first—mainly because the power stage is a bit of a beast, and I’ve already got two from the same line. But the price was right, and apparently, I have no resistance when it comes to valve PA heads. This one’s a … Read more
This is a 12w DIY valve guitar amplifier project published in Radio and Hobbies (December 1954), specifically designed to suit the growing popularity of electric guitars. Apparently they were right, more amplifiers would be needed in future. Looks interesting, except for the volume pot being first in the signal chain. That’s not ideal – I … Read more
From Radio, Television and Hobbies, October 1962 PLAYMASTER MODEL 102 SINGLE-CHANNEL GUITAR AMPLIFIER
The Playmaster is an Australian twin channel guitar amplifier from the sixties – these came in kits, with instructions published in a magazine. It’s an usual design if you’re used to looking at Fenders and Marshalls etc. Channel one: The main guitar channel has volume, bass, treble, vibrato speed and depth and has 12″ speaker. … Read more
AWA Model PA872 is a 20-watt Australian valve PA amplifier from the early-to-mid sixties, originally running KT66 output valves and designed for 600-ohm PA speaker lines. I already own its little brother, the AWA PA774, so I had to grab this one. Inputs / Controls: Mic level (250k), phono level (250k) and tone (1meg). … Read more
Rewired the one of the secondaries on this A&R 2504 output transformer from this Steanes Sound System S311 PA head for an 8 ohm speaker. This is very much a note to self for future reference: approximately zero other people will be interested in this. Two bifilar winds in parallel were used for negative feedback … Read more