Connecting Hammond and Leslie

Local musician John wanted his Northern Hammond to hook-up to a Leslie 32H that we rebuilt. We added a jack for the Leslie where the old “Echo” used to go, built a 6-pin cable and wired up the half-moon switch. It’s now Whiter Shade of Pale time!

Traynor YCV40 with some problemos

The Traynor YCV40 is a great sounding amp, but the construction leaves a bit to be desired in my opinion. This amp had a lot of intermittent problems including a broken reverb tank. I reinforced the PCB-mount tube sockets with some old-school leaded solder as well, which should keep this amp working for years to come.

Old Bronson Amp gets flabby Field-Coil speaker replaced

This made-in-Detroit Bronson amplifier came in needing all new capacitors, new power cord and a new speaker. The original field-coil speaker was blown in a recording session and was replaced with a new alnico Weber. The original output transformer was removed from the speaker and reused and a choke was added. Mallory 150 film capacitors were used inside to retain a vintage tone. This is a killer amp!

Fender Princeton Chorus – Bad Repair Fix

This Fender Princeton Chorus came in not working and had been taken to someone else for repair previously. Bad solder joints on key components were to blame, and once everything was cleaned up and done properly the amp functioned again.

Bad solder joints here.

McIntosh MC-240 new capacitors

This beautiful McIntosh MC-240 stereo tube amp came in with all original capacitors. We replaced all of the electrolytic cans with CP Manufacturing cans which are made on the original Mallory equipment and are drop-in replacements. Most recaps on these McIntosh amps use lower quality capacitors here and require holes to be drilled in the chassis to mount them, but keeping the amp original is important. The other electrolyrics were replaced with Sprague Atoms and film capacitors were replaced with 716P Orange Drops. The original “bumblebee” film capacitors were left in-place at the request of the customer.

Modifying a Fender Excelsior

A musician brought in his Fender Excelsior, unhappy with the two-position tone control (who wouldn’t be unhappy about that?). We changes some components on the circuit board and replaced the switch with a potentiometer, and now the tone control works just like a vintage Fender Tweed Deluxe and goes from bright to dark and every setting in between.