Gibson Medalist 4/10 in the shop!
June 24th, 2014 posted under Amps.This was a very interesting amp to work on. The Gibson Medalist 4/10 is a very big amplifier with four 10″ speakers and has the power amplifier and transformers at the bottom of the cabinet. At the top of the cabinet is the pre-amp section with reverb and tremolo and then as a 3rd separate unit is the control panel located at the top. Each of these 3 sections is connected with a large connector and bundles of cable, similar to a jukebox or pinball machine even.
Made only a few hours from here in Kalamazoo Michigan, this amp is beautiful and sounds great once the work was completed on it.
The best part about this amp is that it goes to 12, that’s two louder!
V-Stack pedals
May 24th, 2014 posted under Effects.Recently we repaired a pair of V-Stack effects pedals. These are made in Canada, sturdy and great sounding pedals. Unfortunately the stomp-switch, which is soldered directly onto the PCB had seized and failed. We replaced the switch with a new one, and this pedal should be good to rock for another 20 years.
Gibson GA-40
April 18th, 2014 posted under Amps.
This beautiful Gibson GA-40 came in barely working, lots of buzzing hissing and crackling. After opening it up, there was a few large power capacitors that had leaked black goop all over the inside, including coating the rectifier tube socket.
We replaced all of those capacitors with Sprague Atoms.
Most of the other capacitors in the amp were shot, a few were split right in half. Those were replaced with Mallory caps, and a few cold solder joints were fixed.
After giving everything a clean, the amp sounded amazing with great deep tremolo.
Rivera designed Fender Concert fix
March 27th, 2014 posted under Amps.This Rivera designed Fender Concert came in for new power tubes and biasing. After opening it up to give everything a check over, we noticed a large piece of metal floating around in the chassis! We removed this before it could be come a (very messy) problem. Once everything was cleaned up and biased, the amp sounded great. This is a point to point handwired amp, but a very complicated design with tube driven effects loop and channel switching. We also replaced a fraying power cord with a new one, just to make sure our customer stays alive to enjoy his killer amp.
Dusty Mesa-Boogie with blown-up preamp tube
March 27th, 2014 posted under Amps.This Mesa-Boogie Nomad came onto the bench because one of the Master Volume knobs wasn’t working. After replacing the potentiometer, we noticed a blown-up preamp tube and replaced that. The inside also got a nice cleaning and so did all of the potentiometers and jacks. The amp sounded killer, very well designed inside.
JLM Audio LA500 opto-compressor kit build
February 25th, 2014 posted under Kit Building.We recently built this pair of JLM Audio LA500 studio compressors for a customer. In addition to repairing and modifying guitar amps and electronics, we can also build kits. contact us for a quote!
