I have just come by an interesting old amplifier........It languished in a busted tape recorder circa 1964 until it found a home with me. I would have loved to get the old reel to reel mono beast working again but the heads were stuffed, so out of curiosity and simply coz the valve layout looked a bit like a Fender Champ...I bunged my Strat into the mic in and was rewarded with a beautifully gutsy overdriven growl......hummmm.......Okay so the strain of putting a guitar through the strange oval 6" speaker caused bits to fall off of the plywood casing, but the sound was there, so I spent a happy couple of hours removing the amp from the casing and separating it electrically from the tape recorderish bits that would no longer be needed.
On the bench it fired up again fine......this time through an 8" guitar speaker I happened to have about the joint...Sweeeeeet but bloody dangerous with exposed mains wiring etc.
Next Step? Well perhaps a new custom casing to make baby 'Plexi' head, proper tone controls for bass mid and treble(hi fi amp tone controls suck the big one with guitar) . A master volume shouldn't tax my amp modding skills too much...and of course a standby switch to save those Mullard tubes!
Lets see, twenty quids worth of leathercloth and MDF....twenty quids worth of components equals a small hotrod 'boutique' style head for the studio or small gigs (10-15 watts)......a saving of several hundred knicker!
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