Sweet Vintage Amp Find

Cool, not bad for free!

 

I reckon a few spiders are pissed off, nice find.

 

If one endeavors to restore a rusty amplifier, one must be very careful with the power transformer. It is possible that the PT is still functional, but too much rust may have rendered it useless. Importantly, the unknowing restorer can render it useless with aggressive clean up treatment.

Use a moderately stiff soft bristle brush to stroke away all the surface crap. You won't be able to "deep clean" the PT unit. I have had some success wiping them with wd40. They can be painted. The bell covers may be removed, again with great care.

Any errant scraping or gouging of the laminations is prone to short the beast. Too much rust may have already killed it.

You won't find out until you get into it.

 

Nice score and good luck with it.

 

Just imo, but I say take the knobs off, disconnect the output transformer, put those in a bin with other stuff, and trash it.

If you're going to rebuild an old PA, start with one that was actually someone's cared for possession, imo, plenty of those in the world.

 

I cleaned off too much rust from a 6V transformer and the iron ended up being a single loop secondary winding. Other than being careful not to go too crazy on the rust, could always paint over it, I would strip out most of the junk and start over. Gibson BR-6F, swap the 6SC7 you have for the 6SN7 in the schematic.

 

That amp is in sad condition...neglected for years, right?
Rusted laminates....leave them alone, imho. Do not disturb the rust.
I don't know if I would fall off into resurrecting that one, either. There are places that will test those trannies under load...Mercury Magnetics is one such place....shipping two ways to find out what you have there.

 

Andy's right. These amps and other similar units in good shape turn up on ebay all the time. If you are vigilant and patient, you can snag a good one for well under $99 including shipping.

 

I'd say you put some effort into restoring the little guy and replace the hopeless parts and show everyone who would scrap it that it's still got potential.

 

Here's an example of a nice old amp in good shape. Let's see what it goes for. (Not my listing).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Early-1950s...pt=Vintage_Electronics_R2&hash=item3ce6971c16

 

'May not ship to Canada' , not that if they did it would double the price. Envy you guys. But then again I have too many projects waiting anyway.

 

Worth saving. If you simply clean it and either find a schematic or trace it out you will be half way there. Would.change the filter caps right away before even powering up. Then follow some proven power up procedures and let the journey begin.

 

the whole idea of the shop the OP scored the amp from is to keep item's out of the landfill site's, and re-use/re-purpose them, so i say restore it, if possible, if not use as many part's from it as you can, yes he could buy a working amp off ebay etc, but where's the fun in that, there's nothing i like better than getting an old radiogram that would have ended up in landfill and turning it into an amp, use the carcass for the cab etc, i'm not a "tree hugger" but it seem's that there's too much of the throw-away society going on, use a bit of imagination, and make something, out of junk,

 

6SJ7 pentode input, richer sounding than a triode although they can be noisier. Goes to a paraphase phase inverter. The top tube acts as a regular triode amplifying stage and the signal goes to its 6L6. The lower triode takes the output of the top triode but first a voltage divider knocks down the signal, then the lower triode amplifies. By amplifying it the phase of the signal is changed 180 degrees, the signal is then sent to the other 6L6. Nice little amp, hope it still has some life left in it.