The "What? There's no Standel Club?" Club

Well this morning I wasn't feeling well and couldn't sleep so I finally looked inside my 2x12 200 watt solid state combo. It looks like I got one that has never had any module resin over parts of the circuit. This means its actually serviceable. It has never acted up though both trem and reverb work.

 

My friend Lee Jeffreiss, former steel player for Big Sandy and the Fly Rite Boys, for some time had been preaching to me about Standel transistor amplifiers and how good they sound for the vintage style steel guitar that we both like to play. He claimed that a transistor Standel would sound more "tube-like" than my Twin Reverb. I had my doubts.

So when this 1969 Standel Artist 2x12 showed up on Craigslist for $150 I had to go take a look. When I got there the amp was in good condition, had the original drivers so I took the plunge.

 

Well Lee was right. The amp sounded fabulous with my 1958 Fender steel guitar. The tone has a much different contour than a typical mid-scooped Fender. The midrange in particular is very sweet, but there is still plenty of top end and bass. A lot of amps, like my Twin Reverb, allow you to get 1000 different sounds and 990 of them are un-useable. This is an example of an amp with a single distinctive sound, that you can tweak slightly for more bass or top end, but even at extreme settings it still sounds good. I also like the way it fattens up my single coil guitars, particularly my Telecasters.

There were some minor issues with the amp, mainly it needed some tuning up so I took the chassis to my tech who rebuilt the power supply and replaced some caps. While he had the guts I decided to address the biggest problem, which is the weight and bulkiness. These amps were made from very heavy particle board and the amp, with it's trolley, weighed a ton. It pretty much took a crane to lift it in and out of the car. So I built new lightweight cabinets out of pine for the speakers and one for the chassis. I covered them in blond tolex and re-used the metal grille from the original amp. I was a bit reluctant to hack up a vintage amp, but the transistor Standels are not in huge demand and this one is going to be my number 1 player. Everything is reversible anyway so I went for it. Here is a shot of the finished amp. It is now nicely portable and sounds great for steel and guitar. It takes an overdrive pedal extremely well and I can replicate some David Lindley tones very closely.

 

More Standel love:

 

Alright ... Standels !! My first BIG amp was a '67 Super Artist XV , 85 watts rms with 2 15's . I got it in 1969 for $300 , big money for a 15 year old . I played my beat up '57 Esquire through it with one of those plug-in Electro Harmonix LPB-1's and my Crown fuzz tone . Man was I livin' large ! Our bass player had a blackface Bassman and the rhythm player had a brand new Bandmaster Reverb , my Standel cut right through the mix . Fun times ! In '71 I got in a band with an organ player who had a Super Imperial XV ( had JBL's ) and he ran it through a Leslie box . He got out of music in the later '70s , wish I had bought his Standel too . I loaned mine to a "friend" once and somehow he burned out one of the infamous modules , had to take him to small claims court to get my repair money , sometime later another module burned out too , luckily they were readily available in the '70s . I used this amp until 1976 when I bought a brand new Music Man amp . I fired up the Standel about a year ago , it was like going back in time . I remember that start-up sound ... the click of the switch and that faint hummmmm sound . That amp served me well . Oh , the reverb never did work on mine , anyone have any ideas on what the problem might be ? Z54

 

For the sake of reviving this thread:

 

I'm not one to get jealous, but I have to say I'm a little jealous!

 

Dude, you're doing some serious curating there! What's the story?

 

That is a really nice job.

 

Solid state of mind

What no vox super Beatle or kustom tuck and roll 67 model how about a standel studio ?

 

Forgot to post this one here when I got it.

 

Just got this all tube 50J12V