Converted another 50's tube PA yesterday

Post custom amp, guitar and fx mods. Share details about your custom builds.

Moderators: greatmutah, GuitarBilly

Post Reply
User avatar
Riffraff
Hall of Fame Member
Posts: 4164
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:48 am
Location: Upper Dutchess County NY

Converted another 50's tube PA yesterday

Post by Riffraff »

My son brought over a 50's Bogen K130 he picked up at a thrift store last week for $50.

Image

Image

Image

We replaced the old 2-prong cord with a grounded one, pulled the death cap then removed a funky 4-pin mic jack from the back, replaced that with a 1/4" jack and some reducing washers and installed the wire jumper impedence selector that will allow use with 4, 8 & 16 ohm cabs. We soft started it on a current limiter to make sure nothing was going to blow then took it for a test run and.......nothing. I suspected there was something a little odd about this one so we downloaded a schematic and saw this PA is set up with a special circuit to be used with low impedance mics. It was somewhat of a confusing mess. I got up early Saturday and decided to bypass all that shit and use the 6AV6 single triode used for the "mic preamp" as the first gain stage then run that through a .047mf cap that was in the "speech filter" circuit straight to the 12AX7 and she woke up and started singing. :thu: That's what I love about these old point to point amps, they're easy to modify.

The power supply in this thing was really weird and I'm glad I didn't need to mess with that.

Image

Lots of unusual tubes in this one.

Image

Image

It's supposedly a 30 watt amp so the 6AV5GA power tubes must be similar to 6L6's. The amp sounds really nice. Steve gave me the Telefunken ECC83 that was in it for my troubles and beat feet out to lock himself away with it for a little while. I was sad to see it go last night. I didn't even get a chance to get a tone clip of it. :lol: I'll do that next time he comes over.

Image

I think I'm going to drag my CH-18 out and do that one next to scratch my Bogen itch. They make such cool sounding amps.
My YouTube page containing gear clips & original music
https://www.youtube.com/c/Riffraff12571
User avatar
Tortuga
Crystal Lettucer
Posts: 17174
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 11:29 am
Location: Slow and steady, bruh

Re: Converted another 50's tube PA yesterday

Post by Tortuga »

She's purdy. To bad you didn't get a clip yet. Def looking forward to that.

I wish I had your knowledge, man. Just repurpose / rewire a preamp tube on the fly, like it's nuffin'. Sheeeeit :idk:

:thu:
Co-founder of the Jet Setters 2.0 (Jet ★ City Lounge Redux)

Gear
  • CEOwLP (Sig T), Carvin DC135, Westone Spectrum SX (guitar) & GT (bass), Squier strat
  • '66 Bassman, '61 Magnatone, Mark III, 1960AX, homebrew 2x12 (C90 / EVM12L Thiele), HX Stomp, JCA50H
  • PLX GABion, SD-1, TS9, Crybaby, MXR108, Algal clone, Carbon Copy deluxe

DIY

Ostinato Rubato wrote:"That's the second boomery bro on this forum I've helped seduce to the greenside." :evil:

"Slow and steady gets to **** again eventually" :fap:
User avatar
hardvalve
Crystal Lettucer
Posts: 11292
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 12:16 pm
Location: Ill uh Noise

Re: Converted another 50's tube PA yesterday

Post by hardvalve »

I am a fan of the old Bogen, Knight and similar PA tube heads. I have a 20w Bogen with 2 ECL-86 tubes, Mullards. Easy to replace at much more reasonable cost than EL-84 NOS. I understand these are EL-84 with each having 1/2 of a 12ax7. Solid state rectifier. Think more 18 watt Marshall, than Vox. Such a great little amp, for not a lot of money.
Seize the opportunity of a lifetime, during the lifetime of the opportunity.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It always amazes me when these guys want to tell "their side of the story"

News flash: your product IS your side of the story. It tells everything we need to know.

- Guitarbilly
Post Reply