Guitar Amp Repairs, Custom Amp Builds, Speakers – JPF Amplification

Whilst attending the Dallas Guitar show I also took the opportunity to hang out in Austin Tx, although sadly my schedule meant I could only go there for a couple of days.

In case you didn’t know, Austin is widely regarded as the live music capital of the US, and has more live music venues per capita than any other US city.

On the Sunday we managed to catch country guitar legend Redd Volkaert playing with Heybale at the Continental Club.

On the Monday we had a look around a few of sites including the SRV memorial.

In the evening we hit 6th St, which is full of bars and clubs, most providing live music. We ended up in the Maggie Mae’s bar where Mike Milligan and the Altar Boyz host a blues jam every Monday. Obviously whilst at the bar I got volunteered for this! Scott Unzicker lent me his customshop Tele with a huge 50s baseball bat-like profile! Fortunately I really like these big old Fender necks, although they aren’t for everyone…..

Had a good chat with Scott about the Texas blues scene; amazingly we are both huge fans of Jimmie Vaughan and Anson Funderburgh! Scott also works as a free lance music writer, so check out his excellent article in Texas Music about the Fabulous Thunderbirds on Scott’s website.

Anyhow, thanks to Scott and the other jammers for putting up with my playing. I assume as I’ve lived to tell the tale it went OK — they take their blues guitar pretty seriously in Texas!!

As promised here are some pictures from my trip to the Dallas Guitar Show 2010.

A nice 1959 ‘burst, one of several at the show. Unfortunately I didn’t have $250,000 on me…..

Early 1964 Gibson Firebird I. Very cool and quite rare.

Really cool 1951 Fender Nocaster (have a look at the decal). This guitar played really well and didn’t have the massive baseball bat like neck profiles found on many early 50s Teles, although I actually quite like that profile myself (see Austin post for further details).

1957 Gibson Les Paul Standard Goldtop with twp PAFs. This guitar is actually rarer than a ‘burst, so was a snip at $109,000!

1954 Fender Stratocaster. Note the wear on the front neck pickup cover. This is very typical of early Fender Strats due to the plastic used for the pickup covers. Look at photos of Buddy Holly playing a Strat and you will see similar wear on the front pickup cover; and his Strat must have been fairly new compared with this one.

Another Fender Nocaster and P-bass from 1951.

I have now returned from the Dallas Guitar show 2010. Miraculously neither my flight to, nor from Dallas was delayed by the Icelandic volcano.

I will post a further report of my trip including some pictures of cool guitars at the show.

I’m taking a week’s holiday in the US, during which I will be attending the Dallas guitar show 2010. As a result of this we won’t be doing any repair work until I return on the 21st April.

I will have a digital camera with me (sadly slide film is getting harder to find) and so will — hopefully — manage to take some photos of cool amps and guitars at the show.

Check out the JPF amps blog on my return for a report of proceedings.

This a photo of the filter caps from a Blackface Fender Twin Reverb that was recently brought in for repair. Note the early ’64 date code on the reverb transformer. The main filter caps have been replaced with Sprague Atoms. Can anyone see the error the previous repairer had made?