Here’s the safety earth from a recent repair on a JMI era VOX AC30.

Suffice to say, if you were going to solder the safety earth to something, then the chassis might have been a better bet……

OK, that was a vintage amp with questionable earth bonding. Here’s the safety earth bond from a new Yamaha PA that had failed the PAT earth bond test.

The manufacturer had relied on the star washer piercing the power coat on the chassis to give a good bond to earth.

The power coat should have been masked off the power coating so there was bare metal under the earth bond to ensue a low earth resistance.

I scraped off the power coat before re-attaching the earth bond, and the amp passed the earth bond test.

Nathan’s now got his web-site, Brighton Guitar Workshop,  up and running so you can check out his work.

The amp is a 15W 2 x 10″ Sir Charles 15W combination.

Incidentally, the speakers are Tayden True Brits.

Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) is carried out on electrical portable appliances to verify that they are safe to use. However class III devices that are powered by an external power supply less than 50VDC (like a pedal for example) do not need testing.

The owner of the pedal was rehearsing at a studio and some there insisted that all their gear was tested, including this pedal!!

Now the regs state that PAT should be carried out be a “competent person”;  I would have thought that testing a pedal clearly demonstrats that you aren’t a competent individual.

The only redeeming feature of this episode is that the band weren’t charged for the testing!

Alfie has a SC15 1×12″ combination amp, and we aim to get some more of our range down to Brighton in the New Year.

As well as JPF Amps, Alfie has a great selection of used guitars, pedals and amps.

Although the amps are out of shot, the Flyers were all using JPF backline!

James and Patrick were using 1×12 Sir Charles 15 combos, and Dave (bass) was using a King Charles 30 head.

We’ll have more footage and sound samples coming soon.

Regent Sounds specialize in Fender and Gretsch guitars, and Fender, Vox and (of course!) JPF Amplification.

Regent Sounds are located at 4 Denmark St, London, and is the location of Regent Sounds studios, where many famous, and infamous, artists recorded back in the day, including the Rollings Stones and Black Sabbath. See the history page on the Regent Sounds web-site for more details.

Nathan has been getting requests from his customers for amplifier repairs, so has asked me if I would be interested in coming down to Brighton to repair amps.

Initially, I will aim to come down to Brighton once a week, although this may increase if demand is greater.

To book repairs in, contact Nathan on 07578 916284

No-one I know had one seen before.

It is of course the Wem Deep Blue.

Looks fairly conventional from the front.

But what’s that in the back. A Copicat tape echo!

We’ve only found one other picture of a Wem Deep Blue in the internet in an article about Copicats.

It seems to be a descendant of the Watkins Joker, which was also an amp with integral tape echo (and indeed microphone stand).

The amp was  30W 4xEL84 similar to an ER30, and the Copicat was the first PCB valve version. The amp has 4 inputs including one labelled “clarinet”, so perhaps this was aimed at the trad jazz band?

All the valves are Mullards, and the loudspeaker is a Thames Ditton, Celestion G12H.

The amp was a bit of a pain to disassemble to say the least, and someone had rewired the mains in an “interesting” fashion.

However, it was well worth the effort to resurrect the amp as it now sounds fabulous.

This amp is a SC15, loaded with two 10″ Tayden True Brit speakers.

The 2 x 10″ cabinet is more compact than our 1 x 12″ combo cabinet format.

This combo will be priced at £1050 loaded with the Tayden True Brits. Add £200 for alnico speakers.

We will be doing video demos soon.