Tue 6 Jul 2010
Now available in all good bookshops (and probably some bad ones), is this fantastic new book about Leo Fender’s involvement with Fender Electric/ Musical Instrument company, from his founding of the company to his departure in 1970 five years after the CBS takeover.
Brothers Martin and Paul Kelly (who are well known at Angel Music!) and Terry Foster have taken years researching this book.
The book not only contains tons of ephemera, include rare catalogues and promotional material, but also Paul Kelly’s outstanding photography (rather than the library photos used in many books).
Will make an excellent Christmas/ Birthday present!
Fri 7 May 2010
Here is an example of one of the more interesting effects we have repaired recently — the Shin-ei Resly machine. As you might have guessed this was designed to recreate the sound of the Leslie rotating speaker cabinet, and anyone who’s had to move a Leslie will understand the motivation to find a good pedal….
I didn’t have a schematic to hand, and to make matters worse someone had gone to the trouble of removing the lettering on the chips on the board, presumably to hamper copying.
No sound was coming through the effect, so it was simply a matter of tracing a signal through the circuit to find where it was “disappearing”. The large brown caps on the PCB are quite heavy to be held in place solely by the soldering to the PCB, and I soon found that the weight of the caps had caused a PCB trace break on one cap and a horrible dry joint on another.
Both this type of fault are common on PCB where the solder joint is mechanically stressed (think PCB mounted jack sockets), and fortunately are easy to repair. This repair demonstrates that the visual inspection is a most valuable diagnostic tool!
Sat 24 Apr 2010
Posted by Frank under Live Music
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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!!
Sat 24 Apr 2010
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.
Thu 22 Apr 2010
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.
Mon 12 Apr 2010
Posted by Frank under Guitar Amps
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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.
Thu 8 Apr 2010
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?
Mon 1 Mar 2010
Posted by Frank under Guitar Amps
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Although most of our work is repairs, we also do mods on amps. Here are a couple of recent examples of our mod work.
The Fender Blues Junior is a very popular model in the Fender valve amp range. However, like many amps that use EL84, they do run the output valves v-v-v-very hot. In this case the very knackered looking output valves were dissipating nearly 20W each at idle, which is slightly more than the data sheet maximum of 12W!
Although the Blue Junior is fixed bias, there is no means of adjusting the grid bias voltage. Here I installed a trim pot on the PCB that allows adjustment of the idle current to a less incendiary level.
The second mod was in a Musicman RP-65 amp. These amps date from the late 70′s/ early 80′s when Leo Fender was involved with the Music Man company. Like most amps Fender was involved with, these are well built and reliable amps. Although Musicmans have a solid state pre-amp and run the power valves almost in class B, they do sound good, are well built, and can be picked up for not a lot of cash.
This series of Musicman amps has gain and volume controls, employing a circuit similar to that used in a TS9 Tubescreamer to generate distortion. The owner of the amp like the distorted sound and the clean sound, but wanted to be able to switch between the two sounds.
I added an extra pair of controls for gain and volume, conveniently where the (unused) line out jack sockets were located, and only needed to drill one hole in the back of the amp for a footswitch. As the pre-amp is solid state running off +/- 15V rails, it made sense to use JFET switching. Below is a picture of the switching board. Don’t worry it wasn’t left flapping in the wind, but was bolted to a conveniently placed piece of cardboard underneath it. (The card is there to stop anything being poked through the line out jacks touching the fuses).
Fri 26 Feb 2010
We have now recorded some sound samples of the Tayden Retro 55 and Tayden Ace 25 guitar speaker, which should be posted on our Tayden Speaker page next week.
These were again recorded by Dave Page of Headspace, so you won’t have to suffer any of my guitar playing!
Talking of suffering, Andy at Angel Music has taken up the banjo……
Wed 3 Feb 2010
Posted by Frank under Guitar Amps
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