Mystery amp! Well, it's a mystery to me anyway...

hobbio

Hiya! I acquired today an amp for free, its owner was literally going to dump it on the side of the road for the scrap man to take.

It's a FAL Kestrel, or some such. Looks to be 100w 2x12, I tried to have a look at the speakers but I couldn't easily remove the back panel or get the camera in there. It was given to me as not working, an although it does power on and amplify my guitar it certainly has issues. There's a mega hum from channel 1, which might be connected to the fact that the normal input socket appears to have disappeared inside the cab. Channel 2 is better, but all the pots are scratchy as hell. Reverb works fine and is actually quite nice and subtle.

The amp itself is really clean and it feels like it wants to push a lot of air. The speakers though are fuzzy when pushed. I can't work out if the break up I get when maxing the channel volume is the amp or blown speakers. I don't even know if it's valve or ss! Pics below, but I want to know if it's worth restoring. If it's clean then I'm hoping it could be used with a keyboard or stage piano as well as a guitar, but I might be barking up the wrong tree.

Bygone_Tones

FAL stuff is all solid state I think, and not usually very good quality in my experience.

Those speakers are square back Fanes though and worth salvaging. Look as though they are late 70's or 80's. Should be nice speakers IF they work properly. Get them out and test them for coil rub. Probably the best thing about the amp.

p90fool

I used to borrow an almost-new one of those for rehearsals in one of my first bands, so it was in perfect working order, sounding exactly as the maker intended. 

Dump it at the side of the road, seriously. 
 

ICBM

Solid state, mid 70s, pretty low quality but has a certain sound, if you like that sort of thing - very glam rock, fuzzbox-into-a-speaker kind of thing. The clean sound is quite nice and it should take an electric piano OK.

They are actually reasonably reliable usually - I had one a while ago and before selling it I proof-tested it by cranking the living daylights out of it into a dummy load for about half an hour, and to my slight surprise it was none the worse for it.

The hum on one channel is likely to be broken ground connection, which could definitely be connected (ie not, really!) to the missing Normal input jack.

Unfortunate choice of company name, with hindsight. They disappeared in the early 1980s...

Bygone_Tones

ICBM said:

t has a certain sound, if you like that sort of thing - very glam rock, fuzzbox-into-a-speaker kind of thing.

aka the 'wasps in a tin can' sound.

hobbio

I reckon I'll just chuck it in the back of the garage and forget about it then. Cheers everyone!

Ossyrocks

We had one in my very first band in about 1984. We were fairly experimental and we actually used it for vocals at gigs! Not a great amp by any means, but thanks for digging that one out of my long lost memory.