Amp cab gets a much needed make-over

Jimbro66

A few years ago I had an amp made by one of the small independent UK specialists. Intended for home use only, it’s based on a blackface Champ circuit but with a TMB tone stack and also has a useful headphone output. The amp itself is very well built with quality components and skilled assembly. It also sounds good. The cab is solid pine and contains a Jensen P10R speaker. So far so good.

Unfortunately it had the worse Tolex job I’ve ever seen. On delivery it was already showing signs of lifting edges and some bubbling. Within a week or two of being kept in an ideal environment it had worsened considerably with just about every edge lifting and all faces showing extensive bubbles and ripples. So why didn’t I send it back? Well, I tend to make the assumption that if someone does a job badly the first time they are unlikely to do very much better a second time. The amp looked so awful that it put me off using it so it spent much of its time in a cupboard while I considered what to do with it.

                      It was pretty much like this all over

I was sure that no other company would relish the tedious job of removing the old Tolex and adhesive before recovering it but, having never re-Tolexed a cab, I didn’t feel confident to do the job myself. Then a year or so ago @skippy76 posted photos of his Princeton cabs with a natural stained finish which I really liked the look of. That planted the seed…….

I eventually bit the bullet, removed the amp chassis, speaker and fittings then pulled off all the Tolex. Most of it was barely bonded so came off with no real effort. That was the easy part! I expected to have to remove messy contact adhesive but the pine was instead covered with a rock-hard adhesive -  maybe wood glue or some sort of resin glue painted on? Whatever it was it failed to grip the Tolex but stuck like s#*t to the wood! It took hours of scraping with a sharp blade followed by much power sanding to get back to bare wood. The builder had also used copious amounts of white filler in the joints and in blemishes that had to be removed. I then used colour-matching wood filler and a grain filler before again sanding to a suitable state for applying finish. The two plywood back panels were also replaced with pine of similar width and thickness. Here it is at that stage:

I knew that there was bound to be some glue residue still embedded in the woodgrain in places so a wood dye could look blotchy. Instead I decided to make up my own wipe-on polyurethane using 50% Rustins oil-based satin Teak and 50% white spirit. Using lint-free cloth I wiped on thin coats that dried fairly quickly. After a few coats it was looking too orange so I added some Rustins ebony stain to the mix which improved the colour. Over two or three days I wiped on 9 or 10 coats which gave a nice depth of colour with no application marks. It was then left for a few days before buffing by hand. The satin finish is exactly what I’d hoped for.

For reassembly I decided I didn’t like the rather clumsy chassis bolts and the supplied handle. I could also see no reason to reuse the six corner protectors. A set of small Fender chassis straps and a better looking handle supplied by Modulus Amps completed the look I was aiming for. I also disliked the black chicken-head knobs so replaced them with some white Fender cupcake knobs. I’d quite like to have changed the wheat grill cloth to a light beige basketweave but could find none at reasonable cost. The wheat cloth looks OK-ish for now.

So here is the completed project:

Quite a lot of time and money was spent correcting something that should have been right in the first place but it’s water under the bridge now. Not only am I much more satisfied with how the amp looks but The Boss is also now happy to for it to have a place in the living room -  result!

ICBM

That's a wow both for the fantastic restoration job you've done, and for the astonishingly, shockingly poor one the builder did...

It's hard to believe anyone could let something out like that. In the first pic it doesn't even look like the volume pot is fitted to the chassis properly either.

Jimbro66

ICBM said:

That's a wow both for the fantastic restoration job you've done, and for the astonishingly, shockingly poor one the builder did...

It's hard to believe anyone could let something out like that. In the first pic it doesn't even look like the volume pot is fitted to the chassis properly either.

Thanks John. The volume control also acts as the standby switch so it first turns 'on' and then raises the volume. It has a longer shaft than the other controls so it stuck out a long way from the faceplate. I had to remove it and add a nut and washer behind the faceplate so that it protruded the same amount as the others before adding the new knobs.

Deadman

Amazing job. I’d never have thought to finish the wood as opposed to recovering. I’m well up for having a go at it now, just need a cab worthy of it.

Bravo!

Jimbro66

Cheers @Deadman. @skippy76 gets the credit for the idea

Deadman

I’m off to check out his thread too, cheers.

elstoof

That’s one hell of a transformation! Great job

elstoof

It’s quite amazing that someone would go to the effort of making those nice half blind joints, then not only wrap them in tolex but that badly. same with the volume knob, you’ll go through designing/assembling a good amplifier then just leave one of the pots sticking out for want of an extra nut. 

It’s as if two people made it, one of them really good and the other a complete spanner

tanihhiavlt

As an amateur, I understand that - the guy is rushing. He's capable of doing a good job under ideal conditions but he's stressed and is rushing it.

If it were my day job, I'd value my reputation and I'd limit the work I took in until the skills were embedded.

The repair work is inspirational, literally! Many thanks

DartmoorHedgehog

That looks fantastic - reminds me of some of the Boogie combos. You should have entered that for the 1Q22 challenge

Jimbro66

@elstoof, @tanihhiavlt and @DartmoorHedgehog thanks for all your comments.

@DartmoorHedgehog to be honest it didn't occur to me to take part in 1Q22, the standard is so very high there.

BlackbirdCabs

Really nicely done, particularly the staining job, pine isn't always the most forgiving!

Sporky

That looks jolly classy.

I can confirm, though, that tolex really isn't that hard to work with. I did a perfectly acceptable job the first time I tried. Well, I say acceptable, it was sparkly blue tolex so it was absolutely awesome.