It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
That must be quite an old one - later they did the 'Pop 50' to which the same applies.
These - among other Fanes, Goodmans etc - are why Celestion had the reputation of being the 'good' speakers and everything else the 'crap' speakers back in the old days, when musicians didn't understand why you can't connect a 50W speaker to a 50W amp and crank it. (Unless it's a Celestion.)
They actually sound quite nice, if you can find them in working order. Pretty efficient too, if I remember.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Hah! Told 'im boss! Told 'im. I said don't use it on anything hotter than an HT-5 but he might get away with a 10W (into 4R) transistor amp.
Dave.
I got given one of those recently - all it needed to get it going was a new mains cable and a clean-up. I was interested to see what it would sound like overdriven, and to my great surprise not only did it sound great - in a 1970s fuzzbox kind of way of course - it didn't blow up! It wasn't at all loud for "50W" though, I reckon it was more like about a 25W amp at best. I forgot to measure it.
I seem to remember that the 'popular wisdom' back in those days was that you should always match the amp rating to the speaker rating, because using a lower-rated amp to drive a higher-rated speaker would 'strain the amp'… I think it was even mentioned in 'The Guitar Book' by Tom Wheeler.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
People are too quick to label certain vintage speakers as "sounding crap" when the truth is they are probably using faulty speakers but dont know the correct way to check them. The cone movement has to be absolutely perfect for good tone, and unfortunately most old speakers are not in that condition thesedays. Especially Fanes because the coil gap is very thin on them, so as soon as the cone is slightly off center it will start to sound bad.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Don't know how many L Conchords you have seen IC but they were legion around here for WMC bingo PA!
They also ate EL34s! Even Mullies. Reason was the G2 was run at over 500V and I used to fit a TV 'dropper section' on a bit of 2BA brass studding to drop them to around 400-420 V . I dare say top power was curtailed a little but nobody would notice.
If you are keeping it for guitar and running it hard it might benefit from smaller coupling caps and higher value grid stoppers to the EL34 grids?
Dave.
Surprisingly the original (I assume) Mullards were still working fine, although they do look a bit tired. He wanted to keep those for some other purpose so I've stuck some JJs in.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
That amp, combined with the horrible Kay Les Paul copy I had, made me sell them both and spend the money on an acoustic pickup.
I was probably in on the first ones IC and they might have re-jigged the transformer later on for you young 'uns!
Mind you! It was pretty standard practice in these clubs to keep the amp in a cupboard and ventilation was poor. I think they went for the Conchord because you could use a very cheap 'crystal' mic which was handy for clarity since the speaker was often a Goodmans 12" in a 'box baffle' (often er, 'DONATED' by a local shoe factory!)
Dave.
EL34 was not designed to be run Ultra Linear, so not a great design choice in this amp.
That's odd since the Mullard 5-20 was something of a classic UL design in its day.
Dave.