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Topic: Pedal Steel With A 1950's Gibson GA-40 Les Paul Tube Amp |
Greg Cutshaw
From:
Corry, PA, USA
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Posted 6 Oct 2011 1:16 pm |
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I repaired this 1950's Gibson GA-40 Les Paul Tube Amp and laid down a few tracks to see what it would sound like with PSG. Not great and not at all Fenderish! Worked out super for fiddle and I am sure the original owner will be glad to see it working again. He is a player and not a collector so this amp will get some real use. The web page linked below has lots of pics of the repair and a few sound files as well as a schematic showing parts replaced.
See Details
Greg |
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John Billings
From:
Ohio, USA
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Posted 6 Oct 2011 2:37 pm
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Greg,
I'm sure you're aware of this but others may not be. After WWll, and the Korean Conflict. huge inventories of tubes made for the government were dumped into the market. Companies like Gibson, and specially Ampeg, made use of these suddenly cheap tubes. You find some strange circuits/tube compliments, but they can sound wonderful! |
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Tony Glassman
From:
The Great Northwest
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Posted 6 Oct 2011 4:46 pm
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| great vintage tone.........sounds just like the guitars that compelled me to play steel 30+ years ago! |
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Greg Cutshaw
From:
Corry, PA, USA
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Posted 7 Oct 2011 4:53 am
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John, I never heard about that but then I was born in 1955. When I started repairing TV sets they were still all tubes and car radios still had vibrators! Transistors were just starting to come out and all the designs pure junk. I bought a Sencore Cricket transitor checker and quickly made the transistion to transistor repair. Some of the old tube radios still had a dedicated RF amp and the AM/FM reception was phenomenal!
I left the record monitor on for the C6 parts so that explains all the extra echos there!
Tony, we had a lot of steel players in this area when I started out that had really fat sounding Sho-Bud and MSA guitars with tube amps. You could walk into a club and the steel sounds just filled the air, not harsh at all. It was always exciting to pull into a parking lot and hear from outside that the band had a pedal steel.
Greg |
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Ken Fox
From:
Nashville GA USA
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Posted 7 Oct 2011 8:07 am
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I restored the big brother to this amp, a 1952 GA-75 witha 15" Jensen, 2X6L6GC power. Probably on 25 watts or so. Played it last night, killer amp!
Lived the clips you did, what a great tone you have there!!
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