Tremolux On The Way . . .

[JimPage]

If anyone is interested, there's a 1966 Tremolux head on eBay now, much more original than the one I bought, for (currently) just over $600:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... K:MEWAX:IT

Six-and-a-half hours to go and 16 bidders so far; I'm not one of them!

--Jim

[olrocknroller]

I have an older Peavey Artist 240 VT, which has a tube element to it, but it weighs a ton.--Jim

That's the understatement of the week. I had one of those as well, and traded it on a DoD...huge drop in power, but less than a quarter of the weight, and the reliability of transistors. Those Peaveys must have had transformers right out of the power station!

[JimPage]

I was lifting that danged Peavey today when I was straightening the back porch room and, even made into a piggyback head with a dogbone handle on both sides, it still weighed a ton.

You have to wonder what Peavey was thinking when the made such a brute of an amp.

It sounds nice, but until I play RFK Stadium, it will be gathering dust on this porch.

--Jim

[JimPage]

Hey--

Here's a report on this Tremolux amp I recently got on eBay.

This amp sounds wonderful through the two speaker enclosures that I tried it through, although both were 8-ohm cabinets. It's absolutely silent when not being played through. I used it for three hours at our band practice Saturday with no strange behavior on the amp's part.

I decided to get a combo cabinet for now, so I can use the amp while I restore the original piggyback amp cabinet.

For speakers, I ordered two 10" Weber A10125s, which are 8-ohm. Wired right, that should make the two speakers 4-ohm.

So here is the combo cabinet I am putting together. It is about 1-1/2" too wide, as it was made for a Vibrolux Reverb. So I am going to fashion some black spacers for either side of the chassis front. Right now I just stuck some black Tolex in the spaces on either side of the faceplate.


Now, the little Fender tube chart in the original cabinet is in rough shape:


I'll leave that where it is, but I made a new chart in Photoshop to put into the combo cabinet:


The chart would be better if I had more skills in Photoshop and a bunch of early-1960s fonts, but it is good enough just to stick in the cabinet.

I added some wheels to the combo cabinet after I took that photo, above. And, since the vibrato effect doesn't work, my thinking is that I need to get one of those one-button foot switches for it; the kind with an RCA plug on the end. That should work to turn the effect on and off.

So this is fun to play with as a little vacation project!

--Jim

[dubtrub]

Just checking for a progress report. Did you get the original cabinet restored yet? Sure would like to see photos.

[JimPage]

Hey, Danny--

Right now, the original amp cabinet is in the hands of Rocco Egizio, better known on the forum as zarfnober. Whomever owned the cabinet before me used some weird adhesive to put on that beige Tolex, and it slowed down the process of removing that adhesive.

I'm using the amp now in that custom JD Newell beige-Tolex combo cabinet, with the two 10" Weber A10125s in it, and it sounds beautiful. I had the Tremolux gone through by a local musician who's a true Fender tube expert, and he recapped where necessary and replaced some little resisters and such. He reported that at least one and maybe two of the tubes were original to the amp, and that it had been untouched before he did the work.

I was lucky to find that amp, and I also got a very clean 1975 Fender Vibro Champ a couple of weeks later. Last weekend, I replaced the Vibro Champ's tired old original Oxford 8" speaker with a Weber Signature 8" alnico speaker. It sounds a bit more "hi-fi" than it did before, but it still has that classic Fender tube sound.

Eventually, I want to find a Tremolux speaker cabinet so I can go from combo to piggyback as the situation warrants. But one step at a time!

I'll keep you posted--

--Jim

[dubtrub]

I thought you shipped that cabinet off over a month ago. Should have sent it to me. I can recover them in 3-4 days. However you would probably still be waiting for it while I tried it out for a month or two. BTW, I have a line on a pristine '65 that I may trade my Mosrite bass for.

[JimPage]

Hey!

Live and learn, though Rocco said he was only going to charge me $12 because he is learning so much about rare and unusual adhesives that he should be paying me, really.



Danny, do you agree with me-- and I have thought this since I first heard a Tremolux back in the 1960s-- that there is something special about the sound of these amps? I can't describe it, other than there is a subtle difference between the sound of a Tremolux and the sound of the other Fender amps I've owned over the years. I would call it a smoothness, but that isn't a very good description. All these old Fender tube amps sound good, but slightly different from one another.

And there are a lot of the tweed-era Fender amps that I have never played through. I'm from the blackface-silverface era when it comes to Fender tube amps.

--Jim

[dubtrub]

I love old Fender amps as much as I do Fender guitars.

I like the looks and sound of Mosrites but I like Fender more. I rarely play my Mosrites, I just hang them on the wall and admire their looks. And here I own a Mosrite forum.

[JimPage]

By the way; a pristine '65 Tremolux for a Mosrite bass sounds like a good deal, to me. Those Tremoluxes in very good shape are going for some serious money on eBay. I've been watching them for a while, and the prices keep going up, it seems.

Of course, they didn't make that model after 1966 so there aren't that many out there compared to some of the other ones. And they are a handy sized but reasonably powerful amp.

--Jim