Early 1960s Ampeg Jet J-12 Amp

[JimPage]

Hey--

I played through one of these last week at a band practice, a small gray combo amp in mint condition that belongs to our lead guitar player.

I was playing Bakersfield country stuff on my Celebrity.

The reason I mention this is that the combination of the amp and guitar was quite striking; it was a very sweet sound.

I don't know how common or popular these amps are, but it was nice enough for even me to notice, and I am no amp expert. I am going to take the H60C to this Thursday night's practice and see how that sounds through that amp.

I know most folks seem to focus on old Fender amps, and with good reason, but this was a classy sounding unit. I know that back in the day, I used to use various old Gibson and Silvertone tube amps for guitar and bass, and I always thought they sounded nice, though they were not especially loud.

--Jim

[rog43win]

Hi Jim.......I believe you because back in the '60's, it seemed that most of the bass players in our area were playing their basses through Ampeg amps......not too many had Fender Bassman amps.........and the sound was perfect.....nice and deep and full and no buzzes or rattles....I can't tell you the model numbers of the amps they used, but definitely Ampegs...

Roger

[mark1]

I just traded a friend for a 1962 Reverberocket. It is super condition with all original RCA tubes and footswitch.This amp sounds sooo good! Ampeg had onboard reverb before Fender and this reverb sounds great.Ampeg called it echo or as the control panel says..dimension.I changed some caps and put on a three prong power cord and this amp ready for another 48 years!!

[dubtrub]

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=497

[JimPage]

Hey, Danny--

Thanks for posting to that amp discussion!!! Excellent. By the way, that amp you recovered is super attractive!

Seeing the Twin as a piggyback reminds me of an amp I have done that way. A pal gave me a Peavey Artist 240 VT that someone had lost the original combo cabinet for. He made a head-only cabinet for it and another pal covered it in tolex. I found some nice leather handles and chrome corners, and made a plexi faceplate, and it looks quite nice.

I haven't used it much, but when I do, I play it through a new Ampeg SVT12HE bass speaker enclosure and it works pretty well, and is a lot easier to lug around than if it was still a combo.

I need to get a reverb tank for the amp, though.

--Jim

[jfine]

Ampegs were certainly considered a quality amp back in the '60's. (I can't vouch for the '50's as I didn't start playing until '62.) Fender had the lion's share of the amp market at that time--I've read that at some point in the mid-'60's, 90% of the amps sold worldwide were Fenders. One of the reasons you don't see as many Ampegs as Fenders from that era is that Ampeg was a much smaller company, and also that Everett Hull, the company's founder, hated rock 'n' roll and actually stated in company literature that his amps were not to be used for high-volume (read: rock 'n' roll) music! The big Ampegs like the SVT, V-4, and VT-22 didn't come along until '69, after Mr. Hull was out of the picture. Ampegs were pretty common in studios--there was a bunch of New York studio guitarists called something like the New York Guitar Club, who made sure that every studio in town had Ampeg amps for them to play through--and the Portaflex was the standard bass amp in studios. I remember thinking that Fenders were for rock and Ampegs were jazz amps, but I was a teenager then--what did I know? Those old Jets were little screamers!

[stl80]

In the mid 60's our band had an Ampeg Echojet. The amp was bare bones, no reverb, no tremolo, but had a set of aligator clips that could be clipped to another amp's speaker to add reverb to the other amp. Gota be one of the weirdest amp set-ups ever. I recently got another one, and it is a screamer.
Jim

[JimPage]

Our bass player, who is my age or so, says that back in the '60s, most Ampegs had inputs marked "guitar" and "accordion."

Funny!

--Jim

[Dennisthe Menace]

Our bass player, who is my age or so, says that back in the '60s, most Ampegs had inputs marked "guitar" and "accordion."

Funny!

--Jim

Hey Jim,
It wasn't funny for the accordian player, he had to go through some kind of an amp , and I think Lawrence Welk was still popular back then (?).
And someone already mentioned earlier that Ampeg was using the word 'Echo' for their Reverb effect on their amps......go figure....

p.s.--BTW I have 'ECHO' on my '68-'69 Ampeg GU-12

[mark1]

My Reverberocket has three inputs.One marked guitar,one for accordion and one for mic.The accordion input for some reason sounds better with guitar than the guitar input sounds I do remember using the guitar and mic inputs on other amps at the same time because we had no PA.But that was many moons ago.Old Supro amps also had an input for accordion.