Electrical artistry

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Back in the good ol’ days, before the advent of the printed circuit board, they used to make amplifiers by soldering things together one piece at a time, one guy sticking things together bit by bit. This is one such outstanding example of what was once standard procedure, now practiced largely by boutique amplifier makers. This whole crazy mess actually makes sound, glorious sound, emit from a guitar in a wondrous cacophony of toneful toneliness. Being fans of good tone at Casa de Tom, this sort of thing goes over quite well.

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Go Commando!

Rare, weird, and awesome.

Hmmm…a little tough, this one. This amp, it’s something special. It has a sound all its own, and it’s a damn good one at that. It came out in the fifties, eight speakers, each being eight inches in diameter. Talk about wild! It opens up like a suitcase, with four speakers in each half. You can separate the halves and put them wherever you want with enough cord between them to place them at opposite ends of the stage. Craziness.

It sounds pretty fantabulous with that Astatic Velvet Voice microphone that’s sitting on top of it. Yep, real good. I can make that thing *honk* and positively *squall!!!!* But still, I don’t use it much, just not much at all. It should be getting used, or at least be getting passed around so that other people can get to play with it, enjoy it, and then send it on to someone else. I’ve had some fun with it. Now I have some very important interests and need money for other things, things that seem to be leading me in a pretty incredible direction. Might be time to let this go and pursue those other things. This may be holding me back more than it’s helping me. I had a friend come over and try this tonight, and he really liked it. He can take good care of it, and he appreciates it for what it is, a unique piece of sound equipment with a storied past.

Diagrammetry

So...what does that say exactly?

I spent quite a while trying to read this stupid schematic off the bottom of this amplifier through the stupidly small hole in the back of the cabinet this evening. I thought if I took a picture I could blow it up and read it. I’m still not sure this is going to work. I’m going to sell this obscure amp, so I need this info to put in the ad for it. Why did I buy this thing in the first place? Well, it’s a Kent amplifier, and I had found a Kent microphone at a swap meet, and I thought that it would be cool to have one of each. For the record, that was at least ten years ago, and I never once took this thing out of the house after I bought it. Time to move on!

Commando Tubes

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Ah, the legendary Danelectro Commando 88 – or part of it, anyway. This is a lesser known vintage amplifier, but really huge in harmonica circles. It has a reputation, part of which is that Chicago harmonica master Little Walter played one back in the day when he was making mind-blowing records with Chess up north and basically doing for harp what Hendrix did for guitar. I have one, which is kind of amazing. I got lucky and found it at a guitar show years ago. I honestly don’t play it that much…so…I dunno…it might be time to allow it to move on into some other player’s hands who will give it a good workout. Maybe.

Unbeatable Basics

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I ready this fabulous post somewhere on the web once that said, “If the Army ever issued guitars, they would issue Telecasters.” The point was that the Tele was a simple, durable piece of gear that would endure tons of misuse and abuse and still perform a myriad of duties with aplomb, that it was a very basic item, but it had the capacity to cover a number of duties that could be asked of it.

This here is Fender’s reissue of what the Army might have issued – the ’52 Telecaster. It’s paired up with an amplifier that’s an original of roughly the same vintage, a National amp probably from the late 40s or early 50s. Together this pairing is unbeatable for all kinds of traditional music. Anyone from Bob Wills to Muddy Waters to Jimmy Page could get what they wanted out of this setup. On the night this was taken, this combo did itself proud.