Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Magnatone High Fidelity Custom 480


This one will make you feel like throwing up in your mouth just a little. There is an Amvets thrift store somewhat near my house that used to always have pretty good stuff (not so much any more). Weird swirly bowling balls and cool vintage bags, interesting furniture, cool western shirts before everyone including surf companies started making western shirts, and I even found a couple of lap steels here. One day I walked in and sitting in the middle of some dog cages and fake plants and old people's walkers was a Magnatone Custom 480. I walked over to it very quickly so as not to draw attention to myself, but not let anyone else get there first...as though that was going to happen.

To be honest, from a distance I wasn't 100% sure it was an amp at all. I thought maybe it was one of those old style console stereos or something. But as I got closer I knew it was an amp. I didn't know much about Magnatones, but in the back of my mind I sort of remembered something about Robert Cray playing one. I plugged it in and got nothing. I noticed that the fuse was missing. This would be obvious to anyone with some amp knowledge because it was right there on the control panel. I went over and sweet talked my way down to $25 for the amp and it was a done deal. I picked it up...I should say I tried to pick it up...and, man, it was heavy. Finally lugged it out to the car and headed to Moonlight Music, which was a local guitar store. He actually had the correct fuse with the screw on cap built in, which was a very lucky score.

We turned it on and, SWEET. It worked!

It had inputs for guitar and accordion and maybe something else. For you geeks I found this info and the photos at vibroworld.com (a very cool amp site): The Custom 480 originally sold for $499.95. It has 13 tubes, 1 transistor. The 2 input channels (each with high & low gain) are preamp'd by 6EU7's. Each has a Loudness, Bass, and Treble control. There is also a stereo input. Stereo vibrato is handled by 6CG7's and a 12BH7 to amplify the oscillator. A 6DR7 drives the input to the reverb pan, and a 2N306 transistor takes care of the return. Phase inversion is acomplished with twin 12AU7's. Four 6973's drive the stereo transformers along with two 12" Oxfords. It had approximately 50 watts.

Anyway, I kept the Magnatone for awhile but didn't feel comfortable gigging with it. Plus, it was just too heavy to drag around. I eventually traded it in at a guitar store and now can't remember what I traded it for. I do remember getting $250 in value for it. Not bad for a $25 thrift store find. I'm sure Robert Cray would have wanted this one.
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Fender Princeton Reverb Silverface


I'm pretty sure everyone should own a Princeton Reverb. I've owned at least two and maybe three...I've lost count. There is a good and a bad side to these amps though...they're really not loud enough to gig with, but they sound absolutely fantastic. I'd love to have one again just for recording purposes and I'll probably keep hoping that one day I'll come across one at the Swap Meet or at a Pawn Shop somewhere and the owner won't know how much it's worth. "What? That old '70s amp in the corner? Heck, I'd take $30 for it I guess." We can all dream can't we?

And what's the deal with pawn shops these days?

Do they all think that they can charge more for a guitar than it's worth? What happened? Pawn shops used to be places that you could find a good deal on a guitar for the simple reason that when you go pawn a guitar in the first place they give you about four nickels and a couple of dimes for it and act like they've done you a favor. So, they could sell them for a good price and still come out way ahead. At some point in about the late '80s all pawn shops decided that they were retail shops and started jacking up prices on crappy Squiers and Johnsons and other weird brands from Pakistan or somewhere. They've all got those little Gorilla practice amps too, don't they? I digress.

The last Princeton Reverb that I had, I traded away exactly because it just wasn't loud enough. I was in a band that was rehearsing in a small little rehearsal spot and I could just never hear myself over the Carvin half stack our other guitarist cranked through. And by the way, while I'm digressing, why won't people admit that Carvin makes some pretty darn good sounding gear for the money? Their amps have always sounded really good...they make a tweed called (I think) the Bel Air that sounds nice and their stacks always sound very crunchy...I'd rather have a Carvin half stack than a lot of those other non-Marshall brands that try to pull it off. And I will go on the record that their PA gear is unbeatable for gigging folks like you and I and extremely cost effective. This sounds like one of those sneaky blog ads or something but it's not. I just believe that Carvin should get some credit and I don't think you're going to find many folks willing to say it. Especially when they're supposed to be writing about Fender Princetons.

Okay, no more digressing. Fender made the Princeton way back in the '40s, but the Silverface version I have owned were made from '68 to '82 when Paul Rivera released the Princeton Reverb II. From what I remember and have barely researched just now, these put out about 12 watts, which is perfect for recording and fine if you don't mind micing the amp and not being able to hear yourself, but not really practical for most guitarists on stage. Over the years of this model they had lots of different specs and small variations on features. The last one I owned had a pull pot, amazing clean tone and beautiful reverb. Man, I'm talking myself into wanting another one even more as I write this.

The best part of this story though is how I eventually ended up trading it. There is a fairly well known guy in vintage circles named J.R. who owns Sunset Music in Idaho. However, before he moved to Idaho he ran a small guitar store in Encinitas, CA called Blue Ridge Guitars. He was always fair with me, so one day I decided I really wanted a Gibson ES-125 Cutaway he had that had suffered the classic neck/headstock repair, which dropped it's value but didn't change the way it sounded...amazing. He had been sitting on this guitar for awhile and it was worth approximately the same as my Princeton Reverb. I walked in with my amp and just said, "Hey, no one is buying that 125 and I don't have any extra cash to sweeten the deal...why don't we just trade straight up fair and square and you'll have an amp you can more easily sell and I'll have a guitar I want." This kind of bargaining never works. But for some reason J.R. saw the logic in my deal and shook his head and said, "Okay, let's do it." He asked if the amp worked fine and I said it did. We didn't even write up a receipt...the whole thing took less than 5 minutes and I was out the door with a pretty cool guitar.

So, thanks J.R. for a cool deal. Wish I had that amp back though.
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