Bendix 6384 Fender Showman Mod

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Hi chaosentertainment,
They are the standard 6L6EH. What do you think of them?

As an aside, I have some 7591EH tubes. The plates are very much larger than the original 7591A tubes. The characteristics look to be the same on my tube tester. Once this amp is restored, I'll have an opinion on those too. Also, the 12AX7EH are very quiet. Try them if you haven't yet.

-Chris

They sound good. I get a lot of clean headroom all the way up to 90% volume. Bridge humbuckers really grind at that level.
 
Seriously, using non pin compatible tubes without rewiring sockets is just plain stupid.

After finding out about the incompatibility he had someone rewire the sockets. I don't think anybody set or checked the bias because one of the tubes was quite toasted and the other looked OK. The toasted tube was in the side with the open OPT winding. Maybe the tube was gassy and went into runaway.

There were some burnt resistors and all of the old electrolytics were shot, which is probably why he started messing with it in the first place.

I thought hotrodding was supposed to be fun ?

Hotrodding an amp is just like hotrodding a car engine. Why would you drop $1000 worth of cam, headers, and carburetor on a worn out engine, then wonder why it doesn't make any more power than before, and the car runs worse. Same deal with an amp, make sure it's working correctly before messing with it. Then change one thing at a time. That way you know which mod worked, and which one didn't.

I used to fix peoples amps, do mods, and make my own (often for sale). I tend to shy away from making irreversible mods on a valuable amp. The term irreversible varies with the competency of the person doing the mods. I'm not going to drill holes in a vintage Fender or Gibson, but I will totally hack up a Crate or a Peavey, they will make more.

Somewhere back about 35 to 40 years ago I stuck an EL34 in one side of a (relatively new) Bandmaster, and a 6L6GC in the other just to see what would happen. Instead of the expected kaboom, it worked. At low volumes it sounded like a single ended amp, as you leaned on it the distortion came on slowly, then it got rather nasty quickly. Remember, this was some time in the 70's and it was "different." I kept this info to myself and made a couple amps. I sold one, then the buyer's friend came by and bought the other. Within about a year I had sold maybe 20 of these, then the sales faded quickly......those amps were pretty much one trick ponies. They had a unique sound that worked on 70's loud rock, but there were too many of them in a rather small circle of people who all wanted to sound "different."

Fast forward to about 2000, I made about 10 to 12 "Turbo Champs." I learned from the past, so no two were the same. Same circuit, different tubes, transformers, speakers, cabinets, and component values. Some had real guitar speakers, some had car stereo speakers that I got cheap when a local Kmart closed down. Some rocked, some sang the blues, one sat around lonely and unwanted (too clean) until one of my daughter's band friends plugged his ES-335 into it. He wouldn't go home without it, so I gave it to him. I must admit, that combination sounded good.
 
After finding out about the incompatibility he had someone rewire the sockets. I don't think anybody set or checked the bias because one of the tubes was quite toasted and the other looked OK. The toasted tube was in the side with the open OPT winding. Maybe the tube was gassy and went into runaway.

There were some burnt resistors and all of the old electrolytics were shot, which is probably why he started messing with it in the first place.



Hotrodding an amp is just like hotrodding a car engine. Why would you drop $1000 worth of cam, headers, and carburetor on a worn out engine, then wonder why it doesn't make any more power than before, and the car runs worse. Same deal with an amp, make sure it's working correctly before messing with it. Then change one thing at a time. That way you know which mod worked, and which one didn't.

I used to fix peoples amps, do mods, and make my own (often for sale). I tend to shy away from making irreversible mods on a valuable amp. The term irreversible varies with the competency of the person doing the mods. I'm not going to drill holes in a vintage Fender or Gibson, but I will totally hack up a Crate or a Peavey, they will make more.

Somewhere back about 35 to 40 years ago I stuck an EL34 in one side of a (relatively new) Bandmaster, and a 6L6GC in the other just to see what would happen. Instead of the expected kaboom, it worked. At low volumes it sounded like a single ended amp, as you leaned on it the distortion came on slowly, then it got rather nasty quickly. Remember, this was some time in the 70's and it was "different." I kept this info to myself and made a couple amps. I sold one, then the buyer's friend came by and bought the other. Within about a year I had sold maybe 20 of these, then the sales faded quickly......those amps were pretty much one trick ponies. They had a unique sound that worked on 70's loud rock, but there were too many of them in a rather small circle of people who all wanted to sound "different."

Fast forward to about 2000, I made about 10 to 12 "Turbo Champs." I learned from the past, so no two were the same. Same circuit, different tubes, transformers, speakers, cabinets, and component values. Some had real guitar speakers, some had car stereo speakers that I got cheap when a local Kmart closed down. Some rocked, some sang the blues, one sat around lonely and unwanted (too clean) until one of my daughter's band friends plugged his ES-335 into it. He wouldn't go home without it, so I gave it to him. I must admit, that combination sounded good.
I was messing with a 6G2 Princeton, and found a good combo of a '63 C10N and 5751 / 6681 tubes. I love the Vibrato on the 6G2 four knobbers.

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