Hello 🙂
I found an interesting amp listed on a local auction site recently. Made in Helsinki by a company called Sarco OY, model V18-22. I found no info whatsoever on the brand, only one guy who had pictures of a very similar Sarco amplifier from the same era and same case that was packed full of very nice tubes. Since the 'buy it now' price was listed at only €10, I decided to go ahead and pick it up just for fun.
What arrived at my door was a very dusty and dirty, but still nice looking tube amp.
After blowing it out with a compressor, wiping all the dirt off, changing the smashed fuse and cleaning every single connector, pot and tube socket, I fired it up for a test and lo and behold, she's alive! Hums a little, probably needs new caps.
Pictures of the amplifier can be found here: Sarco V18-22 by NoBudgetTech | Photobucket
Since I have no use for a mono amplifier other than instrument use, I decided to convert it into a guitar head.
Since there is no info on these amps anywhere, I had to trace the schematic myself. Here is the schematic I traced: https://www.upload.ee/image/6649470/tCad2.png
As you can see, it uses one EF86 for the mic pre, one EF86 for summing signals, one side of an ECC83 as a phase inverter and on to drive the output tubes, which are a pair of EL84s.
I decided to use the microphone preamp as my new guitar preamp since it's a very primitive and noisy design with not phantom powering, it is of no use to me.
I converted the microphone preamp into this: http://laird.vectorstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/channel-1.png
Have not had a lot of time to play with it yet, need to borrow a better cabinet from my buddy's house to really give it a test but so far seems nice.
What I was wondering is whether there are more mods I do to make this thing sound ever better? I'm quite new to tube guitar amps, this is my first one. So if you guys could give me some pointers on what else to change, I would very much appreciate it 🙂
Cheers!
I found an interesting amp listed on a local auction site recently. Made in Helsinki by a company called Sarco OY, model V18-22. I found no info whatsoever on the brand, only one guy who had pictures of a very similar Sarco amplifier from the same era and same case that was packed full of very nice tubes. Since the 'buy it now' price was listed at only €10, I decided to go ahead and pick it up just for fun.
What arrived at my door was a very dusty and dirty, but still nice looking tube amp.
After blowing it out with a compressor, wiping all the dirt off, changing the smashed fuse and cleaning every single connector, pot and tube socket, I fired it up for a test and lo and behold, she's alive! Hums a little, probably needs new caps.
Pictures of the amplifier can be found here: Sarco V18-22 by NoBudgetTech | Photobucket
Since I have no use for a mono amplifier other than instrument use, I decided to convert it into a guitar head.
Since there is no info on these amps anywhere, I had to trace the schematic myself. Here is the schematic I traced: https://www.upload.ee/image/6649470/tCad2.png
As you can see, it uses one EF86 for the mic pre, one EF86 for summing signals, one side of an ECC83 as a phase inverter and on to drive the output tubes, which are a pair of EL84s.
I decided to use the microphone preamp as my new guitar preamp since it's a very primitive and noisy design with not phantom powering, it is of no use to me.
I converted the microphone preamp into this: http://laird.vectorstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/channel-1.png
Have not had a lot of time to play with it yet, need to borrow a better cabinet from my buddy's house to really give it a test but so far seems nice.
What I was wondering is whether there are more mods I do to make this thing sound ever better? I'm quite new to tube guitar amps, this is my first one. So if you guys could give me some pointers on what else to change, I would very much appreciate it 🙂
Cheers!
Don't use a smaller box, use longer shafts!
I think it is a sweet thing; and (with the input conversion) probably a fine guitar amp.
And too prettily-made to rip up.
You can not complain about EL84 output or James tone-controls.
Two pentodes is not common in guitar amps, but you have enough gain-knobs to set gain structure to overload several ways.
I think it is a sweet thing; and (with the input conversion) probably a fine guitar amp.
And too prettily-made to rip up.
You can not complain about EL84 output or James tone-controls.
Two pentodes is not common in guitar amps, but you have enough gain-knobs to set gain structure to overload several ways.
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