Gut and refurb old ss combo

[Greg_L]

I do wanna have an Orange something one day, but not with this little combo. I don't know know enough about them yet.

I have a Tiny Terror you can have ......

No thanks.

I'm thinking old school 200 watt Orange Matamp.

[WhiskeyJack]

I do wanna have an Orange something one day, but not with this little combo. I don't know know enough about them yet.

I have a Tiny Terror you can have ......

Go on. I'm listening.

[WhiskeyJack]

I have a Tiny Terror you can have ......

No thanks.

I'm thinking old school 200 watt Orange Matamp.

Wouldn't that be something.

[Greg_L]

Wouldn't that be something.

Ever since you mentioned it I've been ingesting Orange schematics.

The old original Orange "graphic" amps are shockingly simple. That's probably why they sound so good. Simple amps always sound better.

[WhiskeyJack]

Wouldn't that be something.

Ever since you mentioned it I've been ingesting Orange schematics.

The old original Orange "graphic" amps are shockingly simple. That's probably why they sound so good. Simple amps always sound better.

Yea i don't know that there was much complexity in the older offerings. "make guitar loud" i think was their MO. no frills no bullshit kind of stuff.

[Greg_L]

Yea i don't know that there was much complexity in the older offerings. "make guitar loud" i think was their MO. no frills no bullshit kind of stuff.

The story of Orange and Matamp is pretty interesting. Basically Orange only exists because the Orange guy, can't remember his name, had a second hand music store and none of the big manufacturers would give him new inventory to sell. So without being able to sell Vox or Marshall or Fender, he just made his own amps. And they took off.

And I think Matamp/Green predates Orange by a little bit. The Matamp guy was already building amps, but they were too "clean" for the progressing sound of the late 60s/early 70s. The Orange guy got the Matamp guy to build the Orange amps, but make them dirtier. That's why they look so similar. But people preferred the Orange sound, and there ya go. Orange is legendary, Matamp is just an interesting footnote.

[Greg_L]

Well I got this old hunk-o-junk stripped down to the bare chassis.




Lots of weird shit in here, and some useful/reusable stuff.
Nice handful of standoffs, big terminal strip, some shielded wire, I can reuse the fuse holders, tons of Switchcraft shorting jacks, and to my surprise an actual bridge rectifier. And of course, that quirky tiny reverb tank. None of this stuff is bigtime cost savings for the future project, but it's cool to have it.


Nice steel chassis with more than enough real estate to do what I plan to do.


And lots of rear panel hole options.


This front panel is shit though. I'm gonna cut out this whole front panel and make a new one to just pop-rivet over the space and start with a blank slate.



So next up, strip the rest of the cab.

[Greg_L]

Whoa whoa whoa hold the phone, just found this in the bottom of the cab stuck up under the speaker.

Realistic Highball 7 mic! It's got it's own cord! This vintage bad boy is going straight up on ebay!

[WhiskeyJack]

That skateboard needs grip.

Personally i think you should wait on selling the mic. Save it to record your new amp then sell it.

[Greg_L]

That skateboard needs grip.

Ha yeah it's waiting next in line. I'm riding two setups these days, that one will be the next "street" deck.

Personally i think you should wait on selling the mic. Save it to record your new amp then sell it.

Good call, that'll make it worth more.

[Tadpui]

Ha, nice bonus microphone! Man, I never find gear hidden inside my gear.

[rayc]

I used a Tandy/Realistic Highball mic from 87 until about 2002...I'd have aced the one mic challenge back then as hat's all I had.

[Greg_L]

Parts accumulation has officially begun. After much hemming and hawing and decision and indecision, I've decided to build this thing as a pretty faithful 1962/63-ish Fender Bassman 6G6B. I will still add some "features", but it's gonna be mostly stock. The interesting part to me is the work it's gonna take to make it work. The circuit itself is easy, getting all the parts piecemeal is challenging. I'm not building a kit this time. I'm picking and choosing every single part on my own.

But so far, the output transformer, power transformer, and choke are in the building.

[WhiskeyJack]

Parts accumulation has officially begun. After much hemming and hawing and decision and indecision, I've decided to build this thing as a pretty faithful 1962/63-ish Fender Bassman 6G6B. I will still add some "features", but it's gonna be mostly stock. The interesting part to me is the work it's gonna take to make it work. The circuit itself is easy, getting all the parts piecemeal is challenging. I'm not building a kit this time. I'm picking and choosing every single part on my own.

But so far, the output transformer, power transformer, and choke are in the building.

[rayc]

I look forward to following this one too.

[Greg_L]

I look forward to following this one too.

This one's gonna be a lot more cutting and drilling and fabricating and painting and new tolex and grill cloth and speakers.....the whole shebang from scratch.

I might even make my own eyelet board....or just use turret strips. The chassis is really big. I'm a little concerned about long wire runs.

[WhiskeyJack]

I'm a little concerned about long wire runs.

Why's that?!

[Greg_L]

Why's that?!

In a perfect world inside an amp you want wires as short and direct as possible. You could actually pretty much have no wires at all. That's true "point to point" wiring - components connect directly to tube sockets and jacks with no wires in between. In reality that's hardly ever possible so you need wires, and the shorter the better.

[WhiskeyJack]

Why's that?!

In a perfect world inside an amp you want wires as short and direct as possible. You could actually pretty much have no wires at all. That's true "point to point" wiring - components connect directly to tube sockets and jacks with no wires in between. In reality that's hardly ever possible so you need wires, and the shorter the better.

What do the wires do to affect things? Like interference and hum or something? Is there a difference with those things you called heater wires?

[Greg_L]

What do the wires do to affect things? Like interference and hum or something? Is there a difference with those things you called heater wires?

Yes long wires have the extra risk of more interference, hum, cross talk, oscillation, etc. The longer the wire, the more potential it has for weirdness. High voltage wires run in close proximity to vulnerable signal wires. AC shares wires with DC. It's madness. So what you gotta do as a builder is minimize the potential for clusterfuckery by being really smart and careful with how you route things. Shorter is better....that's what she said.

Heater wires have to be long to reach all of the tube sockets. There's no way around that. And that's why you twist them. Twisting the wires cancels out the magnetic smog radiating out of those AC wires. And even still, you don't want other wires coming in close proximity to those things. Sloppy heater wiring, bad grounds, and poor lead dress (how you route the wiring) are all noise problems in an amp.

That's also why you can/should use shielded wire from the input jack to the first gain stage. That wire is virtually empty. The guitar signal in that wire is very small and weak. Interference can easily enter that wire. Any noise that gets in that wire just gets amplified by each gain stage after it. You can't get the noise out once it's in. So you use shielded wire and ground one end of the shield. The noise gets in the shield and goes straight to ground. The delicate goodness in the wire stays clean.