When Kevin purchased this "modified" Arion Fat-Chorus he wasn't counting on the mod mainly being a half-roll of electrical tape. Components were making contact in ways they shouldn't and much of the tape was starting to come apart. I cleaned up the soldering and insulated the mod with shrink tubing. After giving the main switch a good cleaning the pedal was fully operational and Fat as ever.
Casino Queen's DigiTech Whammy was passing clean signal just fine, but fell silent when the effect was engaged. We were lucky and the issue wasn't related to the chip or anything digital. A bad capacitor in the power section was preventing the pedal from powering up properly. The cap was replaced and Wham was restored!
The customer had purchased this vintage Bassman 70 with plans to clean it up, and while it initially worked fine, once he got it home it would only produce noise. The source of the madness was a missing nut and washer on the bias control pot. Without the nut the pot was no longer making contact to the chassis/ground. One little bit of hardware had thrown off the whole amp. I locked down the pot and biased the new power tubes. I also gave the front panel pots a good cleaning. Some people don't care for Fender's ultra-linear amps, but this one had a nice solid clean tone that was exactly what the customer was looking for.
The ladies in Whorechata cover a lot of musical ground. Everything from '70s classics to punk-rock to new wave to riot girl to grunge. Their rhythm guitar player needed a wide range of sounds in a small footprint. The custom channel selector for her AC30tbx lets her change or stack channels as needed. The old DeArmond volume pedal now houses a Russian Big Muff clone. Once clicked on it lets her sweep from just a little fuzz to ALL THE FUZZ! Everything packs up neatly in a vintage aqua suitcase for traveling light.
As a childhood hero of mine once said, "it's not the years, it's the mileage." And this thing has seen some miles for sure. I rebuilt the crumbling foot switch RCA plugs, replaced the damaged reverb tank, and cleaned the road snot out of every imaginable hiding place. Of the 6 screws that are supposed to hold in the speaker baffle only one remained. Also missing was most of the cabinet hardware. It's tube sockets had been replaced previously with a different size and the original retainers weren't actually retaining anything but air. I installed new spring retainers and while I was in there corrected the dreaded Fender vibrato "tick." Lori and her gals in Whorechata should be good to go for another 100,000 miles or so.
This AD30's AC filament lines are connected using little plastic tabs and a bunch of hot glue. Nothing says "I'm confident in my manufacturing process" like tons of glue just slathered everywhere. Jamie had a show in a week and half of her tubes refused to come up. I found the offending connector and hardwired the lines to the PCB (no glue needed!) If it hadn't been an emergency situation I may have just hardwired them all for good measure.
Things weren't working quite right, so Rian from These People Here decided it was time to spiff up his Music Man HD130. This particular amp started it's life with the older 12AX7 phase inverter. At some point in the 70s (remember those?) it was updated with the newer solid state drive board. Someone had replaced the power tubes and tried to bias it using the older method. With the solid state board installed you can spin the old bias pot like the wheel of a tall ship avoiding the Kraken and it won't make an ounce of difference. The tremolo effect needed some coaxing as well. We replaced the toasted EL34s with the correct 6CA7s, set the bias properly and the difference was immediatley noticeable. 130 watts of spacious, clean tone. Turns out it makes a surprisingly good bass amp too!
This era of Vox amplifiers has a notoriously bad input jack design. The plastic jack is mounted on its own little PCB with a tether that connects it to the rest of the amp. When the jack becomes loose (it will) any attempt to tighten it will spin the PCB around and reel up the tether like a fishing pole. Eventually the multi pin connector at either end will unplug or just snap off. Not only was this jack wrapped up like a ball of knitting yarn, it had also been cracked. The pound and a half of super glue that was holding it all together was also keeping the Input PCB from grounding to the chassis like it's supposed to. The resulting BUZZZZZZZZ was not the classic British tone Jamie was looking for. Replacing the broken jack and adding a metal lock washer solved the issue.
Are these old enough to be called vintage yet? The old Trace Elliot pedals are built tough, sound great, and have some cool features. They also require their own very specific 18v power supply. The 18 volts isn't hard to find, but the barrel of the DC adapter is a slightly different size than your typical Boss/One Spot. The British still base the size their DC adapters on ancient Roman chariot wheels (this may not be true.) You could buy an adapter to jump down a size. You could also lose that adapter, a lot. Replacing the DC inlet with a standard One Spot style jack is the way we chose to go one these.
And, stretch......
Jamie's recording session slowly soothed into karmic relaxation with the gentle sounds of far off crashing waves. Too bad she wasn't recording a yoga retreat compilation. No, that mind numbing white noise was the no name 12AY7 hiding in her mic. I've never heard of "Chinese Leaf Hologram Sticker" brand tubes, and I probably won't be recommending them any time in the future. A nice new EHX 6072a made a world of difference.......
and, exhale........
