Hey what's up! It's me, the amp tech at Retrofret, Ben Fischer/Tubular Audio. Just wanted to follow up and say thank you for accurately representing the situation in your video and I'm sorry you felt taken advantage of. In general, I don't think this experience and amp is indicative of our work, but this one definitely got by us. The reason I OK'd it, as you allude to in a comment, is that the amp worked well enough. I had also spent a LOT of time with the reverb tank and circuit to get it remotely sounding OK, and it just wasn't worth spending any more time on after that. The shop shouldn't have added the boiler plate description of "recapped etc." because that wasn't the case for this one -- despite it having new caps it also had the old ones in parallel. That said, this may be the only amp in my 4+ years at Retrofret where I didn't remove the old electrolytic caps. All said, this experience has me thinking up ways to improve quality control for our 2-man team and I appreciate the reality check. While this was a bit of an oddball amp for us, it shouldn't have received any less attention to detail. Hopefully you'll give us another chance in the future! And glad you were able to fix it up to your heart's content. P.S. -- I'm only in shop Thurs/Fri so that's probably why it took a week to get the situation settled. Also, I believe there is a 90-day warranty on technical issues, but the 48 hr period is if you'd like to send it back for *any reason whatsoever*
For the mysterious input jacks - It must be that the 1Meg gets shorted out when you're plugged into the lower gain input. This keeps the unused jack's signal pin grounded (reduce noise) while giving you a 68K + 68K voltage divider on your low input. Then when plugging into the higher gain input - assuming the same old shorting jack is used - you'd have two 68K's in parallel so a 33K grid stopper resistance to V1 (totally normal). Are the shorting connections hidden under the jack or maybe just check your resistance with the ohmeter if you want to confirm it. Great video!
People def know about these. Doug and Pat even have a whole series on their AC10SRT's, and Henry Amplification build the circuit for new buyers. It's a great amp from everything I've heard. It really does sound like an AC30 when miced up with the right speaker cab.
Doug and Pat's SRT sounds KILLER, had no idea Vox made that amp until their show. I'd love to build a clone of it one day. Had no idea about the Domino either..
Dang sorry to hear about the shop not being upfront, like you said, I think that happens all the time to people they just never know that they've been taken. Last vintage amp I bought, the seller said he took it to his tech and got the all clear and it was ready to play. In my head I'm like, "sure sure".. Once I got it home and opened it up it was 100% stock (which is actually what any tech wants to see as you know) but it made me chuckle. He definitely he got taken by the "tech" he sent it to as it still had every 50 year old stock cap in it and was definitely not safe to play.
Buying anything vintage from anybody is a massive gamble, I've got a video I've been working on that talks about that. This is my first ever vintage dealer experience, I've exclusively only ever purchased from private parties. I would have expected a better experience paying the dealer premium, but I'm also not that surprised with how it went down. I'm happy in the end, but it took some fight to get there. It is true, every amp I've ever purchased that I was told had been worked on by a tech recently has had issues... come on tech's! I'd take untouched like you said 10/10 times.
I don't think I would be wearing the shirt of a store that was trying to pull one over on me. I don't think the tech was the problem - it was the store management. Clearly they knew they didn't do the recap and misrepresented what they had done. Their primary mistake was they sold it to a guy who knows his way around the inside of an amp and knows the smell of BS. I am glad you got them to refund some of your money - that is the least they could do. If they had sold that to someone who doesn't have your knowledge, that new owner would have been in a much weaker position to get compensation.
The footage in this video spans over a week of time, not all shot back to back as it took time to get to a solution. The shirt was actually part of my final deal on the amp haha, I requested it. The shop is incredibly cool to visit, the staff when I went were great as well so I was excited to finally say I purchased something from them (most of their stuff is out of my tax bracket!). Of all of the vintage wares being sold, I'm of the opinion amps are the most mis-represented and that's across all major vintage dealers. It comes down to consumers being mostly ignorant, so naturally over time the requirement to be accurate is diminished. Look at the recent Premier Guitar video of Gruhn's JTM45 for sale (for $200k no less). Ignoring the huge leaps they make about it, just look at the interior and the giant snot rocket with haphazardly installed caps they show in the video. Unacceptable on something like that, and they're maybe the biggest most well known vintage dealer on the planet? My guess is they were trying to churn and burn on a bunch of stuff that came in, and when it was visually inspected they saw it had new caps in it so it got moved to the "recapped" pile. They I'm sure turned it on, strummed a chord or two, and off she went to the site. Like I said, the tech was great to talk to on the phone he eventually agreed to everything I said but it took a lot on my part to get them to accept fault / be open to helping cover anything. Agreed on the average buyer point... but to be totally fair this would not have been something an average buyer would have noticed either. The amp worked when it arrived, if you had no frame of reference you'd think it was mostly fine. And it was mostly fine... but it was represented as 100% gone through, recapped, biased, dialed in with the premium that goes with that...which was obviously not the case.
@@YeatzeeGuitar Yeah - amps are misrepresented because so few people can look inside or do troubleshooting and know something is wrong. Kind of like cars - most people can't go through an engine or know something is wrong unless it just doesn't start or something really obvious. You expect that big, high volume shops or shops with brand name recognition/status are going to treat people well and do things right, but I am of the opinion that you can get mistreated by anyone at anytime, so it is a buyer beware situation all the time. I saw the Premier Guitar video on the Gruhn amp - 200K for that horrible mess is a joke. It would be interesting to see the guts of some of these Dumble amps getting sold - I don't think I have ever seen a video showing the inside of a Dumble in the wild.
@@DanielBobke you're on the money, I have the misfortune of having the knack for both cars and amps -and the "tax on ignorance" is real for both. I regularly help neighbors/friends/family with car issues/ maintenance and even some of the best local dealers or mechanics will miss some thing that sometimes is very obvious for the seasoned mechanic. More so for older vehicles (much like vintage amps), the new techs coming in may be trained with the best in the business, but have they ever had to pull cast iron heads and check that were cracked at the seats instead of just taking at face value that a head gasket were replaced? probably not. Apply that to amps, which is even more niche just like there's specialists for exotic/older/ foreign brands. You end up with mystery mods, iffy parts by age or origin, or hack jobs that make child labor look pro. All this and high volume sales/ repair ALWAYS results in things slipping through the cracks, even the best in the business.
Great video!!! It's a shame that when all the resistors were replaced they used Carbon films because Carbon Comps definitely sound better in VOX ACs. Thank goodness they didn't change the WIMA Caps cos they are the best and never go bad. Looking forward to the follow up video!!
If those original grid stop resistors still in the amp were that far out of tolerance it makes sense, they didn't use high quality CC's in the earlier amps. Thanks!
@@YeatzeeGuitar My 1960/1 transition AC30 has all its original CCs and sounds great. I had a 1965 which had all of the ccs replaced with CFs and it was nowhere near as good. I appreciate more modern resistors are made more accurately but they don't give the sound of the sixties. I was there !!! Great videos though.
Those are pretty different amps aren't they, the early AC30 vs the 65? I'm not sure I'd pin all of that on the carbon comp resistors, though I don't doubt they do have a sound to them!
@@YeatzeeGuitar No, they were identical circuits both being AC30/6 Normal, they both had the same Haddon transformers and chokes, Celestion Blue speakers & Wima capacitors. Even Resistor R24 was 47 ohms in both amps leading to me to thinking the previous owner ( my music teacher ) of my '61 may have had it serviced and the Tech changed it to the later spec. The only differences in the two amps were the colour of the cabinet covering and the colour of the facia panel, the '61 being black and the '65 being copper, none of which would alter the sound, so I believe the Carbon films did have quite a marked effect on the sound. I suppose you could argue that four extra years of use would have an effect on the speaker cones but I did try that by swapping the speaker leads to the amps and could not hear a change. Yes, the resistors could have drifted so that may have been a factor and I haven't checked that lately, perhaps I should. I found the '65 amp with the Carbon films to sound rather sterile in comparison and sold it some years ago. My '61 will go to my Son when I pass, but he cant have it yet!! Keep up the videos I really enjoy them!!!
You might want to compare the sound of twisting your OT secondary wires vs keeping them separate. I'd heard those are wires that you are not going to want to twist, and I stopped doing it. Since it is external anyways, you may want to experiment and let us know how it affects the highs from your signal.
Interesting, not heard of that before. Why would that be the case? Every speaker wire on a fender combo for example is twisted... OT secondaries goes to the output jack and then a twisted wire to the speaker 🤷♂
@YeatzeeGuitar ya, I hadn't heard of it before, but apparently there is not typically any unwanted types of noise created in the lines to and from the OT that need cancelling... But supposedly I capacitive coupling can potentially reduce your top end. I was reading someone's post who was noticing a pretty big difference. I did have a 5e3 build that I swapped an OT on. I went from tightly braided together secondaries to untwisted ones on the new one. I noticed getting more high end from from an amp that was rather dark before, but it's was a totally different OT too, so in my case I can't say it was a controlled test.
Seems like there's been a UL710 up on Reverb, for some princely sum, for some time. I had a clone, an OSO 710, but I have a friend who needed it... I don't have to tape it, so I use stuff that is harder to move.
That 6n14n is actually Russian tube and it is actually 6P14P or one of the versions like ending with P V or EV. One of the strongest EL84 on the market is TAD EL84 STR is 6P14P. There is an option to use 7189 as well. They are even stronger. BTW normally EL84 should stay under and maximum 300 Plate Voltage. But Russian 6P14 tubes can go over easy.
@@YeatzeeGuitar those tubes are really good. They are long lasting and sound good. They sound big. They sound bit like 6V6. Less break up and more lows. I love Genalex and TungSol EL84 as well. They fit some other amplifiers better. Those overdrive nicer.
Why would the amp have the 12au7 tubes. They are a driver tube, similar to a 12At7, suitable as a reverb driver or a phase inverter. Not the same as a 12ax7, 12ay7 or a 5751. Edit: OK I am now further into the video and see they are using the 12AU7's as driver tubes, except for V2A, a preamp gain stage. It would be a good experiment to use a different tube in V2, one of those that have one 12AX7 triode, and a different triode on the other side (I don't recall off hand the names of the "mixed triode" tubes). As you know, a 12AU7 has a very low gain factor, something like 17.
@@YeatzeeGuitar Sorry, I finished watching the video this morning. See my edited comment above, especially the part about trying a "mixed triode" tube in V2.
I think that percentage is always tied to fixed bias amps, not cathode biased amps. Which imo can be considered even a little hot, I tend to go closer to 60% personally. Cathode biased I'd like to get to 100%+. That matchless I had in recently was biased at like 115% factory.
As am I. This experience will be added to my long list of experiences buying vintage for a future video I've been ideating for a bit. Don't buy vintage! It's a dangerous game...
Well since it's New York you already know that there lying and probably stolen at some point in those years , and I know you paid huge dollar amount for this amp since everything they sell it prices outrageous and remember anything out of NY always has problems, but love your channel and always enjoy everything you do . I'm learned about a amp that I never heard of your always have the coolest stuff . Unfortunately we didn't get to hear your new amp but I so look forward to working on it with you and then the test results is always thumbs up you play guitar really well everyone loves when y you record gig night with amp you worked on its awesome. So let's strap in and fix this unicorn fable of an amp .
I'm not sure I'd go thaaaaaaaat far haha, but in general you absolutely have to take whatever a vintage dealer says with a massive grain of salt. They're there to move product, and there isn't a checks and balances system to correct for inaccuracies. My friends and I share links to dealer guitars / amps all the time that are misrepresented, the vintage game is truly a place where the ignorant can easily get taken advantage of (generally). I appreciate that btw, thank you!
![Chris Langan - The Interview THEY Didn't Want You To See - CTMU [Full Version; Timestamps]](/img/n.gif)
Hey what's up! It's me, the amp tech at Retrofret, Ben Fischer/Tubular Audio. Just wanted to follow up and say thank you for accurately representing the situation in your video and I'm sorry you felt taken advantage of. In general, I don't think this experience and amp is indicative of our work, but this one definitely got by us.
The reason I OK'd it, as you allude to in a comment, is that the amp worked well enough. I had also spent a LOT of time with the reverb tank and circuit to get it remotely sounding OK, and it just wasn't worth spending any more time on after that. The shop shouldn't have added the boiler plate description of "recapped etc." because that wasn't the case for this one -- despite it having new caps it also had the old ones in parallel. That said, this may be the only amp in my 4+ years at Retrofret where I didn't remove the old electrolytic caps. All said, this experience has me thinking up ways to improve quality control for our 2-man team and I appreciate the reality check. While this was a bit of an oddball amp for us, it shouldn't have received any less attention to detail.
Hopefully you'll give us another chance in the future! And glad you were able to fix it up to your heart's content.
P.S. -- I'm only in shop Thurs/Fri so that's probably why it took a week to get the situation settled. Also, I believe there is a 90-day warranty on technical issues, but the 48 hr period is if you'd like to send it back for *any reason whatsoever*
For the mysterious input jacks - It must be that the 1Meg gets shorted out when you're plugged into the lower gain input. This keeps the unused jack's signal pin grounded (reduce noise) while giving you a 68K + 68K voltage divider on your low input. Then when plugging into the higher gain input - assuming the same old shorting jack is used - you'd have two 68K's in parallel so a 33K grid stopper resistance to V1 (totally normal). Are the shorting connections hidden under the jack or maybe just check your resistance with the ohmeter if you want to confirm it. Great video!
I love these. One came through the shop earlier this year and it sounded really cool.
That's awesome! Very rare
Looking forward to seeing you bringing this back to its full glory, they are great amps
Excited to get some live use out of it!
That is a really interesting amp and sounds very good.
Great video & info! Thanks for posting this!
People def know about these. Doug and Pat even have a whole series on their AC10SRT's, and Henry Amplification build the circuit for new buyers. It's a great amp from everything I've heard. It really does sound like an AC30 when miced up with the right speaker cab.
Have you heard of the Domino Super Reverb before?
Doug and Pat's SRT sounds KILLER, had no idea Vox made that amp until their show. I'd love to build a clone of it one day. Had no idea about the Domino either..
Dang sorry to hear about the shop not being upfront, like you said, I think that happens all the time to people they just never know that they've been taken. Last vintage amp I bought, the seller said he took it to his tech and got the all clear and it was ready to play. In my head I'm like, "sure sure".. Once I got it home and opened it up it was 100% stock (which is actually what any tech wants to see as you know) but it made me chuckle. He definitely he got taken by the "tech" he sent it to as it still had every 50 year old stock cap in it and was definitely not safe to play.
Buying anything vintage from anybody is a massive gamble, I've got a video I've been working on that talks about that. This is my first ever vintage dealer experience, I've exclusively only ever purchased from private parties. I would have expected a better experience paying the dealer premium, but I'm also not that surprised with how it went down. I'm happy in the end, but it took some fight to get there. It is true, every amp I've ever purchased that I was told had been worked on by a tech recently has had issues... come on tech's! I'd take untouched like you said 10/10 times.
Nice find!
I don't think I would be wearing the shirt of a store that was trying to pull one over on me. I don't think the tech was the problem - it was the store management. Clearly they knew they didn't do the recap and misrepresented what they had done. Their primary mistake was they sold it to a guy who knows his way around the inside of an amp and knows the smell of BS. I am glad you got them to refund some of your money - that is the least they could do. If they had sold that to someone who doesn't have your knowledge, that new owner would have been in a much weaker position to get compensation.
The footage in this video spans over a week of time, not all shot back to back as it took time to get to a solution. The shirt was actually part of my final deal on the amp haha, I requested it. The shop is incredibly cool to visit, the staff when I went were great as well so I was excited to finally say I purchased something from them (most of their stuff is out of my tax bracket!).
Of all of the vintage wares being sold, I'm of the opinion amps are the most mis-represented and that's across all major vintage dealers. It comes down to consumers being mostly ignorant, so naturally over time the requirement to be accurate is diminished. Look at the recent Premier Guitar video of Gruhn's JTM45 for sale (for $200k no less). Ignoring the huge leaps they make about it, just look at the interior and the giant snot rocket with haphazardly installed caps they show in the video. Unacceptable on something like that, and they're maybe the biggest most well known vintage dealer on the planet?
My guess is they were trying to churn and burn on a bunch of stuff that came in, and when it was visually inspected they saw it had new caps in it so it got moved to the "recapped" pile. They I'm sure turned it on, strummed a chord or two, and off she went to the site. Like I said, the tech was great to talk to on the phone he eventually agreed to everything I said but it took a lot on my part to get them to accept fault / be open to helping cover anything. Agreed on the average buyer point... but to be totally fair this would not have been something an average buyer would have noticed either. The amp worked when it arrived, if you had no frame of reference you'd think it was mostly fine. And it was mostly fine... but it was represented as 100% gone through, recapped, biased, dialed in with the premium that goes with that...which was obviously not the case.
@@YeatzeeGuitar Yeah - amps are misrepresented because so few people can look inside or do troubleshooting and know something is wrong. Kind of like cars - most people can't go through an engine or know something is wrong unless it just doesn't start or something really obvious.
You expect that big, high volume shops or shops with brand name recognition/status are going to treat people well and do things right, but I am of the opinion that you can get mistreated by anyone at anytime, so it is a buyer beware situation all the time.
I saw the Premier Guitar video on the Gruhn amp - 200K for that horrible mess is a joke. It would be interesting to see the guts of some of these Dumble amps getting sold - I don't think I have ever seen a video showing the inside of a Dumble in the wild.
@@DanielBobke you're on the money, I have the misfortune of having the knack for both cars and amps -and the "tax on ignorance" is real for both. I regularly help neighbors/friends/family with car issues/ maintenance and even some of the best local dealers or mechanics will miss some thing that sometimes is very obvious for the seasoned mechanic. More so for older vehicles (much like vintage amps), the new techs coming in may be trained with the best in the business, but have they ever had to pull cast iron heads and check that were cracked at the seats instead of just taking at face value that a head gasket were replaced? probably not. Apply that to amps, which is even more niche just like there's specialists for exotic/older/ foreign brands.
You end up with mystery mods, iffy parts by age or origin, or hack jobs that make child labor look pro. All this and high volume sales/ repair ALWAYS results in things slipping through the cracks, even the best in the business.
Superb!
Thanks for the video.
Thank you for taking the time to watch 🙏
Great video!!! It's a shame that when all the resistors were replaced they used Carbon films because Carbon Comps definitely sound better in VOX ACs. Thank goodness they didn't change the WIMA Caps cos they are the best and never go bad. Looking forward to the follow up video!!
If those original grid stop resistors still in the amp were that far out of tolerance it makes sense, they didn't use high quality CC's in the earlier amps. Thanks!
@@YeatzeeGuitar My 1960/1 transition AC30 has all its original CCs and sounds great. I had a 1965 which had all of the ccs replaced with CFs and it was nowhere near as good.
I appreciate more modern resistors are made more accurately but they don't give the sound of the sixties. I was there !!! Great videos though.
Those are pretty different amps aren't they, the early AC30 vs the 65? I'm not sure I'd pin all of that on the carbon comp resistors, though I don't doubt they do have a sound to them!
@@YeatzeeGuitar No, they were identical circuits both being AC30/6 Normal, they both had the same Haddon transformers and chokes, Celestion Blue speakers & Wima capacitors. Even Resistor R24 was 47 ohms in both amps leading to me to thinking the previous owner ( my music teacher ) of my '61 may have had it serviced and the Tech changed it to the later spec. The only differences in the two amps were the colour of the cabinet covering and the colour of the facia panel, the '61 being black and the '65 being copper, none of which would alter the sound, so I believe the Carbon films did have quite a marked effect on the sound. I suppose you could argue that four extra years of use would have an effect on the speaker cones but I did try that by swapping the speaker leads to the amps and could not hear a change. Yes, the resistors could have drifted so that may have been a factor and I haven't checked that lately, perhaps I should.
I found the '65 amp with the Carbon films to sound rather sterile in comparison and sold it some years ago. My '61 will go to my Son when I pass, but he cant have it yet!!
Keep up the videos I really enjoy them!!!
You might want to compare the sound of twisting your OT secondary wires vs keeping them separate. I'd heard those are wires that you are not going to want to twist, and I stopped doing it. Since it is external anyways, you may want to experiment and let us know how it affects the highs from your signal.
Interesting, not heard of that before. Why would that be the case? Every speaker wire on a fender combo for example is twisted... OT secondaries goes to the output jack and then a twisted wire to the speaker 🤷♂
@YeatzeeGuitar ya, I hadn't heard of it before, but apparently there is not typically any unwanted types of noise created in the lines to and from the OT that need cancelling... But supposedly I capacitive coupling can potentially reduce your top end. I was reading someone's post who was noticing a pretty big difference. I did have a 5e3 build that I swapped an OT on. I went from tightly braided together secondaries to untwisted ones on the new one. I noticed getting more high end from from an amp that was rather dark before, but it's was a totally different OT too, so in my case I can't say it was a controlled test.
Seems like there's been a UL710 up on Reverb, for some princely sum, for some time. I had a clone, an OSO 710, but I have a friend who needed it...
I don't have to tape it, so I use stuff that is harder to move.
Nice get!! Have ya got a link for that schematic? Thanks!!
I put it here: www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/deep-dive-1964-jmi-vox-ac10-srt.2591863/#post-39582752
Damn, i need a Vox amp.
That 6n14n is actually Russian tube and it is actually 6P14P or one of the versions like ending with P V or EV. One of the strongest EL84 on the market is TAD EL84 STR is 6P14P. There is an option to use 7189 as well. They are even stronger. BTW normally EL84 should stay under and maximum 300 Plate Voltage. But Russian 6P14 tubes can go over easy.
I've been using those TAD's in my '64 AC30 for a good bit now, long 3hr gigs and they've been rock solid.
@@YeatzeeGuitar those tubes are really good. They are long lasting and sound good. They sound big. They sound bit like 6V6. Less break up and more lows. I love Genalex and TungSol EL84 as well. They fit some other amplifiers better. Those overdrive nicer.
Wow, as rare as hen’s teeth!
That buss ground above the preamp tubes makes no sense as well as the sheilded leads into the grids like you need one because of the other.
Why would the amp have the 12au7 tubes. They are a driver tube, similar to a 12At7, suitable as a reverb driver or a phase inverter. Not the same as a 12ax7, 12ay7 or a 5751. Edit: OK I am now further into the video and see they are using the 12AU7's as driver tubes, except for V2A, a preamp gain stage. It would be a good experiment to use a different tube in V2, one of those that have one 12AX7 triode, and a different triode on the other side (I don't recall off hand the names of the "mixed triode" tubes). As you know, a 12AU7 has a very low gain factor, something like 17.
@@MichaelSmith-rn1qw gonna have to ask JMI / Vox, that's the factory spec.
@@YeatzeeGuitar Sorry, I finished watching the video this morning. See my edited comment above, especially the part about trying a "mixed triode" tube in V2.
Definitely more to come on tube experimentation 😉
Never understood the conservative 70 percent dissipation thing unless you want total clean.
I think that percentage is always tied to fixed bias amps, not cathode biased amps. Which imo can be considered even a little hot, I tend to go closer to 60% personally. Cathode biased I'd like to get to 100%+. That matchless I had in recently was biased at like 115% factory.
Great work, glad they agreed to refund you for parts and time.
As am I. This experience will be added to my long list of experiences buying vintage for a future video I've been ideating for a bit. Don't buy vintage! It's a dangerous game...
Gusikowski Tunnel
?
Well since it's New York you already know that there lying and probably stolen at some point in those years , and I know you paid huge dollar amount for this amp since everything they sell it prices outrageous and remember anything out of NY always has problems, but love your channel and always enjoy everything you do . I'm learned about a amp that I never heard of your always have the coolest stuff . Unfortunately we didn't get to hear your new amp but I so look forward to working on it with you and then the test results is always thumbs up you play guitar really well everyone loves when y you record gig night with amp you worked on its awesome. So let's strap in and fix this unicorn fable of an amp .
I'm not sure I'd go thaaaaaaaat far haha, but in general you absolutely have to take whatever a vintage dealer says with a massive grain of salt. They're there to move product, and there isn't a checks and balances system to correct for inaccuracies. My friends and I share links to dealer guitars / amps all the time that are misrepresented, the vintage game is truly a place where the ignorant can easily get taken advantage of (generally).
I appreciate that btw, thank you!