Guitar Gear Forum

Hi, several years ago bought a tube amp from my local guitar shop, it's an amp that was a local build I believe. In any case it's been sitting for quite some time unused. I've been recently contemplating purchasing a new tube amp but haven't been able to come up with anything I like in my price range.

I'm now considering just restoring this amp and seeing how that turns out. I'm thinking this would be a fun project and a great way to learn about amps. My first plan is to do the obvious and swap new tubes in. My next thought was to examine the existing components and replace with high quality parts. I will also need to map out everything with a circuit diagram.

My question (and I know this is a very broad one) is generally speaking will replacing caps, resistors and other parts with higher quality make a significant impact on tonal quality?

Thanks for reading, any guidance is most appreciated.

what type of amp is it and what is wrong with it?

It's a local build that I bought at the guitar shop. The overall tone is kind of muddy/saturated which isn't necessarily bad however I would like to get a bit more clarity to the overall sound. As well it has a tube driven tremolo. It has a "knocking" sound except when its driven to full. I think this is attributed to tube failure however again that's just a non-qualified guess.

Sorry, after some further investigation NOT tube driven tremolo. Amp has one 5Y3GT rectifier tube, two 6V6GT power amp tubes and two ECC 83S preamp tubes. There is no tremolo on/off switch, just the intensity knob. Can't imagine where that knocking sound comes from. Filter caps are Mallory MFD40, 450Vdc. After some online reading I think I will swap those out after I swap out the tubes.

Just randomly changing some components to higher quality probably won't change the amps' characteristics. From the tube layout, the amps might be a Fender Deluxe variant, maybe based on the 1961 brown Deluxe when Tremolo was added. Finding or making an accurate schematic is your first order of business, since you can't really expect to change the behavior of the amp without it.

If it is too dark you may want to delve into the tone stack. If you want to get more headroom, I would look at the power tubes bias and the preamp section and see what's going on.

This can be a long process, but you will definitely learn a lot!

Best Regards,

e