My new amp(s), A little long

[timm@xxxxxxxxxx (Tim Moody)]

Well, as most of you lurkers and posters know, I bought an old Silvertone
Twin Twelve a while back because of price and a few other things(I read
Pete Sheridan's review of it in Kevin's catalog). I have been playing through
a mod'ed Fender Twin for about two years, and always unhappy with the
tone.(Too hard to overdrive) Too clean and loud, and a little too tinny for
a good tone, IMHO. The Silvertone was a little better. I was able to get a
little fatter sound from it, but was still a little clean for my preference.
Then one day I was junk store shopping with my wife and ran across and old
cheesebox organ. It was a "Silvertone" organ.(Sears did a lot back then) I
plugged it in, only to find out it was one of those old "air" types. The
kind that has a electric motor keeping a chamber full of air, so when you
press a key, a hole opens up letting the air rush past a reed to make the
sound. Yes, just like a harmonica.(You ought to see the "reedboards" that
are inside of it). Anyway since it seemed all the keys worked, I bought it
for three dollars and took it home. I decided to pull out the guts and use
the wood for other projects.(This thing is really cheesy, plywood and wood
grain looking paper). I got the back off, and low-and-behold mounted to the
soundboard were two small carbon mics(More on them later) that lead down to
a small Silvertone tube amp. This baby is samll, maybe five watts. It has a
single 6L6 for the output. To make a longer story a little shorter, I found
two open resistors and got it working. Now I have this REALLY sweet sounding
tube amp sitting on my workbench and I decide, "Boy, this really needs to go
into an OLD cabinet for a good effect." I decided to look at a couple of
junk store around town. The first one I went to is considered the junkiest.
It's an old Goodwill where all the trash from the others go. Well I turned
the corner and there was this ancient Kodak 8mm movie projector. It was in
this really forties looking case/cabinet and they only wanted one dollar. I
paid them and rushed home. I started to rip out all the mechanical
stuff(Someone had already stripped a lot of parts from it) when I discovered
it too had a small amp(Obviously for the movie sound) in it. Well I ripped
all the stuff out, mounted in the Silvertone from the organ and used the
original six inche speaker in the projector cabinet. Now sitting on my work
bench was a TOTALLY cool, old time looking, knarly sounding harp amp. It's
kinda like my dream tone come true. But a new problem arose. I now had
another small tube amp that didn't work. After a little fiddleing around, I
got it wired up and a speaker hooked up and went to test it out. The ouput
in this one is two 35L6GT set up as a push-pull. After a little poking I
determined it had a bad 12LS7GT in the pre-amp stages. I replace it and
whammo, it worked. I found another cabinet for it, not old but I managed to
make it look really cool with some OLD grill cloth. Now I have two really
killer amps, one of which I put up against an old Champ for tone and the
other a close second, that cost me 4.50 for the first one and Seven dollars
for the second one. Back to the mics in the Silvertone. There were two of
these babies mounted inside rubber cups stapled to the soundboard. One of
them didn't work, but the other..........What a sweet mic. Just like an old
Astatic. I want to find and old SM57 or SM58 body(good diameter for the
element) to mount it in. Just to be different. Now I actually have an
amplifier collection. It's pretty cool. I look around the room........."Let
me see,  which one do I want to plug into?" 

Thanks for listening.


Tim Moody