Ampex 601-2 2 track “portable” suitcase tape deck:

What can I say, easily the most complicated rebuild I’ve done, not only did the preamps need complete rebuild (1959)and modified for safety, the whole deck was taken apart, cleaned and put back together, it’s 60 years old and sounds simply wonderful… not to mention being way cool.

Yamaha TA-60:

Wow, memories of High School, the school band had one of these, they were probably the only ones who could afford them as they were prohibitively expense. This one had me scratching my head until I realized somebody had been into this amp and shouldn’t have been. This is one LOUD amp, those Yamaha coplanar speaker have a lot of surface area.

Fender Delux Reverb:

Another nice Fender refurb, this amp needed a fair bit of work to get it sounding right again, recap,  fried components, tube problems plus the addition of grounded cord and elimination of the dreaded ground switch.

Dual 1214 Turntable:

When I received this from the customer it wouldn’t even turn, the grease had dried up so badly that the platter was seized, took it all apart, rebuild, new rubber and needle and voila, runs like a dream.

Engle E310 15 watt:

This lovely German made amp was a special customer of mine, Ian at Weston Instruments, he simply didn’t like the way it sounded so… I ran flying leads out from the tone stack, on to a bread board and tweaked the filters using my spectrum analyzer to get close to how he told me he wanted it to sound. He came by and played through the amp while I did final adjustments, he’s thrilled and I had great fun doing this project. Every now and then you get a job like this that is both challenging and a hoot. Oh, I also found a wrong value capacitor in the circuit which meant the amp was never going to sound quite right, I was surprised given the German quality of the build of this amp.

Lifco Pepco

These amps were built by Pepco under the brands Lifco, Regal, Riviera and others for the discount stores in the 60s, this guy was rebuilt and I modified the tone stack to get better tone control. Every component in this amp was made in Canada, even the tubes. One of the problems with these amps is they used RSC speakers which weren’t very efficient, particularly when matched with the modest output of these amps.

Guya-tone GA-830:

Similar to the Canadian Pepcos, this 60s Japanese 15 watt’er needed a completer rebuild, personally, I thought this was one of the coolest amps I’ve heard in a while, not sonically brilliant, just very unique sounding.

Yorkville AP1212

Always liked this series of Yorkville powered mixers, they were tough as nails and had plenty of headroom. Repair job for my friends at Spaceman Music.

EVH Fender:

A gain monster, this amp had a blown power supply which surprised me, did some calculations a realized that the components were being used very close to their max ratings so I beefed up the supply while repairing it. This amp was a Revision 0 and noticed that the second iteration had some needed changes in the design, both electrically and functionally. This thing had so much gain that when on the bench, it was picking up the 60 cycle vibration of my Halogen lamp on the ceiling.

Fender Princeton:

I’ve rebuilt a number of Princetons over the years, Fender sold a ton of these and they’re super reliable nice sounding “6V6” 15 watt amps, so, complete restoration on this one complete with addition of bias control.

Ampex 2012 suitcase amp:

Received two of these for refurbishment/modification so they could be used for guitar and stereo, they are great 12 watt practice amps once modified.

Yamaha CP70M

Complete disassembly and rebuild and retolex of this classic and infamous back breaker Yamaha CP70M piano, so, obviously it was a pretty big job, there’s a lot of parts in this baby. You know, my memory of owning one of these and playing it was better than the actual recent experience, it is a really nice keybed to play though.

Fender Supersonic:

Well, a simple repair, couple of cold solder joints and loose connectors… done.