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Ampeg B15n Rebuild

Hort Elvison

Hort Elvison

Nov 19, 2012
133
320
Kentucky
www.twiggenburys.com
#1
I'm 57 years old, have dealt and beat stage 3 colon cancer in the last 2 years and have decided to rebuild and USE all my old amps. Just finished a 58 Princeton (OMG...the tone) and now I'm working on a 1969 Ampeg B15 that I bought from a dude who never played it. It's absolutely mint which makes me nervous to take out to gigs but then I only play nice places and bigger gigs now...so questions.

I've settled on an Eminence Beat15 for the speaker but now I'm looking to see what tube set I should buy. Everything in this amp is 100% original so I want to keep all that and play updated and more reliable parts. Money isn't really an issue but at the same time, I'm married and own 35+ basses so I have to make my wife happy and so I'm trying to balance what makes sense. Also, what mic so you suggest using? I usually run 2 channels, a direct line and a mic'ed line. I have beta52, audio D6 and a few other options in my studio...just don't know what works live. Suggestions welcome.

Cancer makes you rethink everything. I've collected and held on to gear for years, now is the time to use it, but I'm not stupid, everything is very protected.

Thanks for your help and suggestions on this.
 
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#3
I've always loved an RE20 in front of a B-15. Plenty of people also use a 421 or even a good ol' 57.

fliptops.net and vintage-blue both get good reps around here for old fliptop stuff. There's also the portaflex wiki here on TB as well as a fliptop club thread with a lot of useful info! I'm sure those resources could help you with the rebuild process.

And, if I may make a suggestion based on your setup: you mentioned running both DI and cab mic at shows. The old fliptops don't have direct outs, as you probably know. Now, you could just tap the DI off a pedalboard preamp or tap it before the amp and use the THRU connection to the B-15... But IMO there is a better way! Certain DI boxes can handle speaker-level signal. The Radial JDI is one, another is the Rupert Neve DI that I own.

You plug the DI in between the amp and the cab (and make sure "speaker level" is engaged). This way your DI line gets the full tube complement and tonal richness the B-15 has to offer. The only drawback that I've come across is that if you change your stage volume, the DI volume also changes. But that's already the case with the mic line and nothing a good soundcheck and attentive engineer can't alleviate.

Congrats on beating cancer and best wishes enjoying your gear and your music!

Edit: Just saw your profile says you're in KY - depending on where you are, Nashville could be a worthwhile place to bring the amp for service. There are some great amp techs here if there aren't any closer to you.
 
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#6
Verticos said:
I've always loved an RE20 in front of a B-15. Plenty of people also use a 421 or even a good ol' 57.

fliptops.net and vintage-blue both get good reps around here for old fliptop stuff. There's also the portaflex wiki here on TB as well as a fliptop club thread with a lot of useful info! I'm sure those resources could help you with the rebuild process.

And, if I may make a suggestion based on your setup: you mentioned running both DI and cab mic at shows. The old fliptops don't have direct outs, as you probably know. Now, you could just tap the DI off a pedalboard preamp or tap it before the amp and use the THRU connection to the B-15... But IMO there is a better way! Certain DI boxes can handle speaker-level signal. The Radial JDI is one, another is the Rupert Neve DI that I own.

You plug the DI in between the amp and the cab (and make sure "speaker level" is engaged). This way your DI line gets the full tube complement and tonal richness the B-15 has to offer. The only drawback that I've come across is that if you change your stage volume, the DI volume also changes. But that's already the case with the mic line and nothing a good soundcheck and attentive engineer can't alleviate.

Congrats on beating cancer and best wishes enjoying your gear and your music!

Edit: Just saw your profile says you're in KY - depending on where you are, Nashville could be a worthwhile place to bring the amp for service. There are some great amp techs here if there aren't any closer to you.
Click to expand...


Thanks man, yeah I'm in Nashvegas a lot these days. I have a lot of friends there and rely on them for help too. I generally split my signal from a compressor into a FatBoy Tube DI and then run to the amp, it gives ia a big sound on big systems and generally soundmen like the beef. It's two completely different lines and up until lately, I've been running either an SVT or an EBS Fafner 2 as the amp side of the signal. If my 21 year old son shows up, I use an old ampeg 8x10 but lately it's been a 1x15". ;-0
 
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#9
Hort Elvison said:
I'm 57 years old, have dealt and beat stage 3 colon cancer in the last 2 years and have decided to rebuild and USE all my old amps. Just finished a 58 Princeton (OMG...the tone) and now I'm working on a 1969 Ampeg B15 that I bought from a dude who never played it. It's absolutely mint which makes me nervous to take out to gigs but then I only play nice places and bigger gigs now...so questions.

I've settled on an Eminence Beat15 for the speaker but now I'm looking to see what tube set I should buy. Everything in this amp is 100% original so I want to keep all that and play updated and more reliable parts. Money isn't really an issue but at the same time, I'm married and own 35+ basses so I have to make my wife happy and so I'm trying to balance what makes sense. Also, what mic so you suggest using? I usually run 2 channels, a direct line and a mic'ed line. I have beta52, audio D6 and a few other options in my studio...just don't know what works live. Suggestions welcome.

Cancer makes you rethink everything. I've collected and held on to gear for years, now is the time to use it, but I'm not stupid, everything is very protected.

Thanks for your help and suggestions on this.
Click to expand...
Congrats on winning your battle. I hope that the cancer remains defeated.

I know nothing about amps except the plug in and turn on/off stuff. On some occasions, I turn a knob besides the volume just to see what happens.

Stage III Multiple Myeloma survivor here. 11 years free.
 
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#15
Hey @Hort Elvison, congrats on beating your cancer. I am a late stage (4a) colon cancer survivor myself ... 22 years now. I TOTALLY get your statement that survival changes everything ... and hopefully for the better. Certainly made me re-evaluate a lot of things in my life and guided me to go back to things that really mattered in life. It may be kind of an odd thing to say, but I tell people who ask, that once my survival was clear, that I felt like cancer was a gift to me as it made me rethink what really mattered in life. FWIW, music became much more important to me and remains to this day.

I got nothing on your B15 question, but good luck and good living!
 
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#17
I’ve always liked an RE20 (or on a budget a PR40) on my B15, they’re pretty neutral and let the tone of the amp shine through.

On replacement speakers, for modern drivers my preference was the beta 15 in my double baffle, but for the thiele style cabs I think the delta 15 is a common recommendation as well. I think the beta is a nicer/smoother sounding speaker. I didn’t compare the two in my B15 but did in a B25B cab.

On the suggested DI/load box alternatives the issue will be the speaker terminal. If amp is all original from 1969 it should still have the 4-pin connector. Fliptops has adaptors you can buy for both ends of this, allowing you to place a speaker level DI, but a lot of the voicing of these amps is the cab. I’ve used mine with a two notes captor X as a DI/cab sim option, it has a built in B15N model which visually looks like a thiele cab so that may have been what they used for the cab model. On my current B15 the stock 4 pin had been replaced with an XLR so I swapped it to a speakon, but that complicates things (like using the captor or other speaker level DI).

Also congrats on the good news. My day job is in cancer research. It’s easy to get lost in the dismal statistics sometimes. Always great to hear a positive outcome.
 
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#18
You may not have read this post. The audio files are helpful.
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/am...altec-421-jbl-d140-cts-square-magnet.1448590/

This is the schematic for a late 19860's B-15N. The external amp output gives you the option to send a post-pre-amp signal to a mixer or recorder, allowing you to keep that signature Ampeg tone.
B15N_Late1960.jpg


Again, congratulations on beating cancer. And congratulations on resurrecting such a fine amplifier.
 
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#19
TheSpinDoctor said:
You may not have read this post. The audio files are helpful.
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/am...altec-421-jbl-d140-cts-square-magnet.1448590/

This is the schematic for a late 19860's B-15N. The external amp output gives you the option to send a post-pre-amp signal to a mixer or recorder, allowing you to keep that signature Ampeg tone.
B15N_Late1960.jpg


Again, congratulations on beating cancer. And congratulations on resurrecting such a fine amplifier.
Click to expand...

I have built this preamp circuit into a few homebrew DI units, just taking that output into a transformer. Can confirm it sounds great. If you have a transformer based DI, I would give this a shot. The only unexpected thing is depending on the DI/downstream preamp, you may get some signal loss due to loading effects on the preceeding circuit. Not too bad, maybe 6dB at most in the builds I've made. An active DI should minimize this.
 

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