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The Acoustic Club
- Thread starter The Owl
- Start date
It's just a run-of-the-mill NE-2 neon bulb, available for relatively cheap just about anywhere - eBay, Mouser, even Amazon, etc. I don't have a 360 handy, but it should be just like my 150 which has the bulb just shoved up into a round amber lens, not glued-in or anything, easy change-out. There should be a 47k ohm resistor in series with one of the two leads that you might want to verify isn't open, otherwise it's bound to be the bulb. The bulb is non-polarized so you don't have to worry about putting it in backwards.
Found it. No part number but I remember that I bought mine locally:
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Ill pop mine in the mail if you DM me or you can check Mouser:
https://www.mouser.ca/c/?q=neon lamp
Photos of the lamp and the install attached. The last image is from the 370 schematic showing the lamp and series resistor that are inside the pilot lamp holder (needs to be carefully pried open):
Edit for typos
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You are awesome! This club delivers!
Thank you all, that's perfect! It's greatly appreciated. I should clarify, the lamp holder is also missing, looks like whatever bulb the previous owner installed didn't fit it, so they removed the whole holder and tacked the new bulb in with hot glue. If anyone knows the part number or maker of something close to the original, or at least one the same size, let me know!
Well that sucks. So you really need a whole panel indicator. The round amber plastic lens of the one in my 150 (which I suspect is the same part as in a 360) has an exterior diameter of 3/8", meaning the hole through the panel is probably either 5/16" or 1/4" diameter. You need to verify that first.
I hesitate to post this because it's a total crapshoot and may not fit, but something like this from eBay(no affiliation) might be close:
Looks like you might have to glue it in. Note that it's specified for 125V. No way to tell for sure, but that implies it has the series resistor already built-in so you would remove the existing external 47K ohm part assuming the previous owner didn't already do it while in there screwing things up. I see the lamp that @Roxbororob offered up has the series resistor already attached to one leg too... Either way you only need one series resistor.
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Yes, it is unfortunate. Ultimately, if I can't find a good match, I may pull the amber lens from the 361 cab, as that is still in place, and swap that into the head as one rarely sees the cab one, and I can replace that with something less accurate if need be. The 47k resistor is still there currently. I'll have to get measurements for the hole in the chassis, I don't believe the whole itself was altered, I may be able to find just the lens from someone like Newark, might not match the original but would fit the hole.
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Some really good suggestions from the crew here, for sure. Mouser is awesome and another couple places I thought of is Digikey and McMaster-Carr
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McMaster-Carr
https://www.mcmaster.com
So much stuff to look through!
So did they go with LED indicators with the Series III stuff because there were issues with these lamps or just because back then "Red LED's are the new thing"?
If LED's for LED's sake I gotta believe any lamp that survived since the Nixon presidency lived a very long life!
Meanwhile over on the main amp forum, it's littered with threads about Class D amps dying after one to 10 years; I don't believe the bit from some people they are "just as reliable as the old stuff".
It's certainly not just the cheap Class D stuff either....
I knew a lot of guys with ACC gear and not a one of them every had a failure, stuff used to be built to a standard and then priced what it cost. Now they start out with price and then figure out how to save money to build it to that cost.
New stuff is just designed to use until it breaks and throw away, "in theory" it can be repaired but the best part of that is it's cheap to ship to a place to repair it. But back in the day you never had to do that.
My 220 came with an offer of a "Lifetime Protection Warranty" which in practice would have only been good for the six years until ACC folded.
At the time I figured "well it's an Acoustic, it's not gonna fail" and no matter how much abuse I threw at that amp (a 125 watt bass amp competing with 100 watt Marshall stacks) the only thing it did was to melt voice coils on JBL E-140's about one every 18 months from overheating them with clipping distortion. The amp never faltered at this.
Oh the JBL repairs were all covered under warranty because back then JBL gave you a five year warranty on their drivers. I only had to ever pay for one recone.
Analogeezer
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I would imagine it was because LEDs looked better and were expected to last longer. I've never had one fail on any of my Acoustic amps.
I have a problem now... I really love my Acoustic 450 and found a period correct 408 cab locally but one speaker is blown.
Any recommendations for a replacement speaker or do I need to swap both?
Trying to figure out how much the replacement would cost and if it's worth it. While I'd love to take the whole 220 rig I am pretty happy with the 450 after playing it for a bit.
Here's what I'm looking at:
Any recommendations for a replacement speaker or do I need to swap both?
Trying to figure out how much the replacement would cost and if it's worth it. While I'd love to take the whole 220 rig I am pretty happy with the 450 after playing it for a bit.
Here's what I'm looking at:
This is the exact conclusion I came too after my Ampeg PF500 started acting strange and I went the ACC route. I'm told it's never been serviced and it still looks almost brand new. Really digging it.
So does anybody know the story of how ACC Acoustic went under in the 1980's?
I've never read a good explanation of what happened to ACC. From the 1970's and early 1980's they were dominant in the market, they had great distribution (almost every store carried their products), great artist endorsements, and a great reputation for sound and reliability.
IIRC they went away circa 1986 which was just at the dawn of the "hi-fi" 4x10" era, at that time most bass amps were still based on single or double 15" setups.
There was a big recession in the early 80's (something fans of the Raygun never seem to remember) but that didn't seem to sink any of the other major brands.
I looked around at some other ACC fan sites and not much really there about the demise of the company.
One site suggested they went under in 1983 but I know the products were still in the stores circa 1984 - 1985 and they had introduced a lot of new products and a new look for the small amps (brown tolex).
Seems like the later stuff, Hartke, SWR, Eden that came to dominate the market came to prominence AFTER ACC was gone.
So it's not like they were trying to sell old school products against new style competition.
Anybody have some insight on what actually happened?
It's of course a very well known fact Steve Rabe left to start SWR but I don't know if that was because the company was going under or Steve just wanted to start his own company.
Seems like in the 1970's and 1980's there were a lot of buyouts of amp companies by large corporations, seems like surely ACC would have been an attractive target for say Norlin or the like.
It's almost like they were a big thing in bass amplification and then suddenly they were gone....
Analogeezer
I've never read a good explanation of what happened to ACC. From the 1970's and early 1980's they were dominant in the market, they had great distribution (almost every store carried their products), great artist endorsements, and a great reputation for sound and reliability.
IIRC they went away circa 1986 which was just at the dawn of the "hi-fi" 4x10" era, at that time most bass amps were still based on single or double 15" setups.
There was a big recession in the early 80's (something fans of the Raygun never seem to remember) but that didn't seem to sink any of the other major brands.
I looked around at some other ACC fan sites and not much really there about the demise of the company.
One site suggested they went under in 1983 but I know the products were still in the stores circa 1984 - 1985 and they had introduced a lot of new products and a new look for the small amps (brown tolex).
Seems like the later stuff, Hartke, SWR, Eden that came to dominate the market came to prominence AFTER ACC was gone.
So it's not like they were trying to sell old school products against new style competition.
Anybody have some insight on what actually happened?
It's of course a very well known fact Steve Rabe left to start SWR but I don't know if that was because the company was going under or Steve just wanted to start his own company.
Seems like in the 1970's and 1980's there were a lot of buyouts of amp companies by large corporations, seems like surely ACC would have been an attractive target for say Norlin or the like.
It's almost like they were a big thing in bass amplification and then suddenly they were gone....
Analogeezer
Without looking it up, my recollection is that the brown tolex series debuted much earlier than that, like in the early 1980s. I've heard the design of those amps drew legal patent challenges from Mesa Boogie which I'm sure didn't help Acoustic's bottom line.
Russ Allee left ACC to start AMP (Amplified Music Products) in 1981. He brought along Steve Rabe from ACC who designed the preamps used in amps like the BH260 and BH420. Steve departed AMP in 1984 to start SWR.
That's exactly what happened, they were bought out around 1984 by The Wagner Group, a large corporation. The products after that evidently didn't float enough boats. IMHO the Collaboration Series stuff just didn't have "the look".
After Wagner ran them in the ground Sammick picked up the scraps for a while but their products (mostly cabinets) were a colossal commercial failure.
I've always wondered about this myself. A very good question, and I'm hoping to hear some replies.
I bought my first 220 back in, I want to say '82 in London. At that time the big names were Trace Elliot, Carlsbro, and Peavey, So its not like Acoustic was being forced out by superior products.
But A.C.C. stuff was not easy to get hold of in the U.K. I was lucky.
Well, if you decide you don't want the 220, I would be interested in it. Do you know how much he wants for it, and were are you located?
He's asking for $350 for the head and cab currently. It's located in NJ though but I could coordinate shipping if you wanted it.
Yeah there is a thread from some guy who bought a brand new Mesa 800-TT; the first one had a ton of hiss which would not change with any settings. So he sent it back and got a second one. This one did not have the hiss but it had a massive hum in the second channel so he sent it back and just gave up on Mesa.
He also said the second one the fan worked right away whereas with the first one the fan never came on at all.
I realize this is the internet that tends to amplify flaws and make things seem worse than they are, but not a day goes by without someone posting about their dead or defective new wonder amp.
I actually own one of these (a GC Acoustic B300HD) but my investment in it is limited to $208 with tax, bought it on a blowout sale. I like it for what it is and it does get loud but it's not got the tone my older amps (Ampeg B2-R, Bugera BVP-5500, and of course the Acoustic 220) have.
But my god if I paid $1200 and got TWO Defective amps I would be pissed, yet Mesa seems to be somewhat of a deity around these parts
Analogeezer
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,093
- 46,077
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- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
AFAIK they went out of business as the original entity by '84, not '86. My first task at my new day job in '84 was to clean up a substantial pile of the apparently rather problematic tube guitar amps that my new boss was on the hook for to back up the now defunct "lifetime" warranty. He bought or traded back for as many as he could, had me mod them, and then resold with something like a 90 day warranty. I have no idea how much this contributed to the decline, but it definitely soured me on the brand forever and I was a huge fan before that. There was a lot of that going around at that time: Fender, Sunn, tube manufacturers, and so on.
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