Those Universal Tigers were popular when I was in high school; I remember schematics of them circulating around, as well as some off-shoot modifications f the basic circuit.
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Weird Amps Nobody Remembers
- Thread starter Pablo504
- Start date
Hard for me to forget them, I've had this Polytone MiniBrute III since 1980:
But yeah, I don't think they've made amps in a decade or more...I think they went out of business when the founder died.
Yes.Should I bring back the Garnet G100B I bought two years ago?
View attachment 5344710
I finally gave it to my son after my dream amp (Ampeg B18N) came in!
Jim Kale would be proud of you.
Usually, everybody has never seen one of these.
Always get comments when I played it out, and then a nice conversation.
Always get comments when I played it out, and then a nice conversation.
Indeed, as soon as we say « Garnet », the Guess Who comes to mind! I love them…
And they’re still not in the R&RHOF, as far as I know. They're more worthy than a lot of the current inductees.
Not American, not British, just the poor cousins from Winnipeg, Canada, why give them any credit?
I had a Garnet bass combo amp. 112, tube, 30 watts. It was a nice little amp!
Lectrolab was made by Sound Projects. Great harp amps, and clean sound for guitar. They blend well when others are playing acoustics.
I had a Cerwin-Vega ( BG-250? dunno, don't remember :^) ) with 2 huge 18" folded horn cabinets for awhile.
A short while...
P.O.S. sounded awful.
The quality of toan was only exceeded by the extreme unreliability and the PITA of moving it.
I didn't even want to remember that one.
A short while...
P.O.S. sounded awful.
The quality of toan was only exceeded by the extreme unreliability and the PITA of moving it.
I didn't even want to remember that one.
I have a Heathkit AR-1500, which first shipped in 1972. It has one circuit board (or set of boards) per function, with edge connectors on the boards that are wired so that they can be taken out of the chassis without unplugging.
There are a couple shots of the innards on this page about the AR-1500. I imagine that trying to pack all those functions (power supply, separate AM/FM tuners, switched preamp with tone section and additional tuning controls, phono preamp, 60 Wpc power section -- times two because stereo) into a reasonable case size with point to point wiring might not be impossible but would be egregiously expensive even by the standards of early 70s electronics. The component population on the boards is pretty spacious by modern standards though I suspect that packing things tightly together would make this a pretty hostile project for home hobbyists. This sucker weighs 42 lb, and that's without having a massively overbuilt audiophile-approved case.
I’ll need to dig into the deeper boxes on the garage shelves to unearth it but I still have my SWTPC Tiger 40 (stereo) and the matching preamp. SWTPC and PAIA (especially the Craig Anderton projects) were two sources of a lot of learning and satisfaction back in the day. I have a rack that still has Anderton’s Quadrafuzz. That was a really fun one during the short time that I played guitar. Thanks for the nostalgic reminder!
Addendum
I also still have the cab that came in my Heathkit TA-16 solid state guitar amp around 1967-68. The rest of it is lon-n-n-ng gone. It was a 25W all-transistor amp that used two 12” Jensen speakers. The control arrangement resembled the Fender Twin but nothing else about it did. After scrapping the electronics I hacked in a stereo SWTPC Tiger 25 (one output to each speaker) and a separate preamp. That worked much better but the solid state of that time was terrible for anything but jazz (also of that time). After several years of non-use I gutted it and put it on the shelf where it languishes.
Addendum
I also still have the cab that came in my Heathkit TA-16 solid state guitar amp around 1967-68. The rest of it is lon-n-n-ng gone. It was a 25W all-transistor amp that used two 12” Jensen speakers. The control arrangement resembled the Fender Twin but nothing else about it did. After scrapping the electronics I hacked in a stereo SWTPC Tiger 25 (one output to each speaker) and a separate preamp. That worked much better but the solid state of that time was terrible for anything but jazz (also of that time). After several years of non-use I gutted it and put it on the shelf where it languishes.
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I still use a pair of SWTP 207/A monoblock amps in my second stereo system. Paid for themselves about 50 years ago.
When Men were Men and fingertips were calloused - by soldering irons! Saved me some time when I started with stainless rounds...
- Feb 12, 2006
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They didn’t fail? Those weren’t terribly reliable because of the times and limited short circuit protection.
Yeah, they definitely did have that reputation. Not sure if the later 207/A that I have addressed that (versus the original Tiger .01), but in my case I've only had to replace the two power supply filter caps to restore quiet after some impressively loud motorboating.
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Mosrite sold a line of guitar and bass amps for a very short time. I owned a Gibson Atlas bass amp for a long time. Bought it in 1965. The bass pot failed shortly after I got it and it never sounded good after it was repaired. Probably not a surprise since the bass control had a 4-gang pot stack on the shaft and they probably mis-wired something. 40 watts of 6L6 power with a singe 15" speaker. This is am image from a sale site. Mine was brown.
Rick B.
Rick B.
