I've always liked the idea of using these (a have something similar without the transformer) but until this demo i'd never heard one sound good on youtube. Nice demo.
I had this amp as built into a 16mm film projector. Connected to it's matching 12" alnico speaker, it was possibly the best amp I owned in over 50 years of playing.
The world certainly has regressed in the wake of analog components. Perhaps one day things will change for the better and we will return to the golden days.
I have a Bell & Howell projector with this amplifier. Back in the 1980s, I had it set up to show a film, turned on the amp, and an electrolytic capacitor blew up. It was made in the late 1930s, and I'm surprised it lasted that long. The problem was that it was a custom cap, with several coaxial layers, and it was marked only with a part number. I called up Bell & Howell and was connected to the company historian. He found the schematic for me (it was actually a blueprint, and they had several copies) and sent it to me along with an actual capacitor. He said it was untested, but of course if it didn't work, I could just use multiple capacitors and rewire the amp a little. I asked him how much this would cost and he just laughed and sent it all for free. Bell & Howell defined the term, "class act." The new old stock capacitor worked fine, and it's still going strong.
@@klaudio2803 I know where the projector is up in the attic, but I don't think the schematic is with it. I folded it up to the size of a normal sheet of paper and as I recall I folded it white side out. But I do have a couple of old filing cabinets I can go through, and I'll do that when I get a chance.
That amp sounds awesome!!! I have a similar amp... I discovered that if I use a Boss (or equivalent) equalizer pedal in line with the guitar, its sound is absolutely brilliant. The boost of the pedal not only drives it harder if you want more crunch, but it gives me really impressive clean headroom too. In 20+ years of living room jams, I still haven't blown its onboard speaker or the output transformer. Thanks for posting your demo! I love it
I worked at Carvin Amps for 20 years. There was so much controversy over wether the newer solid state amps were as good as the old tubes. So finally we did a blind amp test in the lab and it turned out that the most ardent promoters of tube amp superiority chose the solid state amps as better. The truth is theres simply no audible distinguishable characteristic that the human ear can differentiate anymore. However the tube amps do generate more heat, and in a cold basement studio in winter, thats a plus.
I had a Carvin 100 watt head and i hated it...i sold it to my buddy and his girlfriend hated it even more, cos she went into it one day with a pair of scissors and cut every wire. Ive owned Carvin PA stuff too and i was not impressed ...it all seemed very cheaply made and didnt sound as good as my Peavey stuff from the 80s...which i still have...so i have to respectfully disagree. I had big hopes for both, because of FZ and Steve Vai, but it didnt work for me. I kept my Marshall 2204s...all 3 of them...thats the sound for me.
Yep! I've been picking these up for a few £££s, rebuilding them, and really enjoying them. They are full of very old electrolytics (six that require replacement). Furthermore, the 6J7 is an early version of the EF37A - a superb pre-amp valve and precursor to the EF86. You can tune the circuit to filter out bass via the cathode and screen caps and achieve correct bias. With a Celestion Alnico Creamback, it keeps up with drums with a superb and controllable crunch. Given the electrolytics required replacement, what I've done to some is build Fender circuits (5D3, 5E3, 6G3) for the power stage, and kept the octal phase inverter (6SL&/ECC33) and said pre-amp valve but with a customised circuit to tune the bass roll-off. I'm on my 7th build at the mo with a stack of other chassis waiting for attention. They are quite a small chassis to work on/in. The OT is excellent quality and well with range of current given a few milli-amps have been saved by removing the optical reader and the third 6V6. So is the OT, if rather small, and therefore it saturates rather quickly. The bread pan is wise improvisation, but if you use coax, earthed at the chassis, you don't need it. You you need a step-down transformer for UK use. I'll do a video at some point if anyone is interested.
Brings me back to when I was 17 years old.. I worked for a company called 16mm, earning $15.60 a week wages, lol. My job was to count the frames in a film roll, after it came back from hire. The company hired out 16mm film in a time where video tape did not exist. I was given a Bell and Howel 16mm projector from my work and used the amp inside the projector to practice and practice on my Coronet electric guitar, eventually joined bands, bought marshals but just never made it big.. The sound is still the same on what you’re playing right now, amazing..
That sounds great! Do NOT get electrocuted. I had a REALLY old amp that I found from the 1920's - 1930's that was intended for an accordion, of all things. It sounded good and I tried using it as a monitor in my old band's recording space 25 years ago and it UNGROUNDED my whole PA system and when I went to sing I saw a bright white light in my eyes seemed like from inside my head and I felt my mouth burn horribly. Then I sold it! Sold that amp to the first person that I could with a LOT of warnings! True story. I do NOT miss that amp! Almost welded my teeth together.
@@restojon1 Oh thank you sir laughing at me and the situation is fine too! Doing so is part of the human condition but you are clearly nicer than most people thank you! 😁
Anytime working with glass tubes on electronics you should always make sure to “discharge” it or you’ll get a nice shock 😂. Luckily it wasn’t a CRT because those things will kill you
And I use it for blackened speed metal. And for my Witchtrap covers. Im sure this is how AC/DC got their name too. Its a perfect tone known with Angus.
THANKS for posting. It's good you kept the bread pan bit. I'm an engineer (not sound, but I have experience in radio circuits.) The pan shielding out the noise tells me all I need to know after I heard the 60 Hz hum. Your power supply circuit needs a 'filter cap.' The capacitors are old, tired and need some replacing. If you're up to it, you can wind your own with lead foil and oiled paper but you can also buy some nice ones. Filter capacitors in a power supply like this smooth out the ripple voltage when converting from AC to DC, and I can hear a lot of ripple.
One of nicest sounding speakers that I played through for guitar was a pair of 12" old electromagnet organ speakers from the 1950s. They used 400V electromagnets instead of permanent magnetics. They had this very warm jazzy sound.
You can wrap the input pentode with 3M copper tape to act as a shield.. Love the tone, please retain Allen-Bradley carbon comp resistors and the “Domino” Silver Mica coupling caps if they are still within spec.. Most of the stuff you’ll change first are the very old electrolytic caps..
So those 'domino' caps are still usable- awesome, cos ive got some somewhere...i think. I save EVERYTHING-LOL. Im gonna look up Allen- Bradley resistors next and see what they look like...i found a bunch of odd looking resistors yesterday and im curious exactly what they are, maybe small caps. Thank you for posting this info, im also gonna go subscribe to your channel, this stuff fascinates me. For the last 50 years or so.
@@edwhite7475 Hi Ed.. I’m not a RU-vidr.. I just did some DIY tube electronics (hifi and guitar).. Be aware that most of the Allen-Bradley Carbon Compostion resistors (as seen in the Filmosound amp here) would have drifted in value (especially if they were used as Plate loads or in the Cathode, esp if the tube is ran in high current).. If they are still within tolerance then you are lucky.. The small value Domino Mica caps sound really good and clean, but could also be open or leaky due to age and abuse (soldering iron..) So better Double Check everything.. If they are out of spec or defective, replace them.. An alternative to vintage Allen-Bradley are Ohmite Little Demon resistors.
That thing is insanely good sounding. Tonal range in breakup and cleans is insane. Wow. And a Tele thru it was how it's supposed to be done. I always stay on the tweed channel of my hybrid Fender Superchamp X2 head. I swim in these tones with my Telecaster. Great video and nice playing dude!
@@BC-Zeee I'm literally spoiled by this little X2 amp. They have the same digital brain box as the Fender Mustang solid state amps (which sound pretty damn good by themselves). Adding the 12AX7 inverter & dual 6V6 power amp section was a brilliant move in these hybrids. It sucks they discontinued the X2 series as I'd likely purchase another.......
I had an even older one with the projector attached and a really ancient speaker that hand a really long rod between the driver and the cone which produced distortions like nothing else, this one also sounds amazingly good, just spectacular, love it
The top cap connection is the input grid for the 6J7. As its the first stage, any hum will be amplified. Try replacing that wire with an appropriate length of shielded wire. The braided shield should be connected to the ground of the guitar input jack. The 6J7 tube is inherently shielded by its grounded metal shell. Pin #1 on the socket should be the shell connection. Great find.
Incredible sound...when you got to the point of playing and you hit that first chord I was shocked how good it sounds. Excellent discovery, thanks for sharing!!! 🤘
I bought a reel to reel in a charity shop in 1999 for £3 and its very like this, all valve and the 'film editing' version of the one I had as a kid and blew up when I was 18! These old circuits tone is all down to the component type, not their age. You can build great sounding amps today just make sure you use NOS components, vintage solder and wire too if you can get it.
At Mars Amplification has been selling vacuum tube guitar amplifiers like The Convincer, The Torque Amplifier and The Specialist, all built on the Filmosound chassis for well over a decade. They are gorgeous and sound amazing.
Several years ago the a local church was cleaning out accumulated stuff, a lot of things from the last forty or so years. They put the old PA system on the ground at the side of the street, undamaged and in good condition. A 150 watt Harmon Kardon power amp and the preamp [mono], I drive this amp using a Chameleon, a Presonus preamp, a Presonus gate/compressor, and a Karl Teknik EQ into two cabinet containing a fifteen and a horn, from the same church. There were five of these cabinets hanging from the ceiling, was able to acquire them. I tried several configurations to drive the amp, this is the one I settled on. I'm no fancy picker, but have learn to make a racket. One man's trash is another man's treasure, for sure!!!!!! These old amps are hand wired and well built and they are ALL ANALOG.
That tone is legit! I’m impressed by how smooth the overdrive is. Sounds a lot like when I used to run a Klon KTR into the clean channel of a Marshall DSL40C, but this is more natural sounding and way cooler-looking! Great video
I own the exact same amp. A really nice guy by the name of Andy Marshall modded one for me (Andy used to have a line of guitar amps under his company THD). He replaced some of the spent components, including the output transformer, and modded the filmosound to be self-biasing. The reason it is so noisy without the bread pan: it is due to the far right tube, closest to you (if you're facing the amp). It is used to read the optical audio track on the edge of a filmstrip. Andy took it completely out of the audio path in my case. Kudos on owning an old gem! They're really, really cool!
That is utterly fantastic sounding. I love this stuff. A Jensen 12 in a film projector! I had to literally LOL. Now I want to find one of these. Brilliant!
Thats a beautiful amp. I have 2 Krell KMA-100 mono-blocks that I use for vinyl playback. The amp you just played has the same kind of warm and analog sound as well. Very nice, thank you very much.
Old wireless radio valve (tube) sets often had an input for a record player but beware, they may not only not be earthed (grounded) but may have a surprisingly high voltage to ground on them. Always "safety test" before frying yourself. A pair of 6V6 in push-pull can make about 15W which is pretty loud.
Put that on a Variac and drop the voltage to the 110 it was made for, not the 120 volts of today and see how that sounds. It's probably running a little hot. It sounds incredible, I love it! I haven't been lucky enough to find one....yet.
I don’t know what to say but I want to say something. I used to play, have gear, write guitar parts, long time ago. And this video and that beautiful, pure sound put me right back there. Thank you.
Careful with changing that power cord! Make sure the design of the amp is compatible first! If you have the power switch and fuse on the neutral wire, you need to either switch them to the live wire, or add another fuse on the live wire. If you have a circuit with the fuse on the neutral, and the fuse blows, all the current will flow through the ground wire in a 3-prongs cable, and the circuit remains closed (meaning it will still electrocute you if the fuse blows!). That design is "safe" in a 2-wires setup, but not in a 3-wires setup. Also it probably sounds muddier than it should because of old/leaky capacitors. I would replace all of them, even the mica ones. Modern NP0/C0G ceramic caps are super cheap and are even more linear than these old mica caps... Shouldn't have to replace any of the resistors unless you notice some looking crispy....
My first amp was a stock Filmosound, just because I picked it up for cheap at a garage sale in high-school. Hell of a sound, and also acted as a space heater.
The breadpan is the ground for the tube with the wire on top. The stock sound of that amp is spool vintage spongy and great tone for no equipment. Rock on!
Awesome! Stumbled across this video was intrigued as to what it sounded like so clicked. Within a few seconds I was like hey I recognise that voice turns out I follow your restoration channel! Nice video and brill sound got a early ACDC feel from it.
Thank you! - you answered a 40 year old mystery. I found one of these in the attic of a house we rented. This one was pretty beat up and the "filmosound" label was missing. All I had was an acoustic and my Dad's Phillips mic, so I stuck it in the soundhole. There was no speaker with mine, so I ran it into Dad's stereo into the Aux input. I had fun showing my friends it, loving the tone of it until about 2 days later it started smoking and started on fire. Dad insisted I threw it out.
I had a friend who was both an excellent blues guitarist and somewhat knowledgeable in electronics etc., and he wired his 335 or Strat into a Dansette (with a modicom of pre-amping) and reported great things - IIRC correctly he mentioned that there was some similarity to a Vox AC30
@@dezionlion many people speculate its primarily because of the transformers. You can't get iron like that any more. Totally over built, incredibly resilient, wonderfully sounding.
This amp sounds great with the telecaster! This reminds me that a buddy of mine ripped the guts out of an old Caliphone record player and rehoused into a project box. We used it on a ton of recordings. Sounded wicked on guitar.
Actually own that exact same amp. Found it at a yard sale a few years ago, the old woman there said it belonged to her husband and she had no idea what is was used for(i didn't either at the time)....i offered her 20 bucks for it and she gladly accepted. It powers up and likely works fine, however it never occured to me to use it as a guitar amp. Will have to dig it back out and give it a try. Great vid!
I have this exact amp and used shielded Gibson style wire and replaced the lead out to the top cap of the 6J7 making sure to only attach one end of shielding to ground and it made the amp much quieter. Then I put a vintage shielding cap on and it made it even quieter. That was a hard to find part on eBay.
Extremely impressed 👍👍⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, very similar to the tone one might hear on a Steely Dan song, specifically "Don't Take Me Alive" off of The Royal Scam, 1976.
I have an ancient Bogen P/A head... It's an absolutely incredible amp! Those small amps that were meant for projectors, small P/A setups, even the ones out of those old portable lecturns... They're amazing for guitar.
Run this into a 2x12 or 4x12 cab, possibly with mismatched speakers to get some real girth to the sound. It sounds great as is too and would be fantastic to have in a recording studio to give songs a unique tone
The bread pan isn't shielding anything. It is grounding. A permanent fix is to solder a new ground cable from the ground post in the power plug, to the volume knob. I discovered this on accident, but there is no more hum.
Filmosounds really are great as guitar amps. Awesome, almost perfect vintage crunch sound, which you hardly get form any modern multi channel amp, also nice, British voiced clean sounds. Even better with eg. an OCD or Zendrive in front for more intense overdrive. Only the speaker does not convince me so much, I rather used an old Goodmans cabinet or a Ruby instead. Nice demo! Thank you!
Yeah, so that’s part of film projector rig from the 50’s or 60’s and it’s got a great tone! Gotta wonder how many of these are sitting in thrift stores, pawnshops, and government facilities? Great tone!
That's what I'm thinking... Buried treasures in old school storage rooms, junk shops, old-school military training facilities... There may be hundreds or more those things gathering dust or bound for the landfill 😞
They're cramped because they fit into a portable projector. I have one and considered re-capping the amp, but its compactness meant it was going to be a long project, not worth it while I'm working. FWIW, the tube he removed by the 5Y3 was the ultrasonic oscillator to drive the lamp illuminating the soundtrack. The four prong tube was for the photocell.
Nothing wrong with that tone. It sounds like it has a little more headroom than most little amps. Or it's that transformer. Those tubes might be microphonic.. I can hear them ring a bit. My modded Special 6 is way grungier when it's cranked like you did there. Great project to land for sure.
I was only a child when the world kinda moved from the old tube amps to electronic modern stuff. I always have it in my mind that the old amp stuff just has a power to it that new stuff doesn't. Maybe power is the wrong word. Raw, analogue, floorboard vibrating something.
