very cool custom EL84 guitar amps

[whatadish]

so I found a few of these hammond AO35 18 watt EL84 amps at a sale a few months ago. Converted them into a close rendition of Dr Z Carmen Ghias. These sound absolutely great and were a perfect fit in the vintage Bell and Howell speaker boxes. The flag one was dipped by a good friend, the brownstone one is rattle canned. The brown one has a cord retracter through the hole in the front so no need to carry patch cord with you. Very pleased at the way these turned out.

 

[Dswankey]

Very nice! congrats on the re purposing of them. Where did you find the Bell & Howell boxes?

 

[whatadish]

Very nice! congrats on the re purposing of them. Where did you find the Bell & Howell boxes?

you can find them online once in a while...they used to be pretty cheap...75 bucks or so. Now they are fetching closer to 150.00 or so. They are bulky to ship as well. 90% of them have very nice B&H badged Jensen speakers though. Most are 16 ohms as well so amp requires ot tinkering or just drive the amp at 7 or 8 watts. They still sound very nice. Cabinets are very, very solid with little to zero resonance. Dont play guitar but my son has been playing for 30 years and has an extensive collection of guitars and amps. He loves these little screamers.

 

[Dswankey]

^ Thank for sharing, at 16 ohms those speakers don't need much at all. Several years ago I found a "Fender Champ" tubed guitar amp on the curb for trash day. It was in good shape so I grabbed it and dropped it off at my buddy's shop. A couple of days later he calls and said come get it it's ready to go. It was a very minor repair, anyway at the time I was all about "watts" and loudness and when I asked what he thought it put out I was stunned by how little the amount was.

I don't play guitar so I brought it over to a friends house who does and he plugged it in and when he turned it up it got quite loud even though he was probably only utilizing a handful of watts if that.

Cool backstory on the mighty Champ which I'm sure your son is aware of and here's my thread on

https://www.fender.com/articles/gear/indispensable-undeniable-the-legacy-of-the-champ

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/cheesy-little-amp.584579/page-2

 

[Lavane]

you can find them online once in a while...they used to be pretty cheap...75 bucks or so. Now they are fetching closer to 150.00 or so. They are bulky to ship as well. 90% of them have very nice B&H badged Jensen speakers though. Most are 16 ohms as well so amp requires ot tinkering or just drive the amp at 7 or 8 watts. They still sound very nice. Cabinets are very, very solid with little to zero resonance. Dont play guitar but my son has been playing for 30 years and has an extensive collection of guitars and amps. He loves these little screamers.

I was looking at them when I built a SE 6l6 guitar amp for my son. The prices really have shot up. I wound up just making a head amp. I do keep my eye out for them though.