The Baddest Harp Amp on the Planet

Adam Gussow gushes about his 1956 Fender Bassman. You gotta watch this vid...

D2F Amp Covers

D2F (Designed 2 Fit) amp covers are great: Well made, tight fitting, and padded. And, they are WAY less expensive than the covers some custom amp builders include with their overpriced amps to tack on a little more excess profit.

I've had a D2F cover for my Champ for a year, and I just ordered one for my Twin. Their website is here, and they have a large presence on eBay. Very highly recommended.

Review: Epiphone Blues Custom 30 Amp

Tried it. Didn’t like it.

I was interested in the Epiphone Blues Custom 30 because it is switchable from 15 class A watts to 30 class AB watts. It has two 12-inch Eminence Lady Luck speakers, which sound great for blues harp in the little Epi Valve Jr. stack. It uses 5881 power tubes, similar to 6L6 tubes. The price is low, selling new for $549 everywhere.

So I went to Rockley Music in Denver a couple months ago to check it out. They had five of these amps and were evidently having trouble moving them, so they offered it to me for $475. I plugged in my favorite bullet mic, fiddled with the gain and EQ, and tried a Bb harp.

Terrible. It reminded me of all the reasons I hate using guitar amps at blues jams: Shrill ice-pick tone with lots of feedback. I fiddled with the amp controls some more with no improvement. And this was in a rather large room using only the 15-watt setting. Maybe I could have taken it home, tinkered with the tubes and speakers and made a decent harp amp out of it, but I just didn’t have the patience for all that. Too many other projects.

Besides the terrible tone, the downside of the amp is its weight: about 65 pounds. I don’t really have room to talk on the amp weight issue since my 1973 Fender Twin Reverb weighs even more (especially with the Altec speakers), but the Fender is way more powerful (100 watts) and actually sounds pretty dang good for harp.

I have a pro guitar buddy who LOVES his Epi Blues Custom amp, but only after tweaking the crap out of it. (He installed Jensen Neo speakers to lose weight and improve tone, and he swapped the tubes for RCA NOS Blackplates.) Here is my advice: If you want to spend $500 on a harp amp, find a used Fender tube amp such as the Hot Rod Deluxe and swap a few tubes. You will easily get to a great harp tone the Epi Blues Custom (and many other guitar amps) just can't produce.

Fender Twin Reverb Project

The Twin Reverb project amp is coming along. Here are a few pictures of its current state.

Details and sound samples will be added soon...

Sabine FBX Solo 620-SL Feedback Exterminator

Feedback is a constant menace for amplified blues harp players. Walking around on stage with an open microphone in front of loud amplifiers is a recipe for speaker howl and audience complaints. We go to great lengths to avoid feedback, but the laws of physics and acoustics are hard to overcome.

One method of ameliorating feedback is to use devices such as the Sabine FBX Solo 620-SL Feedback Exterminator, which I recently gave up on. I was enthusiastic about it at first, but with real-world use over several months it lost its appeal. I used it less and less, and finally sold it when I downsized my gear collection a few weeks ago.

Yes, it did a pretty good job of targeting feedback and killing it, but it killed my sound, too. Imagine playing through a narrow-band EQ with your harp’s second or fourth draw tones rolled off by -12db… When you hit what you expect will be your killer tones, they are heavily attenuated to fight the feedback. Hey, I sound bad enough sometimes; I don’t need my best tones falling flat.

A more patient or careful user might get better performance from the Sabine FBX Solo. I did follow the instructions closely (they are helpfully printed right on the device), and I expected the performance to improve as I got to know the device better. But no luck.

The Sabine FBX Solo is not a magic feedback bullet for harp players. I’d like to hear from players who had better luck with it, but I cannot recommend it based on my experience.

Roland Cube 30X

As you may know, I have an affection for Roland Cube amps. Heck, I've even gigged with a Cube 30.

I bought this nearly new Roland Cube 30X for a friend, and I had it at my place for an afternoon before delivering it. I could not help myself... I plugged it in and fired it up, and played harp through it for an hour. What a great, fun little amp. Most of its amp emulations are too high-gain to work with a bullet mic, but the Tweed and Black Face settings are cool. The delay and reverb sound great. You can get a lot of fun tones (and considerable volume) out of this little amp. I paid $150 for it on Craigslist.

Harp Amp Project: Fender Silver Face Twin

Yesterday my girlfriend's brother-in-law said to me, "It's yours if you want it. Go ahead, see if you can get some use out of it." I looked down at a Fender silver face Twin Reverb amp.

So I took it home and plugged it in. The tubes glowed, and it made all the right smells. It sounded fantastic. I took a deep breath. Can I really accept such a huge gift? He has owned the amp since 1990; got it from his "guitar teacher" but hardly ever plays it anymore. I feel a little guilty, like I robbed the guy.

By the serial number it is a 1972 SFTR. It does not have the pull boost on the Master Volume, which dates it to late 1972. The tube chart is gone, it has an ugly black grill cloth, and it has Altec 417-8C speakers, code 391320. The power tubes are four beautiful 6L6 Mesas. It includes the footswitch; The reverb is lush but the trem does not seem to work. All the electronics look original to me.

This is a clean-sounding, loud guitar amp, and I play blues harp, not guitar. Twin Reverbs are not usually played by harp guys, with the notable exception of Magic Dick from J. Geils Band who sometimes played two SFTRs stacked. That was his rig on Whammer Jammer.

I plugged a bullet mic into the reverb channel, rolled off the treble, dimed the bass and had the mids on 5. I switched off the bright switch and turned the reverb up to about 3. I gotta tell ya, the tone was hypnotic; deep and full and powerful.

I think I just found my next project.

I'll restore this amp a bit. It needs cleaning up, and it is missing the handle strap, tilt-back legs, and casters. I have Gerald Weber's video about how to overhaul a vintage Fender amp, so I am very tempted to do this myself; replacing all the capacitors and resistors. The only change I think I'll make to it to adapt it for harp will be to try some lower-gain preamp tubes.

This early Fender Silver Face Twin Reverb is a 100-watt monster; a high-gain screamer on the order of Marshall or Mesa. It is a beast. I'm curious to see how it works as a harp amp. If it worked for Magic Dick on Whammer Jammer, it is way good enough for me. Stay tuned...

Back of the amp, with upper panel removed.

Altec Lansing speakers, with a note about new tubes back in 1980.

The left side of the circuit board.

The right side of the circuit board.

The caps with the pan removed.

The transformers.

* * * * * * *

UPDATE: Internally, this amp is in pristine shape. The brass grounding buss behind the pots and jacks doesn't have a bit of corrosion. Everything is original and perfect. I'm thinking of leaving it unmolested.

I've cleaned it up and changed some tubes. I'll try a 12AX7 in the phase inverter socket to induce earlier breakup and try a lower-gain preamp tube in the second channel.

The Altec 417 C8 speakers are much loved by vintage amp guys, comparable to the JBL D120 speakers. Altec 417s were Santana's favorite speakers in his early 70's era, when he got his best tone. I've seen good examples sell for $600 a pair on the used market, and the pair in this amp is excellent.

UPDATE II: I've decided to have the amp serviced by a good tech (I don't have the time or the skill) so I dropped the chassis off with Glen Whatley at MARS Amp Service in Englewood, CO for new caps and filters and a general overhaul. It should be finished in a week or so...

UPDATE III: Here is a pic of the SFTR in its current state. I've replaced the handle and casters with new Fender gear. The tolex has been cleaned and treated. This gives you a good look at the business end of the Altec 417-8C speakers. The chassis is still at the tech. I'm waiting for delivery of the Silverface grill cloth...

Loud!

A few years ago I was fronting a loud blues/rock band, and the Fender Blues Jr. amp I was using at the time didn't have nearly enough volume to keep up. I tried playing through the PA but I never got the tone I was looking for. So I went through an evolving process of finding a good LOUD harp amp without breaking the bank.

Tube gear seemed out of the question at the time based on dollars per decibel, so I decided to start with solid state amps and digital signal processing. My first creation was a Crate Powerblock amp, Behringer V-Amp Pro, and a BBE Maxcom compressor/gate/maximizer.


The Crate Powerblock is a cool little stereo amp with 75 watts per channel, an effects loop, and a pretty decent tube simulation. The Behringer V-Amp Pro is a poor-man's version of the POD XT Pro, to which I upgraded later. I discovered, however, that the expensive Line 6 POD was no better than the V-Amp for this particular application. The speaker cab was a 4x8 bass cab I found on Craigslist for almost nothing.

All this sounded, uhh, interesting. It showed promise, I guess. It was indeed loud, with the 150 watts from the little Powerblock, but the tone was not what I wanted. I determined the speaker cab was wrong - it was loaded with 300-watt speakers with enormous magnets.


So the next move was to a 4x12 Crate cab loaded with Seventy80 Celestions. Now I was getting somewhere. This rig was very, very loud and kept up easily with my head-banger bandmates. The amp emulations from the V-Amp sounded great, and the BBE Maxcom compressed it all down to a soaring tone that easily cut through the thrash. I played with this rig for nearly a year.


I can never leave well enough alone. I was consumed with the notion that I needed a Mesa Boogie 20/20 tube power amp instead of the solid-state Powerblock. The Mesa sounded great, with a tubey snarl and crunch you just can't get from transistors, but it kind of violated the rule that this rig was supposed to be low-buck. Mesa 20/20s are, like all old Mesa amps, quite expensive. I paid $500 for it on eBay. The BBE Maxcom got switched to the PA rack and the Mesa went into my rig. This version was not quite as loud (but still thunderous) and had a very satisfying tone.


The Mesa has four EL-84 power tubes and three 12AX7 tubes. I re-tubed it with JJ Teslas which gave it the edgy character I needed. This rig was not warm or round or fat or any of those adjectives we use to describe good tube amps for blues harp. This rig was loud and a bit rude, without being harsh. It accomplished what I wanted, which was to keep the harp from getting lost among all the power chords and hard drum fills.


In this pic I was using this rig and a Zoom H4 recorder to work on some tracks for our first CD.

As I've said elsewhere in this blog, I am not a tube snob. You can get good harp tone from solid state gear. Richard Hunter is known for getting great harp tone from digital processors, in particular the Digitech RP series. I still have this monster rig, and I kick start it and let it roar every now and then just for grins. It may not have the "right" tone, but it sure is fun.

Gravity Music Gear

Gravity Music Gear is a brick ‘n’ mortar music store in Denver that does most of its business through eBay. Their eBay store is here. They buy and sell used gear, and I’ve done quite a lot of business with them over the years. I’ve always been satisfied with them.

I bought an old Bogen tube PA head from them that turned out to need some repair, but I paid almost nothing for it so the deal was fair. Gravity Music gets a bit of grief from twits online and especially in the local Craigslist, but I have always been happy with everything I bought from them. They treated me with professionalism and fairness.

Recently I sold them a bunch of gear and I was pretty impressed with the offer they made. If you are adult enough to recognize that you can never sell your used gear for what you paid retail, Gravity Music is great. Two big plusses: They pay immediate cash for gear, and if you live in or near Denver you can pick up your item at the store to save on shipping. This gives you a big bidding advantage.

They frequently have harp-related gear, including amps and mics. I have them in my list of favorite eBay sellers and I cruise their listings frequently. You can often find real bargains. These guys are pros, and they get a thumbs up from the Blues Harp Amps Blog.

Review: Custom Peavey H-5 Cherry Bomb harp mic

Make no mistake about it, this is NOT a stock Peavey H-5 mic. It is modified by mic ace Greg Heumann at http://www.blowsmeaway.com/. In fact, the only stock Peavey parts in this mic are the shell and on/off switch.

Greg installed a better volume pot and a Shure Controlled Magnetic mic element. This is a 99A86B element. Hi-Z, made in USA. It's the same element used in the earliest Shure 520 mics.

I A-B'ed this mic against my regular gig mic, an Astatic JT-30 shell with a similar element, a Shure CM 99A86GB, also Hi-Z, made in the USA. In this comparison I played a short blues riff on a Bb harp. Both mics were played into my Masco amp at low volume, with identical settings for both. This was recorded using a Zoom H4 recorder about 4 feet in front of the cab.

You can hear the Peavey mic here.
Click here for the JT-30 mic.

The sound difference is pretty stark. Greg Heumann's Peavey H-5 mic is unusually dark and growly, warm. I like it very much. It sounds similar to another custom mic I have from Greg, and I don't know how he gets such fat tone. Must be his mojo or something...

It may not be right for every song or vibe, but it sure sounds great with raunchy blues, and it makes my Masco positively honk. I think I prefer the JT-30 with my Champ, but the Peavey mic complements the thump of the 2x10 closed back cab I use with the Masco.

This mic is a keeper. I recently sold off a bunch of mics, and with the Peavey I am now down to only three. I like the range of tones I can get even with this small collection of harp mics.