Harpamps.com is a large collection of information about amplifiers for use by harmonica players.
What is a harp amp?
Harp amps are amplifiers that make you louder. If you are lucky, they might make you sound better. Don’t forget, though, that the sound comes from inside of you and that equipment won’t help you sound better if you don’t have something to say in the first place.
Harp amps are usually older tube amps that don’t have much gain or power. These old amps seem to resist feedback, the enemy of every harp player. Old tube amps are suited for the old bullet shaped high impedance mics.
The perfect harp gear, to me anyway, is a vintage high impedance mic, an analog delay pedal, and vintage amp with two 6V6 power tubes.
The 6V6 power tubes are usually not loud enough to compete with the guitar players, but they sound so smooth that they are worth it, even if you have to run a mic from the front of the amp to the PA in order to be heard.
The analog delay, set to a long delay and a fairly short sustain, gives a nice slap back kick to each note, but care should be taken so that it does not sound muddy. The analog delay is useful in that they tend to help the dreaded feedback. A little delay goes a long way, so be careful and add just enough delay to keep things tasty.
The old mic should be a crystal mic, like the JT-30 for killer overdrive and that James Cotton style dirty Chicago blues. You need another mic like a Green Bullet with a vintage high impedance CR or CM element for Jazzy third position playing with lots of chords and octaves. The CM has a clearer output that will prevent the sound from running together in a muddy mess, while still allowing some overdrive when needed. Both kinds of mic have their own sound, and either keep two mics or decide which mic works best for you.
Old Stuff
Read about Jeff Brobofsky’s experiences restoring a derelict Lectrolab R800.
I have an 8 Minute Video of Carlos Colina and the Straight Up Blues band (WMV – 2 megs). Carlos is playing through one of my Harley mics and is using two Premier Club Bass B-160 amps in tandem. I have been a bad influence on Carlos. He playes here in third position using both a chromatic and a diatonic. Check out the solo at about 4 minutes into the song. I used a $38 camera/video/mp3 device called a Eujoy. It takes OK videos, but I’ve had to compress this one quite a bit to get it small enough for internet viewers. The original was 83 megabytes.
I stopped by the music store at lunch time and was able to review the Epiphone Valve Junior amp.
I finally got around to collecting all of my Masco Amp Pictures and created a Masco Amp Gallery. Old Masco PA heads make great Harp Amps, and they are cheap.
I have found a bunch of old Gibson Amp Schematics and I made them into PDF files so you can download them. These are not the common schematics and seem to be from the earliest Gibson amps. It is time consuming work and I only did a few.
I captured some great Premier Amps pics lately. Read about it in Stalking the Wild Premier.I went to the Fall Philly Guitar Show and tooke some pics.
Larry Graham caught this picture of Pinetop Perkins at the Turning Point in Piermont, NY (11/23/2003). I thought that it was cute. We’ll miss you Pine Top.
I found some old pictures that I thought I had lost that you might find interesting. Here’s Little Charlie and the Night Cats and Gary Primich as well as the Spring Auburn Guitar Show.
New – I just wrote a new and more comprehensive list of Canned Ebay Searches
I just wrote a little Guide to Transformers and Impedance for home brew amp builders.
I went to see Anson Funderburgh and Sam Meyers the other night. Here are some pictures.
On February 16th, 2003, I went down to the 90.5 "The Night" 6th Annual Guitar Show and took some pics of nice harp amps.
Hello:
I have inherited my father’s 1960′s tube Premier 71, and by chance have a friend who repairs old tube amps. It needs cap work. The leather handle is destroyed. Do you know of where I may find a leather handle that closely matches the original? I have seen the vintage Fenders, but was wondering if there is anything closer.
Thanks,
Mike L.
http://www.tubesandmore.com or http://www.angela.com are sites that specialize in restoring old tube amps. They have several different styles of the old “Dog Bone” leather handles.
Keith
Where are you?? I can get some handles and may have a Premier handle kicking around. If it is the leather one that goes under two metal cover caps take the old pieces to a boot and shoe repair shop. They can approximate the shape from the rotted leather (maybe) and cut two or three pieces and stitch them together into a thicker piece I have had to do this myself and use a Mexican shoe repair shop. I am within 3 hours of Mexico in sunny hot (will it ever cool off hottest August and July ever) Phoenix Az. As for the cap job, if you were close or willing to ship I can only say ask around your area. Find some old burnt out musicians that have been there a while like myself who know some of the shop and repair people’s history. I am an anal SOB who would look at what caps are bad check the rest, and try to find a cap that preserves the original sound. Most techs just stick either orange drops or what they can get cheap in an amp. Most techs do not have 2/3rds of Mc Intosh’s Danish audio analyzer console and $10,K in other sound and distortion analyzing instrument on their bench either. Hopefully you might be OK with just the filter caps swapped out, and make sure nothing else is too leaky. Some of those caps that leak a tad, but not enough to cause any real problems can make for an awesome blues guitar or harp amp sound. I finally put aluminum foil and paper with bee’s wax caps in my mom’s old Supro 1624. The Q was not audiophool stupid high, and they do not dry out. They are the low end cap in the Amp Ohm Cap line. The sell silver foil, or copper foil in oil with paper, and silver leads. (STUPID MONEY EXPENSIVE) Best wishes, and I hope you get it back to a better state than it is now.
I still say boot and shoe repair shop. You will get new leather, and they have sewing machines that will sew it into the layers. An old leather handle found on line will likely look good then crumble away in short order, unless it comes from one of the miracle climate areas in the country. I tried luggage repair, but it was very expensive, and they had no real interest in doing the work right. The population of Mexican immigrants here keeps cowboy boot repair as well as normal shoe and boot repair shops alive, so there is enough competition they gladly make any leather handle shape I need for around $25. Tubesandmore is across town in Tempe Az. It is about a 20 minute drive. They only do will call order pick up from 3:00-4:30 PM but ship world wide every day. Angelina or Angela has more of the Fender stuff and is pretty pricey. Premier was a neat company. I have one or two of their amps, and a snare drum the marketed under the name Olympic. Tubesandmore essentially has what Angela has but you pay less for it. They are also a great place to buy new old stock USA, UK, German,, or Holland made tubes. They also sell the new Russian, Slovak, and Chinese stuff. Oh yeah Groove Tubes makes a 6L6GC in the USA now from roughly 80% USA parts.
You’ve probably replaced yours by now, but if anyone else needs a handle, contact Bob Schell at http://www.brookwoodleather.com/
He made a dead-on copy for my ’50s Premier 71 handle (with the arrow-shaped ends). Super fast service, and reasonably priced. His work is amazing.
dc
Looking for some insight into an old Japanese build amp and its applicability to being used with GB mic. Its Teisco Melody using 6AU6 drivers and 6RA5 outputs with a small 6 inch speaker. Very little info on the web, and a total nob on these tubes. I won’t have a chance to test this item out before purchasing due to meeting the owner some several hours drive at a Timmy’s.
I don’t know about the 6RA5. I am assuming that the tubes are about what you’d find in a radio (Teisco made radios), so the power output will be low, just enough to drive the 6 inch amp.
It will probably start out clean and get dirty as you turn up the volume. It is most likely a neat practice amp and will work well with the GB.
If you like the sound you can mic it through the PA and the amp becomes a neat little effects box to give you some tube overdrive and a little protection from feedback by tweaking the volume controls on the amp and the PA.
Keith
Picked up the Teisco Melody last night and unfortunately one of the axial caps (a 80MFD x 150WV) is broken right at the cap (unable to solder back on), so the task of trying to track down replacements is on. There’s nothing in Vancouver, BC that I can purchase from local suppliers (with the exception of a couple of radial 100MFD x 160WV or 100MFD x 250V).
Any advice on where I can buy replacements would be most welcome as I can put in the radials now to get the amp up and running but would like to get axials as they look more like stock units.
Jim
I replying to your wanting more info about Multi vox amps. I purchased a “lot” of vacuum tubes and radios from an old guy that’s giving up the hobby. Within the lot I purchased is a Multi Vox P.A. Single ended push pull with 2 7591′s and 3 12ax7′s (tubes are labeled Multi Vox with what I think is Sylvaina’s yellow stamp). It has a Mic “Z” adaptor, hum balance and bias adjustment.
Outputs are 2,4,8,16 ohm’s and 70 volts, 35 Watts R.M.S. Inputs are Tuner, Phono, P.A. and Mic.
Model EA35-6 Made in Montreal, Canada. I have put the bottom cover back on yet there is at least 10 Mullard mustard .022 tuning caps dated 1965 within.
Jonathan
i have a premier twin 8 “widow’s peak” version with the gold foil grill and i’m trying to find the gold foil grill any info will help thanks
gary
Art stores have metallic sheets for use in art projects. If you can find a gold colored one that is the right size, it will look like the original. You can try the big online art supply houses, but there is so much stuff on these sites that I could not find anything quickly for you.
Keith
Hi,
Could you tell me how to contact Mic Kaczmarczik?
I have an amp repair service shop in Edmond and
would really like to ask him some questions.
Thank you for your time.
Best Regards
Ron Thomas
Edmond, OK
I only communicated with Mic once many years ago about using his usenet archives. I found his email through his university job, but I don’t know if he is still there.
Keith
Help, Picked up premier model 88N. Someone cut all the wires out of the audio output transformer. I know there is not a schematic. But if I could get some close up pictures it would help ALOT. Thanks guys for any help. I don’t know why someone would do this. Jim