Amp restoration
Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2018 4:05 pm
I "inherited" this bass amp - a Traynor TS-60B - as a freebie, saving it from being put in the trash. It was apparently owned by a local music store that rents equipment, then sold used and ended up being dragged around a local high school for many years, hence the beautiful "patina".
Despite all the abuse, the poor thing still works, and amazingly, this seems to be a GREAT guitar amp. I've been looking for a simple, bare-bones solid-state guitar amp - nothing more than overdrive and reverb, and have been looking at a $500 amp that fits the bill, then this dropped into my lap. I was amazed at how good my Tele and Strat sounded through this. I can, with the tone controls and EQ get that twangy or even ice-picky tone out of the Tele, or I can tame it right down into a "woman tone".
What I'd like to do is:
a) Build a new cabinet, or at minimum re-cover this cabinet with either tweed or (2nd choice) Tolex. The big advantage with rebuilding is I could build in a removable back-panel, making it an open-back design for using it with a guitar, or left in place when playing a bass through it. I could also explore doing this with the existing cabinet.
b) Make a new faceplate from a sheet of aluminum or stainless. I could add any graphics or lettering (like 1-10 markings around the knobs) using water slide decals which I've done for machinery restorations
c) Replace all the knobs, since one is missing and there's no chance of matching the existing knobs which are in terrible shape. I'd also like to add some fader knobs to the EQ sliders. As you can see the original knobs were big (1 1/2" dia) witches-hat style knobs, and I can't find anything like them anywhere. I'll either have to go with smaller knobs of this type, or as I mentioned above going with simple knobs with just an indicator and print the 1-10 scale (maybe I should go to 11?) on the face plate. I can't find any specs for any of the fader knobs I've found, so I'll just have to buy some and see if I can make them fit the sliders on this.
Despite all the abuse, the poor thing still works, and amazingly, this seems to be a GREAT guitar amp. I've been looking for a simple, bare-bones solid-state guitar amp - nothing more than overdrive and reverb, and have been looking at a $500 amp that fits the bill, then this dropped into my lap. I was amazed at how good my Tele and Strat sounded through this. I can, with the tone controls and EQ get that twangy or even ice-picky tone out of the Tele, or I can tame it right down into a "woman tone".
What I'd like to do is:
a) Build a new cabinet, or at minimum re-cover this cabinet with either tweed or (2nd choice) Tolex. The big advantage with rebuilding is I could build in a removable back-panel, making it an open-back design for using it with a guitar, or left in place when playing a bass through it. I could also explore doing this with the existing cabinet.
b) Make a new faceplate from a sheet of aluminum or stainless. I could add any graphics or lettering (like 1-10 markings around the knobs) using water slide decals which I've done for machinery restorations
c) Replace all the knobs, since one is missing and there's no chance of matching the existing knobs which are in terrible shape. I'd also like to add some fader knobs to the EQ sliders. As you can see the original knobs were big (1 1/2" dia) witches-hat style knobs, and I can't find anything like them anywhere. I'll either have to go with smaller knobs of this type, or as I mentioned above going with simple knobs with just an indicator and print the 1-10 scale (maybe I should go to 11?) on the face plate. I can't find any specs for any of the fader knobs I've found, so I'll just have to buy some and see if I can make them fit the sliders on this.
- I'd appreciate any thoughts or advice about this project. The existing cabinet is made of reasonably good quality plywood, not particleboard, so no reason to not simply re-cover it. Then again, it wouldn't be out of the question to build a new one from some nice baltic birch ply. I've never done this, but recovering with Tolex seems fairly straightforward. I'd really like to recover it in tweed, but can't (so far) find any tutorials on this online.
- Also, as to the pot shafts, they measure about 1/4" (.246"/6.26mm on my dial calipers), and appear to be solid, not split, with fine splines. In shopping for knobs, some are identified as sized for 1/4" shafts, some for 6mm, some for 6.4mm. Can I get some advice on selecting knobs that will work with these pots? I was also thinking of turning a set of knobs on the lathe, but it would be nice to have a nice brass insert to match these shafts, but again, my online searching hasn't yet turned up any pot-shaft "bushings" that could do the trick. The shafts of these pots appear to be some kind of plastic, maybe nylon, so they're hard, but don't seem sturdy enough to force a suitably-sized hole in a hardwood knob over them. Alternatively, I see no reason I couldn't cross-drill and tap the wood knobs for set screws, other than they would tend to chew up the shafts a bit when tightened.