It has been a long, long time since I last posted due to circumstnce more than anything.
I ended up getting some insurance money from the seller but he syphoned off some for long distance phone calls and gas to the post office in the next town. Thing is, all the calls were on my dollar. Me calling him.
Previous to this, I had called PayPal in to do my dirty work. The seller had not returned ANY of my PayPal emails. This was disconcerting to me so my hand was forced. I offered $400.00 USD for the wreck of the model T through PayPal. PayPal ruled in my favour but only gave me $200.00 USD of the $650.00USD I was seeking. As it turns out, the ebay account used was a relative of the model T owner. So, $200.00 USD was given to me from the wrong person. Furthermore, the person with the account that sold the model T to me was just ignoring my carefully worded emails as if nothing were to happen and the owner had know idea of this going on. A few weeks later I get a money order and it takes 14 business days to clear. The draft was for $510.00 USD. So now I am at $710.00 USD. I get a call from PayPal asking how much was portioned back to me becuase the ebay account holder is right pissed. I end up giving back the difference of what I orginally demanded so I am sitting pretty at a return of $650.00.
After this, somehow I feel as though there is a whole family in the SW United States cursing my existance. Then a healthcare bill pops out of nowhere. I had moved and the bills had not followed with the move until much later. There goes my model T money.
Regardless, it still goes into the tech's hands and he is a good friend so offers the "pay when you can" idea. This process begins last summer and is stuill going on today. We start by me taking the face plate, the grill and the wooden housing home to clean and work on cosmetic repair. I'm positive this thing sat in a SMOOOOOKEY basement for it's whole life. It had fine silt in every little wrinkle in the tolex. That silt took a couple of hours of hard scrubbing to get out. It's not even completely done, I just got fed up after a certain point. The grill was spot painted with gloss black and looked awful. I re-sprayed it with many coats of flat black to give it back a rich dark finish. I had a better conditon sunno))) faceplate from an empty vintage 4-12 cab and slapped it on. I then worked on the face plate with some soap and water to get the nicotine stain out of the aluminium. Tried windex first and it wiped away some of the letraset graphics(F###ING HELL). I went in and filled in what I could with a fine tipped pen. Everything worked well except when I began the sunno))) graphic. I quckley stopped at that point because the ink began bleeding. Oh well.
The amp...
A few months are taken off due to licensing issues with the tech. Crabby neighbours complainig to the city about the minute amount of dudes with amps coming around the tech's house. The model T sits awhile more...
The issue is resolved and we begin again.
I'm no tech but I'll try to explain this.
Well it turns out the cap job that the seller did was bogus. I believe the measurements for the parts were WAAAAAAY off. For instance, the component was supposed to be a 0.25V part but what was in there was 0.025. That measurement is 10 times off. We got 'er going the way it was wired just to see what this guy was doing and it sounded like craaaaap!
We foucused on just getting it going at first. The missing caps were of the 0.25V and apparently very difficult to find because they are not typically used anymore. Thankfully, an old radio repar shop in town was closing and my tech bought every componoent in the the old shop when it closed. Tons of NOS parts including the Black caps originally used in the model T. Next, we put it back together just to get it working.
This is just a few weeks ago. I find that we need to go back in and seriously scrutinize every part. I A/B the model T and my Sonic 2(200S) through the same cab. As I understand it, the model T is roughly 120-140 watts output and my sonic measures at about 73 watts. Funny thing is, the Sonic 2 is waaay louder. Even when the model T master is set to 10, it still pales in comparison. That is odd to me because the model T has twice as many of the exact same tubes. Both amps currently have Svetlana 6550s.
So I thought I would hold onto it in the meantime and play with it a bit just to get a feel for it. It distorts waaaaay sooner than I thought it ever should based on what I've read. Mind you, the distortion sounds good but it is very limiting. On both preamps, we're talking overdrive at 2-3 and metal-town at 5. I thought this amp was supposed to have a dynamic tone range with nice cleans. I've also heard that any distortion box plugged into it would sound great but the amp I have currently does not need any help in the grit department. The last issue is the random loud background noise.
So I have a date with my tech and we're going to go piece by piece making adjustments to see what we missed. I'm pretty sure I have the only vintage model T in Edmonton, AB and this amp is new to him so it will be interesting to see what we can do.
If anyone can give some pointers as to how the amp should sound at stock, please speak. It is a first generation model T.
I'm thinking of putting in those reissued Genelex KT-88s. I know some may think they are garbage or a rip-off but I like what I've heard and they are made in Russia exactly to the original specs. And those new Tungsol preamp tubes are incredible. Super shimmering highs, smooth lows and rich mids.
I tried posting pics long ago but they were too big to upload. I'll shrink them down and try again.
Thanks again for the interest and support!!!
Best,
Matt
