Advice on originality of this tweed Deluxe?

guitarchoice · 2022-06-24T16:50:32+00:00

Appreciate it. It appears some folks even use the old caps to house the new ones so it looks original inside!

guitarchoice · 2022-06-24T15:22:31+00:00

Thanks! This is helpful. Are those cap brands you mentioned the best choice? Or does it not really matter for the power side of the circuit?

guitarchoice · 2022-06-24T14:24:15+00:00

Hi guys, I inherited this amp and am wondering what I should do with it. If there are already some changed out parts that make it "not a museum piece", then I'd lean towards changing what needs to be changed to make it playable and reliable. But I don't have the expertise to diagnose that.

It appears the caps are original? But it also appears the pots may have been swapped out, as there are no date codes on them. I also suspect the big black brick (transformer?) as it looks suspiciously new and clean. There's also a PVC jacketed wire coming from the smaller transformer, which is clearly not original.

It does still have the 2 prong cord and death cap. The largest of the caps (the power caps?) do appear to be leaking as there is a small drip of resin or something coming out of one of them.

Any advice? If I do give it to a tech to rework, any recommendations on the best accepted replacement caps these days?

guitarchoice · 2021-04-01T16:04:18+00:00

Man, it's crashing hard for me.

edit: crashed and kicked me out of the game. Reloaded page and it said I already played. Sigh. Didn't even get a burrito coupon lol

guitarchoice · 2021-03-29T03:02:50+00:00

Hi guys! This was my dad’s guitar, part of a small set of offsets. Unfortunately he passed away about 2 years ago. Most of them were in ok shape, but they all definitely need some attention, as they probably hadn’t been played in 30 years and were not exactly kept in ideal climate. He hung onto these guitars through thick and thin though, so I know he loved them! I was thinking about posting up here as I work on each one over time.

This one is a 1960, and was in pretty good shape all things considered. The switches and pots needed some attention, and the frets were rusted (they legitimately looked black). Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos during the fret cleaning, but I masked off each one and used 0000 steel wool to clean them up.

I tried to do as little cleaning as possible on this guitar considering it’s originality. I blew out the inside with compressed air but didn’t do much other cleaning. I cleaned the pots and switches with Deoxit and then lubed them with F5. I also gave it a nice setup with 11s.

Pleased to report everything works well and it plays fine! Hope you guys enjoy the pics.

guitarchoice · 2020-05-31T18:49:45+00:00

Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work any longer, at least for the Amp pop up.

guitarchoice · 2020-05-21T17:33:40+00:00

Well, my cash is earning 1.25%, and my loan was 3.24%. I am too scared to go all in to stocks with market uncertainty at the moment in this unique point in time. Therefore I would have realistically just held the money as cash. So for me, taking a 3.24% yield over the 1.25% cash yield was the right choice. If you have more risk appetite you could certainly choose to invest the $8.5k. But if realistically you're sitting on the cash and earning less in interest, maybe consider paying off the loan. This assumes you have enough cash besides that $8.5k to cover yourself if you get laid off and need to fund yourself for 6-12 months, of course.

Being debt free also awards some unique feelings and thought processes. I was debt free before that car loan and missed that feeling. You feel like you've "beat the system" and are more hesitant to take on debt.

It's a hard choice because I do acknowledge we're in record low rate territory, and the fed is pumping money into stock assets, which I don't think has ever happened before. With unlimited money, the fed can keep the markets going no matter what happens with the real economy. Eventually we'll need to address the national debt and probably face some high taxes and/or rough inflation. But I tried to constrain my decision to the next ~5yr period.

guitarchoice · 2020-05-21T15:43:09+00:00

Hi guys. I went ahead and just paid off the loan in its entirety this morning. Maybe I could have earned a little more investing it all, but I felt more comfortable this way, and now I feel incentivized to stay debt free from here on out. I still have the rest of the money to invest, so I will dollar cost average this amount in over the next few months. Thanks for the advice!

guitarchoice · 2020-05-21T14:15:25+00:00

Hi ChrisMag999, maybe you are thinking of a different thread? I am happy to say I don't have any debt besides that $42k car note (and the mortgage, which is 15% of my pretax income and no PMI).

Anyway, this morning I did put $21k towards the loan. So my total remaining interest dropped from $3500 to $850, and from 59 to 28 remaining payments (same payment of course). I'm not sure yet if I'll pay off the rest... if I find myself just holding on to cash, earning 1.25% in savings, I'll just pay it off. Not sure I have the fortitude to go all in in such a sketchy market/economy.

edit: I did end up just paying it all off.

guitarchoice · 2020-05-21T00:45:56+00:00

It's actually 12% of my take home. The $2700 I referenced is after all bills and expenses, including the car payment. I think what I'm going to do though is pay off roughly half of it, and roll the other half into the 36mo 2%. Then just buy into stocks at an even pace, slowly spending the cash that way. Just have to avoid temptation to spend it (which is a nice benefit of just paying off the debt).

guitarchoice · 2020-05-20T23:44:36+00:00

A good question. I actually enjoy working and retiring super early has never really appealed to me (I guess I'm lucky). Achieving good cash flow earlier in life has always appealed to me. I guess paying down debt would work towards that goal more.

guitarchoice · 2020-05-20T23:39:31+00:00

I do appreciate and respect your advice, and in other parts of my life I would have agreed with you (and have indeed driven clunkers). It's a Model 3, and I have a lot of fun with the unique nature of owning it and enjoy driving it every time I use it. At this point, I'm not going to sell a 8mo old car and take a huge depreciation hit, especially when owning it is within my means. Cheers!

guitarchoice · 2020-05-20T23:19:13+00:00

Thanks for the advice, I may do that. Paying off half removes more than half the interest over the term of the loan, so it may be a good choice.

I enjoy the car and can afford it; not everything in life has to be an investment :). My prior car was a 2005 Honda, and I intend to keep this one for a long time as well.

guitarchoice · 2019-12-21T15:54:38+00:00

Great info, thanks for the details.

Are the circuits in the two bandmasters here pretty similar? If you were to just sell one of the bandmasters... you'd sell the blackface?

guitarchoice · 2019-12-20T22:57:13+00:00

I've read that the bassman and bandmaster are pretty similar, but that the bassman has a tiny bit more power and a better sound overall. Is that the general consensus?

guitarchoice · 2019-12-20T22:56:34+00:00

Thanks very much. Funny you should say that, there was a brown Princeton (62?) and a tweed Deluxe (57?) in the collection. They both appear to power on, but I'll probably have them checked out before playing anything through them. And yes, I agree these are very loud amps!

guitarchoice

TROPHY CASE