New Very Old Amp Day!

Aidanspaghetti

Picked up this bad boy today....

http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz111/Aidanspaghetti/IMG_0480_zpsubqwx5wb.jpg

http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz111/Aidanspaghetti/IMG_0479_zpsc8yjmvew.jpg

Its a 1955 Selmer TV15...

http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz111/Aidanspaghetti/IMG_0478_zps9hn5r8kg.jpg

In incredible condition considering its age..

One owner from new and.......

ALL the original paperwork!

They even included a circuit diagram of your new amp back then!

http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz111/Aidanspaghetti/IMG_0481_zpsl2mi4tlm.jpg

"Feedback is the greatest  bane of any PA man's existence" !!!

Brilliant stuff!

http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz111/Aidanspaghetti/IMG_0482_zps7aszej6q.jpg

Its has to go to a tech as its wired for dc/ac and has a three pin plug kind of "inserted" into it.. 

I havent plugged i tin and i Wont until its back form the doctors...

Ive spoken to ICBM about the electrical side of it....

Very cool overall though..

Original valves still in it... K33's...

Pretty chuffed

BigMonka

Love it, and having the original paperwork is really amazing!!

Adam_MD

That looks awesome very cool. I'd give you multiple wows if I could \m/

andy1839

Is that snakeskin/ray/shark? That is just fabulous.

Rowby1

That is really something!

DartmoorHedgehog

That's a cool thing.  Hope it sounds good as well when it's been checked over.

Rocker

Amazing find my friend. Good practice to get it checked over by a tech before using it. It looks great as it is. Rust, dirt etc is real, the scars of 60 years life.......

ICBM

I've talked to Aidan already about it, and it doesn't need checking over so much as completely rebuilding. This type of direct-rectified amp can be extremely dangerous if not converted to modern standards, which not least will involve having a mains transformer fitted as well as fusing, plus all the electrolytic caps replaced and maybe some other stuff that might have deteriorated.

It's not as simple as fitting a 3-pin plug and hoping for the best - in fact if you do, it will probably trip the circuit breaker on any modern distribution box - for a good reason. Essentially the live-neutral circuit is not isolated from the workings of the amp, so you can't earth it without causing a current leak to earth, as well as potentially having the chassis live if you don't.

The good news is that it should be possible to keep the non-mains part of the circuit original (apart from replacing old components with modern equivalents of the same value), so it will still sound like it was meant to. If anything, there's a good chance that the original valves will still work OK! They are not among the parts that typically degrade with age.

ESchap

Fantastic find, good luck with the restoration.

ecc83

I have two of those Goodmans speakers. Unfortunately son put a Strat headstock thru one of the cones but it is just torn and can be repaired when I can be arsed to get the cab out of the junk and stripped.

We found them to have a distinctly "twonky" sound compared to a V30, have you heard one lately IC?

And, oh yes! AC/DC kit, only thing MORE dangerous was the Line Cord radio! Shock AND fire hazard.

Dave.

ICBM

ecc83 said:

We found them to have a distinctly "twonky" sound compared to a V30, have you heard one lately IC?

Yes, every day .

Not for guitar though - the bass speaker in my workshop "hi-fi" cabinet is an Audiom 150.

I know exactly what you mean about the sound for guitar, and I agree - very distinctive and clearly an "old" sound, very nice in its own way although not particularly versatile.

Be very careful with the power ratings though, even the claimed 15W is probably optimistic, despite the size of the magnet assembly. Tiny little fragile paper voice coil.

ecc83 said:

And, oh yes! AC/DC kit, only thing MORE dangerous was the Line Cord radio! Shock AND fire hazard.

I remember reading about those but I don't think I've ever come across one. Isn't that where the mains cable was made from a specific length of Constantan resistance wire and acted as the voltage regulator? So if you shortened or replaced the cable, the radio then blew up...

Neil

Wow added.

A museum piece to be sure, I love it.

I bet that could tell some stories.

Phil_aka_Pip

wow to the power of wowsers

BigMonka

I feel like I should be able to give you another wow for having the patience and self-restraint not to plug it in and see what it was like as soon as you got it home - not sure I could have stopped myself!

ecc83

" So if you shortened or replaced the cable, the radio then blew up... "

Bit worse then that! People used to shorten the cable and it would then overheat and ignite the carpet! Line cord had almost gone by the time I went into the trade (53yrs ago!) but iirc there was a (black then) neutral and wound around that was a heatproof insulator which, now I think about it, was almost certainly spun asbestos! Around that was a slow wind of resistance wire for the live.

AC/DC radios died out fairly quickly but then TV came in and it was far too costly to fit mains traffs! So, if you got it wrong with the earlier sets the chassis was at 240V . Later on, with sstate rectifiers you did not even have the 50-50 chance since the chassis was either live or at half live!

It took decades and the coming of video and the Scart connector to eventually force isolated chassis onto the market.

Dave.

Aidanspaghetti

I'd love to get or built up as a power amp and run something like an ethos or royal overdrive into it for fits and giggles! Prob change speaker too... Would def be a head turner!

strumjoughlamps

awesome, is it light bulb socket powered

RiftAmps

Think these have got series-filament heaters but can't remember. @ICBM can you confirm?

ICBM

BigMonka said:

I feel like I should be able to give you another wow for having the patience and self-restraint not to plug it in and see what it was like as soon as you got it home - not sure I could have stopped myself!

Hopefully the fear of death by electrocution would have stopped you… if the amp didn't simply blow up.

It's *really* not a good idea to just plug in old electrical gear to 'just see if it works'. Many years ago a friend of mine bought an old Marshall 50W amp that had been sitting in a garage for at least twenty years, and even though I told him not to, he couldn't resist trying it… bang. It did a lot of damage that would have been avoided if he'd had it properly checked and serviced first.

RiftAmps said:

Think these have got series-filament heaters but can't remember. @ICBM can you confirm?

As far as I know all direct-rectified equipment does. It should be a fairly simple job to rewire them for parallel when fitting the mains transformer though - assuming they're all 6.3V types.

GuyBoden

Aidanspaghetti said:

I'd love to get or built up as a power amp and run something like an ethos or royal overdrive into it for fits and giggles! Prob change speaker too... Would def be a head turner!

Nice.

57Deluxe

#Oh my TV 15 O-Ho#!