Silvertone 1471 Rides Again, way cool

Jeff

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My Silvertone returned from the Dr recently, she's been down South a while getting some new innards. Capn Juan did a fairly major overhaul, I just this morning finished a detail & reassembly job.

What a cool little amp, new Weber speaker, she looks darned near new & sounds better'n before, It's sitting on my desktop, speaker's about 18 inches from my ear, power on, volume about 6, with the Starfire plugged in & turned up; quiet as a mouse till ya touch the strings on the Starfire. It's not totally silent at idle but it's way quieter than I ever figured, pots are silent.

It's got some magic, Starfire has an amazing range of tones thru the little beggar. Originally I thought I'd regret not having a trem or reverb, probly be nice to have, but she seems to have a goodly amount of warble built right in, maybe it's the Starfire doing that, verra cool combo at any rate. Bigsby does 60's rock & roll twangeroo thru the Silvertone that'll knock your socks off. Didn't have much time with it turned up to 10, pretty darned loud, but you can turn it up to 7 - 8 or so & get a good taste of what it'll do without permanent hearing damage. Played around with distortion a bit, Starfire being a hollowbody it's pretty easy to get things rolling, sort of like driving a baby Marshall with training wheels, I found two distinct distortion tones so far, just the ticket.

Including the initial price I paid in Arlington the total investment is a little less than a good price on a used Blues Jr. Way more cooler, weighs next to nothing, pretty sure it'll qualify as carry on at the airlines, for sure it'll fit inside a medium size suitcase. Only one like it on my block & guaranteed Smitty's gonna eat it up come Monday's lesson, she has two inputs & I'll be quite surprised if he doesn't ask to plug in his PRS.

Couldn't be more pleased with the result, Thankyou CJ, I owe you a jug, name your poison.

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capnjuan

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These are pics from the re-hab of Jeff's amp. Among the many reasons it has pleasing sound is the fact that, except for power transformer, controls, and tube sockets, it has all new parts; $75 total outlay excluding another $45 for the new Weber speaker seen on the right in Jeff's pic above. New parts ID'd below:

schempartsreplace.jpg



The amp also needed and got a new 3-wire cord, power switch, and fuse post shown on the right above. Shown below is the amp chassis after new resistors and coupling caps in the preamp on the left but before high voltage filter/DC smoothing caps; lower is after HV caps in convenient space left after disconnecting old can cap. In the upper section, you can see the old on/off switch, fuse post jumped out for testing, and the green cap / box ID'ing the 'death cap' which was removed. In the lower section, the box on the left indicates the added 6V6 cathode cap to boost bass and mids and give more 'body' to the sound (Thank you Kap'n / Teleharmonium / Scott in LTG thread 'Voicing Amps' and Dave Hunter):

beforeaftercaps.jpg



Schematic indicating circuit revisions:

circuitwchanges.jpg



Tube deck view; above before change of OT; notice the dinky little solid wires with the coppery hue; these bare speaker leads are oxidized from the heat. Since the AC signal travels on the outside of the wire, part of the signal is diminished by the oxidation that acts like surface resistance; try sticking one of these in your ear as you listen to the amp :evil: Pic below shows fix to extended shrimpy OT output leads, strain relief for them, and landing #14 oxygen-free, high-conductivity, multi-stranded (extra surface) speaker leads. The OT output leads are tied to a nearby added wiring strip to shorten them, provide strain relief so they can't be jerked off the OT, and a place to splice the new speaker wire; SOP at the Shopz of Juan:

tubedeckOT.jpg



Bench testing before changing the OT; note 'white boxes'; these are two 8 ohm resistors tied together to provide the OT transformer w/ 4 ohms of resistance; its rated load. Generally bad practice to turn a tube amp on without a speaker or, in this case, dummy load on the OT. Not the same w/ transistor amps:

dummyload.jpg



Sound testing w/ my test 12" Celestion 70W speaker in a (yes) Gibson cabinet; note single resistor added in parallel to maintain 4 ohms impedance on the OT:

testrig.jpg




Link to a recently closed Silvertone 1471 eBay auction Here. Closed at $220 or so; this one had already been serviced although the new speaker not ID'd and Jeff's has a new OT. The other reasons Jeff's amp sounds so good are: new tube set including JJ 12AX7 and 6V6 and the fact that this is a Class A circuit.

Electrically, not especially efficient but a dream to listen to when fresh because the circuit generates effortless 2nd-order harmonics when it goes into distortion; warm, rounded, crunchy, compressed and incredibly easy on the ear. You can argue that the amp doesn't have enough knobs to turn but it will take any pedal you like and provide magic tone quality at room or recording volumes. The only drawback to Class A circuits is the fact that power - in affordable Class A amps - is limited to 8 watts or so and, since the output tube is alway on in a Class A circuit (electronic mumbo jumbo), the life of the output tube is necessarily shorter than those in push/pull circuits (Class A/B amps).


cj
 

jp

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Masterful rehab, el capitan! Always enjoy the nudies and the talk through to help me understand these magnificent little electronic gems.

I bet your SF sounds great through it, Jeff! :wink:
 

capnjuan

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Thanks Gents; these amps are just too much fun. Modest level of effort results in exponential increase in tone. I'll be making up a speaker 'extension cord' of sorts so that Jeff can set the 1471 on top of his Reverberocket and feed the Rocket's 12" speaker.

Frankly, when I tested it through my 12" speaker - t'were nothing short of astonishing. He has the best-available 8" Weber alnico in it - as do I in my Gibbie GA1RT which is also single-ended (6BM8) / Class A and yet the improved frequency response from a larger speaker offers even more 'presence' - something that can't be appreciated here in the digital diggerydoo. These amps crank out overdrive normally only available from 7591/6L6 amps set to 9/10 volume but at room listening levels; just amazing.
 

Graham

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So here is a small audio clip of the 1471 amp.

Jeff had his teacher, Smitty, play around with his PRS plugged into her. Sounds kinda impressive for a little feller don't it? :mrgreen:


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capnjuan

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How do we know whether this is our 15 minutes of fame? Thank you Graham; nicely done!
 

Jeff

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Graham,

Thanks for posting this up. Maybe next week I'll figger out how to do it myself. Personally I thought it was cool enough to justify asking a favor.

I'm happy as a clam with this little amp. Took it in to the lesson Monday & played my Starfire into it next to Smitty's Twin. His Twin is a nice amp & the little Silvertone set on about 7 keeps up pretty darn good. Starfire controls offer a good range of tones. I'm not the least bit ashamed. Plenty of power for my needs, off the charts cool.

Smitty plugged his PRS & a big multi effect/multi pedal into the 1471 & both of us were smiling. Weighed it yesterday, amp weighs approximately 12.5 lbs. Zoom H2 was sitting on a table about 8 ft from the amp, gain switch on the recorder set on low, nothing else..

Sorry about the distracting noodling, that's me, it was a lesson after all, wasn't intended to be suitable for framing..
 

capnjuan

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tick tock tick tock... :lol: If any of you might be considering a small, older tube amp, pic below is a Kay K504; two preamp tubes and a 6V6; like Jeff's electronically but with tremolo, probably 8" speaker: eBay listing Unless you are handy, these amps typically need new power cords, new capacitors, and a this and a that: $100 to as much $200 if a new speaker is installed. Too much? not too much if you want to get your feet wet without dropping 5 - 7 barrels of oil on a Fender Hot Rod and then decide it's not for you. The reward is a sweet, versatile little tone machine that cared for, will last another 50 years.

kay504.jpg


More of this kind of amp here: Search Link for Silvertone Amps and Search Link for Kay Amps including 504 above
 
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