- Joined
- Nov 14, 2021
- Messages
- 6
- Reaction score
- 6
So these amps aren’t coveted like the old Fenders but my tech (who is one of the best out there, was Billy Gibbons amp tech for years, as well as had his own amp company) decided to revamp my 2 1965 Guild Thunder 1’s. I bought these amps more or less because of how rare they are as well as the cool unique sound and the unique choice of tubes Guild decided to make these amps with. The circuit itself is just wacky and needless to say Guild did many things wrong here with the circuit. My tech said it seemed like they were in the middle of testing and blueprints and just decided to rush into manufacturing these amps regardless of the design flaws. He had the two amps on the bench for atleast a month tweaking the circuit. The Tone stack was awful and the drift in cap values over the years was like day and night between the two amps. The bias cap values in the amps were the biggest issue, they are really high in these amps in general and the amps run really hot. And it produces this weird awful clipping at the end of a note regardless of how how the amp was pushed. So he decided to more less take Princeton Reverb specs and applied that to the whole tone stack. He did a few minor things outside of the tone stack as well as swapping out the old beat up stock CTS speakers for 30 watt Alnico Weber’s.
Yesterday, he calls me up and says their done. So i head over. We fire them up together in stereo while the amps are still on the bench….and wow, the tone that came out of those amps were incredible. I couldn’t believe how good he got these amps to sound. Definitely had a Silvertone/Magnatone/cranked tweed sound going on that was soooooo good. It didn’t take much to transform these amps into absolute tone monsters. And I feel like these amps are a hidden gem in the vintage amp world for sure. Granted stock they need some work to sound like this but just shocked how easy it was to totally transform these amps and make them sing with the best of any vintage/boutique amp. If you’re into vintage tweed pushed Neil Young tones, don’t pass these amps up. Take it to a tech that knows what he’s doing technically and creatively and tweak the tone stack (Princeton Reverb specs are what my tech roughly went by as the cap and power values are interchangeable ). A little tweaking went a LONG way here with this amp. I’ll definitely now be using this dual stereo set up for some sessions as well as gigs…..And I also own multiple vintage Blackface Twin Reverb’s as well as a few Badcat amps so that’s saying something lol.
Yesterday, he calls me up and says their done. So i head over. We fire them up together in stereo while the amps are still on the bench….and wow, the tone that came out of those amps were incredible. I couldn’t believe how good he got these amps to sound. Definitely had a Silvertone/Magnatone/cranked tweed sound going on that was soooooo good. It didn’t take much to transform these amps into absolute tone monsters. And I feel like these amps are a hidden gem in the vintage amp world for sure. Granted stock they need some work to sound like this but just shocked how easy it was to totally transform these amps and make them sing with the best of any vintage/boutique amp. If you’re into vintage tweed pushed Neil Young tones, don’t pass these amps up. Take it to a tech that knows what he’s doing technically and creatively and tweak the tone stack (Princeton Reverb specs are what my tech roughly went by as the cap and power values are interchangeable ). A little tweaking went a LONG way here with this amp. I’ll definitely now be using this dual stereo set up for some sessions as well as gigs…..And I also own multiple vintage Blackface Twin Reverb’s as well as a few Badcat amps so that’s saying something lol.