The Tube Amp Hack

I love the sound of tube amps! Warm tones that can only come from an analog device.

On a recent trip to my landfill, I found this old Webcor turntable in the unwanted electronics pile. Now, even though I wasn’t supposed to take things from this pile I grabbed it up and put it in my car. When I got it home I opened it up and was quite surprised to see that it was in wonderful condition and the amp still worked! The turntable section had a few issues though. The speed was off and the cartridge was junk. Rather than try to restore it I decided it was a good candidate for a hack! I made a decision to turn it into a small practice amp for guitar or bass or vocals! It ended up sounding really nice as you can hear in the track I recorded at the intro to the video.

One of the really cool things about the electronics of the 40’s to the 70’s was the inclusion of a schematic inside the unit somewhere. This was a very handy circuit reference for the repair tech to use when something needed fixing. Yes, people actually used to fix things rather than throwing them out and rushing out to buy another one like we do these days.

Enjoy the photos and video and til next time, keep on hackin!