BAS Tube Amp Repair

11/10/2025

A “fender” 5E3 kit amp that had some build mistakes. The customer bought it already built. Some faults were hazardous. But when all is working the tweed magic is really happening.

25/06/2025

amps are different, some love them some hate them. Some won’t repair them, some will. I will repair them 😊. Not always the easiest amps to work on but hey, not everything needs to be easy. After some repairs, (replacement of a shorted coupling cap in the MKIII, fresh tubes in the lone star and mkiii, new caps and repaired pots in the 20/20. These amps came back to life and boogie again 😉. And yes the amp on the right is f heavy with its EV black shadow inside. It does the early Metallica sound very well 🤘

25/06/2025

Fog machines and electronics having cooling fans inside don’t like each other 😅
These two babies suffered from lots of greasy dust and one fan was even stuck due to the buildup. After a good cleanup and service, repair of the protection circuit, touch ups of some cold solder joints, a bias adjustment of the power they will be pumping bass on stage again.

10/04/2025

Long time no post! Not dead, still alive! More work and repairs to do, but less time on my hands 🙃. I am a one man show so time is precious. Grateful for all the work that keeps on coming! Still have a lot to finish 😃
I had no time to take nice pictures and videos of amps and gear. Luckily a few months ago I took pictures of this shop condition Princeton (no reverb). Amazing to service gear that is untouched I al those years and is still more than fine!

#7025

02/05/2024

This in suede covered is an amp built by the great guitarplayer and amp builder . It is a small amp but packs lots of big clean tones. The owner wanted to have an additional master volume and an effectsloop. I managed to add both without drilling extra holes and keeping the great tone the same as much as possible. The mod is reversed easily without proof that the mods were ever there.

31/03/2024

This is used with a piano, the complaint was strange distortion and rattling noises, the issue was that 3 of the 4 speakers were distorting due to their cones being deformed and worn out. The Jensen p10r speakers were not coping with the low notes of the Rhodes piano anymore, I replaced them with 4 speakers. This makes a huge difference, all the fart sounds are gone 😂. I love little alnico speakers, but not for these applications.
While it was here I removed some mysterious noisy mods and replaced the filter caps as one was already open. Also the removal of the ROHS tremolo circuit and replacing it with a vintage neon/ldr combination reduces hiss and noise in these EU/UK editions.

This amp is now ready to rock the big stages with chef’ special again.

21/11/2023

These don’t come to the bench often! (In Nederland) This #1969 is built in based on a mkIII power amp using 2 tubes (6550’s in this one) in ultralineair mode pushing out +/- 60 very clean and stiff Watts. It just needs a service but this front just looks so cool!

And 517v on the plates⚡️⚡️

15/11/2023

A well worn ‘69 , far from original but the iron and most coupling caps still are.. (117v) The speaker is the famous , it needed deep cleaning a thorough service a safe ground and some new tubes in the right places. The original Gibbs (Hammond) reverb was very sensitive, and unworkable so I replaced it with a modern one. This amp sounds 3D.

06/09/2023

18/08/2023

This 1963 took some time to get well. These are one of the first amps to have onboard Hammond/Gibbs reverb.
And it sounds wonderful ⭐️
This example is the a revision of the circuit using the 7591 power tubes. A nice 5y3wgta is placed in favor of the variant and a nice quiet old in Stead of a new noisy shuguang tube. She will be loved by now.
#7591

08/08/2023

Cleaning out the closet(s)! I’m getting rid of some amps I’ve had for years and rarely play. Not because they are bad but just because.. they also need to be played 🎸
The amps will be working serviced and checked of course😉
This one has an asking price of 185€ which gets you Marshall grit for the livingroom. 🤘

https://link.marktplaats.nl/m2008723691?utm_source=ios_social&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialbuttons&utm_content=app_ios

03/07/2023

This 1966 with a label was a real mess when it came in, a wrong massive power transformer was mounted lifting the filament voltages above 7V and the HV also way too high..All wiring that is normally running under the board was flying wildly above the board, the choke was intermittent, capacitors (although relatively new) were leaking and one was open, 2 very noisy mesa boogie preamp tubes and a lot off 5 watt wire wound resisters were placed in positions that only require a half watt.. nice but horrible to see 😉
I replaced these with some nice carbon comps to make the amp look and sound nice again.
The speaker cabinet has 2 1971 speakers but is stamped 1965.

After reconstruction of the amp, a proper power transformer, fresh 2 tubes, new f&t capacitors and a new choke. This amp rocks again. The ab165 has both channels running through an extra gain stage, a different local and global feedback circuit and the smaller 22nF coupling caps to the power tubes make this amp a real tight and gainy amp. A perfect rock ‘n’ roll monster!