Tropical Fish Vintage Instruments

Tropical Fish Vintage Instruments Creators of the Vesper bent wood guitar amplifier. We sell vintage & vintage-inspired keyboards & tube amplifiers.

03/16/2026

For the sake of thoroughness… we’ve put the Melosonic through the M3- and yeah it’s sweet! I mean, why wouldn’t it be? A large sweep of tremolo speeds isn’t necessarily something you get in vintage instruments.

03/15/2026

The M3 does a few very important things. It gives your sound it’s start, whether it’s a Wurlitzer electronic piano, a guitar or another instrument. In this video I’m actually plugging both my Wurlitzer and my drum machine into it simultaneously.

The M3 also cleanly powers your Wurlitzer EP’s pickup in the best of ways. From there it is up to you to send it to a good next stage of amplification or recording equipment.

The M3 also provides a wide range of optical tremolo speeds.

Lastly, as done in this video, it has two input channels, so whether you have the ep version or the ‘guitar’ version, there’s always a room for a drum machine.

The first ones shipped last week, more going on the mail this week.

02/24/2026

Whenever I think the snow is done for the winter we get another blizzard ❄️❄️🥽. Anyway, I was looking for something to play that was snowed-in/blizzard adjacent and thought this one worked. The song is called ‘More today than yesterday’ by Spiral Staircase.

02/14/2026

Back when we (Paulina really) realized a Wurlitzer 200A could have an fx loop with one small change, and by populating the Mike section of the board. It involved tapping off a different leg of one of the transistors, to get a non amplified copy of the signal (it was pretty ingenious). Anyway, for some reason My Funny Valentine seemed like the best song choice at the time.

02/12/2026

Ironically, this song was playing while we were visiting a music store that was closing its doors after 60+ years. They sold and repaired Wurlitzer organs, and had a handful of Wurlitzer e-piano parts, and a couple Wurlitzers that were waiting on deck to be restored. It was sad to see them closing, but they were happy to be heading to the next chapter of their lives. This song made the experience pretty unforgettable though.

02/04/2026

I really wasn’t expecting to be able to make this one sound good on a vintage keyboard like this, but I was very wrong (I think). This song originally involves a Rhodes and a sick solo on it. I was very hesitant to go an entirely different direction (with this Casiotone. Didn’t want to butcher the song) but these casiotones are surprisingly musical and have an alarmingly good (relative to mini keyboards) speaker in them. The song is Remind Me by Patrice Rushen

02/01/2026

The inner workings of a Wurlitzer 200 are unique. And they all add up to make its special sound. Wurlitzer wasn’t deliberately going for quirky lo-fi at the time, they were using some of the best tech available. Alnico speakers were popular (and were not cheaper than ceramic). Also their solid state amp board was very current, and about as small as they were able to make it. But these design moves together made this sound what it is now. The song is ‘Why do you laugh at me’ by the Jazz Crusaders.

01/29/2026

The original version of this was played on a Rhodes, and the bass note on a bass guitar. Im using a Wurlitzer to combine those parts, but the e-piano aspect remains the same. I can really hear a difference between the two keyboards (Rhodes / Wurly). Rhodes has much more sustain. The wurly should have some sustain, but lacking the tone bars, each note can sustain slightly differently. (Their Rhodes sounds great in the recording - nice example of a vintage Rhodes in its prime). The song is called How Long by Ace

01/10/2026

This is our favorite restoration of last year. It’s a 120 amp [totally] rebuilt inside of its original chassis. We reused the same transformers, and actually all the original tubes. The circuit needed rearranging (it was the 1950s, and we’ve learned things since then…) and the components were deteriorated. It’s a small chassis but there’s just enough room to make is sound really great.

01/03/2026

I’ve been kind of exclusively miking the Wurlitzer speaker, which I started doing as a quick and fun way of getting sound into these videos, but I ended up liking it! I’ve discovered that what I like is the close miking aspect, and sending the sound externally, and close miking that also gives me the same quality.

12/31/2025

Why does this feel like a new years song to me? I think it’s about dreams and the future, and better things to come. I think it was a good year, and I hope yours was too! Also wishing you a great new year. Also wicked is growing on me and looking forward to watching part 2.

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250 East Sandford Boulevard
Mount Vernon, NY
10550

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