This has to be one of the most attractive vintage amps ever to come to Grouse Guitars! The delightful cabinet is made by Gibbons & Denham Pty Ltd, NSW, just the same as the 1954 Stradivarius amp that sold to Tony, who must surely have the best collection of vintage Australian amps anywhere!

The amp is identical to one described in Radio and Hobbies magazine in December 1954 in an article written by Phillip Watson, and a copy of that article comes with this amplifier. This amplifier was built shortly after that, as on the inside of the cabinet door the date 12 May 1955 is inscribed in pencil.

A common practice during the period was for shops to supply either kits or completed examples of amplifiers described in the magazines for those builders not confident about starting from scratch. This amplifier would appear to be one of the latter judging by the cabinet and standard of the work inside the chassis. Indeed, I would not be surprised if it is a very early amplifier from a very early Sydney amplifier builder, such as Moody. Moody had a few very stylish amplifiers in the same general style as this amp, and in quite bright two-tone 'leatherette' colour schemes, in their very early models. You can see an example of these in Roly Roper's excellent website dealing with vintage amps - look at the bottom of the Moody page. The date pencilled inside the cabinet may have been by the cabinetmaker, or alternatively by a commercial builder of the amp.

The amp is incredibly original, other than a replacement of the power Electrolytic Capacitors around 5 – 6 years ago (according to the previous owner).

General specifications are;

• 1 x Input
• 1 x 12”Magnavox Extended Range (Twin Cone) 12WRMK111 15 ohm Alnico speaker
• 1 x Tone / On-Off Control
• 1 x Volume Control
• 1 x EF86 pre-amp valve
• 1 x 12AX7 driver / phase inverter valve
• 1 x 5Y3 rectifier valve
• 2 x 6BW6 power valves (miniature 6V6)
• 1 x A&R OT 932-7 Output Transformer
• 1 x Ferguson PF170 Power Transformer
• Pilot Light (Green)
• Approximately 10 - 12 watts output

The amp sounds incredibly nice, and has a surprising amount of gain. The handle tends to rattle a bit at high volumes (easy enough to stuff something in the supports to dampen it), but the tone is amazingly good. You can really make this thing rock'n'roll, and it would be an ideal (and very cool) recording amplifier.

The approximate packed dimensions are 40cm(W) x 40cm(H) x 25cm(D), and the approximate packed weight is 10 kg.

Sold to Jon

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