What a grouse little amp! If you are a Vibrato (tremolo) freak like me, you will really love this little Electravox Escort ET8 dating from 1967 (the original Rola output transformer has the date stamp of 10 Mar 1967).

There is no depth control on the Vibrato, just an on/off footswitch (itself a study of 1960s charm - check the 'more pictures' link below) and a speed control, which is PERFECTLY calibrated, unlike many amps - just a great sweep from a nice moody, slow vibrato up to a great, characterful speedy one. And a nice sine wave quality to it, not choppy or harsh in any way.

The amp has a really 'gainy' character to it, and is surprisingly loud through the original MSP 8" speaker. If you have a vintage guitar with fading pickups, this has tons of gain to still let that pickup drive the amp into beautiful low-wattage distortion. It would also make a great harp amp, due to the gain. The volume knob acts more as a 'clean/dirty' control, as when a guitar is plugged in, even with the amp's volume turned right down you can still hear the guitar (nice and clean) bif the guitar's volume is wound up. A higher value potentiometer in the volume control would 'fix' this, but I really like it, and the pot is definitely original, so I have left it as is.

Output valves are 2 x 6GW8 in push-pull, giving about 8 delicious watts. These are a triode and pentode in the same envelope, sort of a 1/2 12AX7 and an EL84 in the one valve. The other valve is a 12AU7, which would use one of its triode 'halves' for the tremolo.

Once again, the Electravox/Vadis blurring of brands occurs with this amp. Just check out THE BEST WEBSITE ON AUSTRALIAN VINTAGE AMPS and see the Vadis equivalent - it's exactly the same! Both great brands, and finally slowly getting the recognition they deserve.

Sold to Karl

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