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Tell me about West Amps


Tomm Williams

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I see they were a small manufacturer making amps used by Grand Funk and perhaps others. Looks a bit like a Sunn and the opinion leans towards they were good amps. Specifically looking at a Fillmore head and wondering what the value might be as I'm reading a few opinions that they are only in the $600 range or so. Others say far more.

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I only heard one once back in the early 70's when I was just getting into electric guitars. I knew some older pro musicians who were always trading their gear out and they did a garage jam and the one brother used an old Silvertone twin, the other a Twin and my buddy the bass player used a West amp.

 

They were extremely knowledgeable of gear and they'd loan me amps and guitars all the time to try out. I didn't get to try out the West amp but they did tell me about them. They saw Santana who was using Modified West amps back around the Woodstock days (where they aslso saw him using a Gallien Krueger SS amp at Woodstock which Santana said he hated but it was loud and projected and he needed something loud for that gig.

 

The west amps he used for awhile had the gain stages modified and wired in series so he could crank any one of them up. It may have even been a modified PA head that had the channels wired in series but I may be mixing up my stories. (I've heard so many tech stories over the years working in that business, you can only remember so much and it becomes a blur) The amp designs are simple so I don't doubt it was easily modified the way Carlos liked them.

 

I think my buddies got that story from the guy who started Dynaco who they knew well. The west amps used Huge Dynaco Transformers and if you knew anything about Dynaco Hi Fi gear they had superb Hi Fi tone, but they had issues with their power supplies blowing up. They had a strange setup where they wrapped a coil around the cap cans. it must have provided some kind of transformer inductance compression or did something to the phasing but great sounding heads when they worked.

 

The West amps used the same Tube transformers which were massive in size but they didn't use the ultra linear taps Dynaco used for their Hi Fi gear. The bigger amps had 4 x 6550 Tubes so they must have been pretty loud. I hear Grand funk used them for their first 4 albums and being a three piece band the guitar had to be pretty loud. I did hear Humble Pie blew them away using Marshall Half Stacks however so maybe they just couldn't compete with other amp makers and musicians simply didn't buy them.

 

One tech that used to repair years ago says.....

 

Here in Mi, West amps are fairly common and don't seem to have much collector value. I've had a few come thru here and they *can* be great sounding amps for the right application. They're pretty much Sunn knock offs.

 

They sound great for bass. But, beware. I have seen **************** quality pwr and stby switches used. In a Grande (named after the Grande Ballroom in Detroit) they used open frame telephone style switches for pwr and stby. These are *not* rated for that type of use and are always burned beyond saving. My advise: replace them with Carling toggles even if they are working as of now.

 

I've also seen 3 pos "tele" style switches used as spkr impedance switches (see above pix). Again, this is a no-no as its a signal level switch.

 

If you can find one for cheap, consider it a "project" amp and plan on some reworking.

 

I do know they are as rare as can be these days. I think they only made 300 of the Fillmore's Grand Funk used and some of the others are just as rare. They'd be a good score as a collector but the amp is super basic so Its probably not going to produce some super unique tones. Its likely to be very generic sounding.

 

The schematics used to be available from the West labs site but since the owner has died even the website is being sold. I don't think the amps will have anything in them any competent tech couldn't identify and repair easily.

 

Don't know if any of this helps you but its what I know of them.

Edited by WRGKMC
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  • 4 years later...
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Any idea what speakers they used in their combo amps? I had a West in mid 70s, with 2 x 12", LOUD!!!

I pulled the speakers out, still have them, but can't figure out if they are indeed Altecs (that's what I remember them being)

But, they have no name on them, only this code on the chassis   220151 MI-122 08514-R

So if anyone can help me out I'd appreciate it

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