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AGC BONHAM 120 amp


Brian Priest

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I have a Bonham AGC 120 amp in good condition, plays beautifully. 2 Channels (3 inputs) with Vibrato & Reverb. Made in L.A. by Audio Guild Corp in the 1960's. I can't find it listed anywhere & would like to sell it.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction?  thanks

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$799 might be wishful thinking.  you can buy allot of amp with that kind of money.

you may find someone who specifically wants that amp but their production was so short its unlikely many people know about them. 

 

In  nutshell,

Quote

Audio Guild was established by a former Magna Electronics designer John Bonham (in fact, the same guy who developed and held the patents for the pitch-bending vibrato circuit designs). The reason for Audio Guild was that Magna Electronics / Estey was bought by Electro Learner Corp. and the new management simply decided to discontinue the old-fashioned tube amps and shift to modern solid-state products. At the same time they also abandoned all the various OEM deals. I don't know whether Don Bonham got the boot, whether he left voluntarily, whether he just moonlighted, or whether Audio Guild was a division of Electro Learner Corp. to begin with but nevertheless, Audio Guild stepped in to fill the vacuum that Magna / Estey had left. They didn't last long because the amps at the time period were practically outdated. HiFi-ishly clean accordion amp with tremolo feature (despite it being a true pitch-bending vibrato) was not the thing anymore, folks wanted distortion and stuff.

You can find the Audio Guild website here with models listed.  http://magnatoneamps.com/audioguild.html   And - http://www.seanodonnell.com/versatone/

 

The one thing the amp does have going for it is the Tremolo design. The Magnetone amp Tremolo was a coveted sound players loved and Bonham was supposedly the one who held those patents and incorporated the design into the audio Guild amps.  The other thing is this amp should produce about 24 watts using those 4 power tubes. allot of guitarists want tube amps in that wattage range so they can  driven tones at lower volumes.  This amp even lets you combine the two channels which could lead to some interesting mods too.    

I'm not sure what the difference between the 120 the OP has and the 213 Posted but the amps used an 8" speaker for the highs and a 12" speaker for the lows. I'm not sure if they used a crossover or whether they had separate amps driving them.  The Untraflex Balance knob likely varies the output between the 8" and 12" speakers which is pretty cool.  

I could see this being a good amp for a Jazz guitarist or maybe an acoustic guitar. From what I read it produces mostly clean Fender-like tones.  Crossovers aren't so hot for rock amps however. Allot of power is consumed in the crossover process and the fact each speaker is only allowed to reproduce certain frequencies chokes and amp from sounding good when overdriven.  It might be ideal for someone who gets his drive using an amp modeling multi effects pedal. you could run the amp clean, balance your highs and lows with that  Ultraflex gimmick and the channel combining switch then simply get your drive and effects from the pedal. 

Might even be an excellent amp for recording if the amp has low background noise levels. Otherwise, changing out caps and tubes might be needed on an amp that old just to get it running decent. 

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On 8/27/2019 at 2:26 PM, Brian Priest said:

I have a Bonham AGC 120 amp in good condition, plays beautifully. 2 Channels (3 inputs) with Vibrato & Reverb. Made in L.A. by Audio Guild Corp in the 1960's. I can't find it listed anywhere & would like to sell it.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction?  thanks

Can you send me pictures 

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