WRGKMC

I did business with them for several decades and never had a problem. This was Pre pandemic however. The covid situation has devastated the tech business just like all others, maybe eve more so. I'm in that business and lost my job all due to the fact so many business are shut down. Even before I was laid off all my vendors contacted me to let me know normal service would be slowed dur to reduced manpower. Tube Depot - Tubes and More - Antique Radio Supply and Parts Express are all reliable companies and have had excellent customer support in the past. Best Tube choices have nothing

Guitar adjustments are all interdependent on one another. You mess with one adjustment you will surely throw others out of whack. String height, intonation, relief are the three main ones. Others like string types, pickup height, fret height, nut height, fret wear, and players touch all need to be factored into the formula. In an ideal world, if you properly diagnose the thing that's gone out of adjustment, then adjust only that one item, you shouldn't need to mess with anything else. because that one tweak brings the instrument back to specs. Wear and tear rarely works that way. Ne

My 480 had issues when I fist got it due to lack of maintenance. I replaced the frets, nut and bought new Kluson tuners and its been great ever since. I've had it for about 30 years and never needed to touch the dual truss rod either. The neck is perfect and other then a little fret work to level and polish the frets every so often its always retained its tuning.

I do something similar for the past 30 years on guitars and pedals where the knobs can be hit accidentally. I use soft rubber pads which I cut to the size of the knob then melted a hole in the middle with a soldering iron. I put that on under the knob and can tweak how much friction the knob has by how far down I press the knob to the pad. Works perfectly. Your idea with rubber bands is OK for short term, I'd be worried what will happen if they are left there longer. Rubber bands are made of actual rubber and within a year or so will liquify into a sticky mess. Once that

My buddy has a band is famous enough to have Peavey as a gear sponsor. (Mark May of the Dickie Betts Band). The amps they use are from Peavey's Pro line or gear which is way better then the junk sold to most consumers. As a Technician I've done repair work on their pro line and its like day and night compared to the budget stuff. I highly doubt changing the tubes would make much of a difference. Speakers? Possibly. Changing Speakers would create the biggest single change in amp tone. Tubes create a much smaller change in tone/drive. Many guitar pedals can easily emulate/mask that

Looks like that amp used an unpopular flashlight bulb to illuminate the panel. Chances are that exact bulb became obsolete many decades ago as LED's took their place in most applications. There is hope however. There are still several 3, 6, 12V screw in type bulbs available. Unfortunately I couldn't find jack on that bulb type so its number cant be cross referenced. What you'll need to do is measure the voltage at the socket when the amp is turned on. My guess is, it uses the 6V AC filament voltage to light that lamp. The tube numbers should help identify the filament voltage. You can al

Haven't been around in awhile to respond. Better late then never. I bought a Vox VT 50 Valvetronic amp about 6 months ago which uses a single tube in its power amp. Unlike other hybrids that use tubes in the preamp circuit (or amps that have a SS preamp and tube power amp), Vox tried something different. They wired the two gain stages of a 12AX7 tube to emulate 11 different power amp stages then ran that tube into a solid state power amp to boost the gain of that tube stage. Instad of the tube being a preamp gain stage its a power amp driver that can be changed from a class A to A/B

I wore the fulcrum blade that rests on the stud down to the point where the bridge rubbed on the wood. As a temporary fix I made the fulcrum longer by bending a piece of steel over then end then gluing it in place. The spring/string pressure did the rest. About a year or two back I found generic versions of the bridge available on EBay. Bought one for $10 then used its fulcrum plate and swapped out some of the cheaper parts with the original. Worked out very well and haven't had an issue since. As far as the stiffness goes, The bridges do have stiffer springs then most but th

Re-plating them is expensive and involves caustic chemicals and nasty poisons. Pickup covers are very inexpensive to buy however. I've bought cover sets for as low as a few dollars. Replacing them isn't that difficult either. You either need an iron with the correct wattage and a good solder sucker or you can even use a Dremel tool and a small cutting disk to cut the solder tabs loose, then re-solder the new one in place. If they are Humbuckers you do need to get the correct hole spacing when purchasing new ones. Many times the generics will work so long as you measure the hole

Playing skill and instrument quality are two different things which continually get misidentified. I believe its because a player bonds with the instrument when playing and masters the instrument by making it an extension of his own body, much like a person may forget a limb replacement is artificial. There are several factors which constitute a high quality instrument. Unfortunately the experience and educational levels involving basic science don't always lead players to the same conclusions when it comes to construction quality. A lack of quality in one area can lead to an abundance of

Its shouldn't make any difference at all. The Amplifier components run on DC, not AC. The power transformer steps the voltage Up/Down to fixed levels before its converted to DC. The only voltages that might stay AC is something like a piolet light or filament voltages to heat the tubes. Beyond that everything is converted to DC voltage. Most solid state amps will have voltage regulators to maintain strict DC voltage levels. Solid state components are fragile and current levels need to be maintained to prevent overheating. Even if the AC does fluctuate it wont make a dam but of di

I have an 87 made in Japan Fender Strat. Paid around $250 for it in the early 90's and it probably isn't worth much more then that now. That's even with the top of the line pickups I installed in it. The market is so over saturated with fender guitars these days. Even if the instrument is in top condition, getting anything near list cost is very challenging. Best suggestion I have is google up the model and see what they are currently selling for. You should realize with a depressed economy like we have now, this is a buyers, not a sellers market. with so many people out of work yo

Many good suggestions but knowing which is going to fix the problem is being left as trial and error. I prefer to give advice that has someone properly diagnose the cause first before applying the medicine that targets the exact issue. Since the problem occurred after breaking a strings, the cause seems obvious to me. Each string adds from 12~15 lbs. pull on the neck. Breaking a string on a thin neck can have dire consequences when it comes to reducing relief and causing buzz. I've owned many guitars that will change pitch by 1/4 to 1/2 semitone when a string breaks, flattening a n

When you use singles with humbuckers its best to use a balanced set so you don't have volume changes switching pickups. If you're picking individual pickups form different makers it can be pure guesswork in what might match because Inductance involves several factors including magnet strengths, wire size, number or wraps, wrap density, and other things like the density/amount of ferromagnetic materials. I've done many match jobs on builds and mod jobs trying to get the best balance and you can waste a lot of time and money trying to get it right. Knowing the DC resistance is o

most of the music I listen to is the stuff I write and record. I was a huge audiophile growing up and still have several thousand LP, s Cassettes and CD's I bought over the years. They were my library for learning how to be a musician. I even have the scratches in those old LP's memorized from having lifted and dropping the needle so many times to learn parts. Along with that I used to drive for a living so I'd listen to music 8~10 hors a day in the car driving from one job to the next. When I jam with other people they are mystified how I can memorize and play most of a song after on