Amp tale

[aeolian]

Back in the late 1970s I bought a solid-state Yamaha G50-112, which as the name implies is 50 watts with a 12" speaker. This amp is a mid-price range amp with high/low inputs, 2 channels, bass/mid/treble controls, a parameter equalizer, and reverb.

I played this amp until the mid 1980s when I quit playing guitar. I started playing again in 1996, but since I did not want to disturb my wife and young children I only play through a J-Station; and this amp just sat in the closet.

In 2004 we moved to our current house, and since I had the amp out while we were moving I plugged it in to see if it still worked. I did work but there were scratchiness in a few of the pots, and the reverb was chirpy and swooshy. Anyway, I put it away in the attic because it wasn't ready to be played.

Between 2004 and now I bought 2 other amps, and the Vox AD30VT is the one I mostly take to my jam sessions since it doesn't weigh much and sounds pretty good.

This last weekend I decided to see whether I can clean up the Yamaha amp with the intention of selling it if it works fine. I took the amp apart and concentrated on getting the pots cleaned up. I used deoxit on all the pots (there are 10 of them) and cranked the pots back and forth to get them cleaned up. After I put it back together I tested it. The scratchiness is gone, although the reverb was still chirping a little bit when I turned the knob. But the thing is, the amp sounded good.

Yesterday I decided to take it to my jam session and see whether it holds up. It not only worked fine, the other guitar player said it sounded better than my Vox. Now I have a problem: should I sell it or keep it?

I think I'll play with it some more this weekend to get a better feel for how much I like this amp, and maybe I can decide. The thing though is that this amp probably won't fetch more than $150, so it may not even be worthwhile trying to sell it.

[Algonquin]

Keep it if you have the space. It's paid for, and you never know when it'll come in handy.

You could plug a Drum Machine into it, or a kids keyboard with a rhythm feature for practising along with. Maybe even experiment running two amps with a stereo pedal.

Then again, if the $100 to $150 you can fetch for it would buy you that nice pedal you've been eyeballing...

[Spudman***]

Ya, it's paid for. Keep it. You'll find a use for it if you have it.