Hi. On a flea market I found an old tube guitar amp. Thanks to the good people at this forum i found out it was a Teisco checkmate 20.
Did any of you ever own one? Can it distort on its own? I have seen several youtube videos, but i isnt really clear if they have a pedal before or not.
Old thread: http://www.diytube.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6713
On the front it has this:
3 inputs
Treble pot
Bass pot
Volume pot
Reverb pot
Tremolo depth
Tremolo speed
A 3 way switch with an lightbulb on each side. One green one red. None of them work.
In the middle position i a really low sound, with lots of distortion on it. Which maybe could sound way cool, but its just way low.
In any other position (the two extreme ones) i get sound.
Im thinking this is an Off/on/standby switch, but it just seems odd to have "off" in the middle... meh.
I swapped the 2 12ax7s around, but no improvement. I even did the same with the 12au7 and swapped that around, but no improvement.
Maybe the tubes arent even in the right places. Who knows.
This is the amp part only. I dont have a speaker, but plugged in a set of crappy headphones to the speaker output jack and kept the volume WAY low.
First things first. I can follow a schematic, and solder, and have done some analog synth diy, but never messed with tubes before.
So i need to discharge what ever needs to be discharged. How do i go about that?
First off i'll start by replacing the caps. Should i replace all or are there some types i dont have to change? Some that dont deteriorate with age. What about sound? Are there any types i should avoid? Im located in Denmark (the little blob of land above Germany, so there might be some stuff that i cant get here...who knows).
Right off the bat, i should change the two grey ones that are right next to the transformer in the first picture, and the 3 grey ones in the lowest picture, right?
Thanks a lot:)