Super Six Reverb

[matt h]

(deleted)

[crbowman]

A bandmate of mine had one of these back in the mid 70's. He played a Les Paul Custom black beauty through it and it really sounded pretty amazing.
He had no trouble keeping up with a really nice vintage 100 watt Marshall half stack. Yeah, I know, these are from the dark days of Fender. Crappy fake distortion, cheap brown caps, UL and all. But I'll tell you, in the right hands, with some good glass and a little loving care, the old Super Six's can really sound good. Now as to whether your back can handle it is an entirely different story.

[Teleguy61]

My comments aside, it is just a Silverface Twin/Showman, which is basically a very good circuit.

[passfan]

New output tubes and she powered up just fine. Volume loud enough you cant talk over it but not to scream over. I will take my time and restore the circuit and then we'll see what she can do.

[Stevem]

If you want to make the amp much fatter sounding with more and better gain then the master volume feature of the amp do this mod.

Ditch the push pull master volume stuff (trace the wires back and just jump them) then disconnect the right hand wire of the Tremolo intensity pot and run it thru one side of the now disconnected master volume switch

[passfan]

Seems something is going on with the brite switch and the tonestacks. I was fiddling with the bright switch on channel 1 and something opened up. Thank god the volume was on 2 because the master was wide open. One loud mother...anyone have any idea what could have happened?

[Teleguy61]

Something completed the circuit from top to wiper of volume pot=wide open.
Probably a defective switch or a wire touching something it shouldn't.

[passfan]

Something completed the circuit from top to wiper of volume pot=wide open.
Probably a defective switch or a wire touching something it shouldn't.

No you misunderstand, The master was on 10. The channel volume was on 2 and working normally. The whole amp , either channel, was only playing at about 30 or 40 watts tops , wide open. While fiddlring with the brite switch upon flipping it down the volume jumped back to normal operation , not fully wide open. Thank god I had the channel volume set at 2 instead of 10 because that one channel now seems to operate up to it's 100 watt potential. The tone stack does not seem to work though,but if I flip the brite switch back up I experience the volume loss again. Weird

[Teleguy61]

My bad, I misread it.
That's an odd one.

[passfan]

My bad, I misread it.
That's an odd one.

Yes, and looking at the schematic makes it even worse. Surely I lost something on the board in the tone section. When I get a chance i'm going to recap and upgrade everything. I will post what I find. It has to be a common problem as it's common to both channels.

[passfan]

Some previous tech moved the channel 1 bright cap to the pot and used the switch to lift the ground on the tone stack. Made the thing scary loud. I restored the card with quality parts and dumped the whole master volume. This thing sounds really harmonically rich, really nice and creamy. It's not as loud as I'd originally thought it should be and looking at the schematic the plate resistors are 47k which produces less gain the PI stage. Supposedly why it sounds really good. I may wire the master back in to keep it stock for a while. Seems to be an issue with the reverb as well. I have to keep it down low or i get a terrible spring noise

[rp]

Tone stack lift on a 100W amp, how about that! Could give you a heart attack if you ain't expecting it.

[passfan]

Well I did the math and the math don't lie. She pushed 29 volts on the meter, off the output into a 5.2 ohm load. Average voltage was around 20 volts at full on which works out to 77 watts. E squared divided by R. The reverb issue was a broken tank spring. I had an old gibbs out of a hammond organ that was a perfect match. What a sweet sounding amp. Loaded her with sprague PS caps and Xicon carbon film's and Electra MF7C's. Kept the original dropping string and wire but replaced all the filter caps.