I am 68,electronics engineer with 42+ years of experience. I see the patience you have and appreciate the logical analysis you do to troubleshoot the amp. Very well done. Congrats.

Great movie. It's nice to hear a woman's voice on the technical channel and nice colored nails instead of hairy paws. Best wishes

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR PLAYING RUMBLE!!! I was sitting like "imagine if she played that".

From 1986 to 1996, I worked as a radio mechanic, after 1996 I work in the energy sector, but last year, when I saw this beautiful lady on KZfaq, I had a desire to do radio mechanics in addition to. Thank you kind beauty, you inspired me to do my favorite thing again, good luck to you.

Hi Colleen , Thank you again for the work you have done on this amp ! All your effort has resulted in my Dads's old Silvertone being one of the most requested amps in my studio backline . Your work is beyond fantastic ! I have used other Tube Gurus in the past and your work ethic and attention to detail set you above the rest . For the record I am using the amp most often with a Fender bassman cab loaded with NOS Muscle Magnets . These are old production Eminence speakers that really bring out the Silvertone sound . Thank you again for your hard work and devotion . Best , Jonny T

The filter capacitor grounded on transformer casing... golden 🤣

I loved the Link Wray ! Great job, I could watch you all day !

People like you single handedly keep the used amp market alive and keep these cool old machines going generationally gotta love it

Those are some badass fingernails! 👍

That amp sounds like a David Lynch film.

Idle Moments. Came for the repair video, staying for the tunes.

I spent half an hour learning about amp repair and then was treated to your renditions of Grant Green and Link Wray!? Fabulous! Love your work!

What's amazing besides your obvious skill is the fact that even with You Tube compressing the heck out of the audio, the warmth of that amp comes through like a thick, fuzzy blanket on a cold day. It just sounds gorgeous! Excellent work! You provide such a rare and needed service to classic audio lovers everywhere!

One of the most enjoyable episodes for sure... especially for us old timers who remember dreaming of owning this amp, while paging through the Sears catalogue in our youth!

I would like to take this opportunity to compliment you and your mentor for doing such a great job. Its refreshing to hear a younger person speak and explain why circuitry is being configured the correct way. I'm a professional electronic technician and I can quickly differentiate between someone that knows their stuff and someone that is just repeating the words they were taught. Please keep up the good work and making great videos. You are unique and should be very successful in what you do as you have what it takes to really understand what needs to be done.

A good reparation/restoration of a tube amplifier, a calm female voice while soldering with fire nails, is a kind of art. Very good video👍

No better way to test a tremello circuit than Rumble! Awesome job on this amp!

so happy to see younger people that are into the old gear and repairing it..

Hi young lady. I am a 66 year old tech working on rf equipment all my life. I would like to say that your work is very clean. Thanks for the fun videos.

Whats better than watching a good tech go through a classic amp? Watching one with badass nails do it👍

Very neat work, I use to be an old tube jockey, your work is very impressive, great too see a young lady carrying on an old tradition ! Enjoyed the video.

I’m a shade tree amp builder / player. Love your systematic method of bringing these old amps back to there former glory. It’s easier to build one, then fix one sometimes. Kudos!

Super restoration repair!👍 Really dig the Link Wray "RUMBLE" bit at the end! Vintage vibes for a vintage amp!😎

As soon as I saw you repairing the tremolo I said to myself this amp is made to play the rumble. You did not fail to oblige!

Sounds sweeeeet. Now it’s ready for another 60+ years. Great work. Hopefully I’ll find the courage to repair one of my amps. some day. Thanks 🤘👍

It's good to see you back. These episodes were sorely missed. I too am not surprised the cabinet deteriorated. They were made of particle board and Masonite. Have you been experiencing the ever-shrinking availability of tubes? Everyone I have spoken to have commented on how scarce they are. Your nails are BOMB! I hope more work comes your way. This channel is very interesting in the presentation of the material. Nevertheless stay safe from this modern-day plague.

Damn, that was some spot-on Link Wray! Such a beautiful tone.

that remember me when I started learning electronics in 1973...tubes,relays, no printed circuits,hand soldering....its fun to see a nice girl with your knowledge ! , dont give up ! the world need more persons like you !

That is crazy how quiet that amp eventually got. Excellent video! I don't know why, but it's almost therapeutic watching you solder, you're so solid. That entire room would smell like burned insulation if I was attempting any of those tight reaches. I think you could solder around corners if you so desired.

Nice old amp! I hope the owner can get it into some version of its original cabinet so it can be played out again. Good job rearranging the fuse and switch. In the end the amp performed well, but here are some suggestions: The safety ground (green earth wire) should be attached using a dedicated bolt, as requirement for new equipment. Transformer bolts can loosen over time. The safety ground lead should be left long enough so that it will be the last thing to break free if the power cable is pulled out of the chassis. The best place to ground the first filter (reservoir cap) is at the same point where the power transformer’s high-voltage center tap (or the bridge rectifier) is grounded. That minimizes the chance of 120Hz buzz getting into the audio by keeping the return from high-current charging pulses off the chassis. Stabilizing large electrolytics by attaching them to the chassis with silicone is a good idea to prevent lead breakage, but they should be located away from heat sources to maximize service life. The power transformer, output tubes, and output tube cathode resistors are things to keep them away from.

Forty years of experience in repairing and building audio and radio equipment allow me to rate you with AAA. Excellent work!

Love how you put it into the historic perspective too. Old old amp.

Colleen is a thoughtful reflective natural teacher. Thank-you, Colleen, for this very helpful video and for response to my email. 👍🏼 #RockOn P.S. -love yer nails!

Saw that main filter capacitor and said to myself, never do that! You demonstrated exactly as to why , it is a very poor connection to ground. Grounding lugs are best. What a beast of a recap job. Very tight quarters and time consuming. This amp never sounded so good now and with a working tremolo to boot. Great job Colleen!

What a wonderful dramaless restore of an old classic amp was very entertaining and the rumble rendidtion at the end was a bonus.

This is a great video! I love these older, low wattage tube amps. Hope all goes well with resettling into new digs. Thank you for sharing!

thanks for bringing this one back to life. I've never seen a point-to-point with this many components!

Thanks, your explanations and camera shots really help understand the process clearly. The amp sounded great when done!

Fantastic job. And what a finish - Link would surely have loved this amp after your tender and expert ministrations!

I worked 34 years in communications and you're the best I've ever seen. Accurate and precise and very patient. I'm glad I found your channel.

I love all your videos, and the little history about that time in the US is a very cool touch. Please keep 'em coming! 😊🤙🙏👏🎸🎼🎵🎶🔊

Link Wray was a great choice for this amp. Nice job.

Glad to see you back at it. I look forward to seeing the new shop and more great projects!

Glad to see you uploading again, Coleen!

It sounds amazing! I always loved the tremolo on these old Silvertone amps. Awesome job on the restore, it's really cool that you were able to fix everything for the owner like this. What a great family heirloom.

I’m very happy to see you back to KZfaq. I *LOVE* the little history intro!

I just love your work, Lots more please x

The final test made my smile :) It's awesome to see such a piece of vintage tech working fine again

Idle Moments by Grant Green was a surprise treat! One of my favourite songs and albums of his. I love the care, attention and historical perspective you’ve packed into this video. Your nails look awesome btw.

I feel for you; the tremolo oscillator caps, ugh! I had to replace them in my Silvertone 1472 Amp... good thing I had a schematic lol. I love your video! You're the best!! 👌

Nice video, I cringed when I saw how the mains was done originally, but loved how you sorted the hot through the fuse and then to the switch, much safer. You solder exactly the way I do, heat the subject with a hot iron and flood the joint with solder, then get the heat away, very skilled and a joy to watch.

Excellent!! ... And I'm always chuffed to hear a wee bit o' Link Wray in the mix.

Watched the post 1 Dec in the morning hours, and was reminded of family jams at the season. In part as some of that performance happened on very similar amps. Absolutely a first rate repair and where I would bet the owner will be very pleased to get back that trem depth. hoping you found that new workshop, As a note from my workbench, it so happened I so liked the repair to the *valve jr I simply placed the new parts to storage. It has a sizzle and crunch at about 3/4 from Fender to Jr. to cabinet I cannot bear to change. Thank you for the assist to source them and where I bid you, fair winds. "fair season". M.

Did you go to school for electronics or learn by doing it like I did? The more I watch the more your attention to details just shines. You have learned some great techniques and it shows. Anyone sends you something to work on, It'd coming back better than when it was originally built.

Buster is basically the best dog ever invented

Great to see you back Colleen .. Good job on that sweet old amp & awesome Tone ..Thanks for sharing & stay safe !

Fantastic old chassis, and a job well done! Always a good idea to remove the tubes from their sockets when soldering the pins! Thanks for sharing!

Aluminum chassis means it was built by Danelectro (early Silvertones with steel chassis were built by Valco). Watch out for riveted chassis grounds that have often oxidized or worked loose over the years. The green Sangamo caps are almost always leaky (electrically).

I had an early 60's Silvertone. The first amp I was ever inside of. I did simple ground repair & pot-replacement. Great amp!

love the nails!

labor of love indeed, you practically rebuilt that whole amp. very impressive and great playing to demonstrate the fruits of your hard work.

What a heroic effort! Not only showing all the skill and dexterity, but also all the editing that went in to this. Totally worth saving, that is one honey of a tone. Cheers!☘

Omg that tone!!! So beautiful. Loved the video great job, I look forward to the next one.

Do wop doobie do wop. Nice soldering. You brought an old one back to life. Too cool

Cool stuff, thanks for the video! Shout-out to the camera person and editing in this video. Very good work!!

Nice nails for amp tech Coleen - mine are always frayed and broken. If you want to be thorough, you would want to replace .5 200VDC wax wad cap as well. There's excellent video on Mister Carlson's lab channel why paper caps go bad with time. Aslo, check that these old Tropical caps don't leak DC through - if tremolo caps went bad, coupling might be on the way. Best of luck.

Gotta love any amp that uses a 6SJ7. Thanks, Colleen, for the instructive and informative series of videos on heritage amp restoration. Your videos have helped me make a vintage '54 Champ Amp into a safe, cool-running and quiet tone meister.

Hi Colleen, Mark from Australia here. I love how everything is so simple. 3 pairs of hand tools, solder sucker, Weller iron and a great set of finger nails!. No walls full of cro's, signal generators and power supplies. A nice homely setting in a quiet environment that is still very productive. So satisfying to watch.

This is such great unintentional ASMR. Your voice paired with the sounds of snipping and placing down tools is just fantastic. Educational too! Thank you for this. The amp sounded great at the end.

Que raridade é ver uma mulher técnica em eletrônica! Voçê é um diamante!! 👏👏👏👏👏

Amazing what 12 watts could do back in the 1950s. Reflowing the solder in EVERY contact in a 100% point-to-point wiring layout is the definition of a lo or of love!I had the Silvertone 1485, which today has a cult following.

So cool! Fond memories of a time I miss so much. Thank you for sharing this moment.

Heeeeeey, long time, no see :). I love your channel - amp/pedal/synth girls of the world, unite! Lovely amp on the outside, but it could surely use some redesign when it comes to ground connections. Depending on the chassis layout, I choose bus or star grounding. For the latter I use a thick copper wire (e.g. 4mm²) grounded close to the input jack, going all the way to the power supply. The wire between the rectifier bridge (or secondary C.T.) and the filter cap is "dirty", should be reasonably heavy and nothing else can connect to it. I always use some kind of strain relief if going for a hardwired power cord; heatshrink for soldered connections on fuse ockets and switches, and whenever a wire goes out of the transformer and I need to splice it, I use a terminal strip or a DPDT power switch. I really love that you know your thing and talk about amps and repairs with competence and confidence. Uncle Doug (and probably Mr Carlson too, as I see his school of fuse-before-switch) has taught you well. And you have nice nails :) I sometimes do repairs and build stuff with painted nails, but it's kinda tricky...

That’s is a rad amp and rad video! Also, I really dig the nails 😉

What an amazing video, you brought this amp back to her former beautiful tone. You followed through with tedious soldering, but in the end she sang like when she came off the assembly line. Well done, a very enjoyable journey, thanks…

Great restoration of a fine old amp! Just loved the way you and it bashed out the rumble at the end; magic!!!

Great work as always. I noticed that the two cathode bypass caps that you replaced were actually different values in the amp than were indicated on the schematic. (10uF vs 25uF) Props on going with what was in the amp, imho. Thanks for sharing and great touch on the demos.

It is an absolute pleasure watching you work. You always leave me in awe of how effortless you make it appear when I know that's far from reality. On a separate note, if you re-order T-Shirts, please let us know? I'm sure I'm not the only one that would like to purchase one!! Please keep up the great work and the Great Videos!!!

You wrap your wires the same way that I do,it makes for a nice smooth connection with heat shrink. I have been repairing electronic equipment for 50years and I really enjoy watching you work, you are no nonsense and very thorough. I would like to have you work in my shop. Keep up the good work and I will be waiting for your next video.

just found your channel and im stoked what a treasure much like yourself never apologize for a messy bench its the hallmark of a genius !

Dang, I’m blown away by how far this restoration goes.

Oh, one more suggestion for reliability: I would avoid mounting filter caps on the power transformer ( I see you glued one to the xmfr case ) reason being that heat from the xmfr will migrate into the cap thru the glue and prematurely dry out the cap over time.

I love the practicality you put into the repairs you do. It never made sense to me to value originality over function in a 60 or so year old amp. It's amazing to me that drifted resistors and dried out caps make an amp more valuable than a properly functioning one. Thanks for sharing this.

RUMBLE! Excellent demo choice. The refurbed amp sounds great!

Hi Buster.

This is the first of your videos that I have seen and this is so interesting! I am intimidated by the pile of spaghetti in the back but super impressed with your knowledge of the circuits and confidence in fixing it. I haven't seen the rest of your videos, but have you built a simple amp from scratch to explain the circuit and what all the parts do? That would be interesting to me. Subscribed!

amp sounds amazing, and this is my first exposure to your videos, and I really enjoyed your clear and extremely easy to understand yet obviously very knowledgeable walk through. Also whoever is playing the guitar has excellent taste that fits the amp and style and tone.

Just emailed my daughter, my sister and my two closest friends in my band. I am so impressed. And then you played. And look close at the thumbnail. I am older than dirt!!! OMG! I will someday soon need a custom amp from you to support what I play on my own channel. Gonna happen! Thank you so very much for being there. This was such a treat for me with 64 years of playing and no end in sight! Awesome Colleen!

So Clear, Clean & Crisp! Classic Vintage Amp sounds! Love your videos. The Flame art on your nails look like they belong on a 56 Chevy! Also Classic & Classy! I learned so much! Thank You.

That's a nice size amp, the turret boards seem to make for easier service work than busy point to point.

I love how you appreciate small details and classic design from a bygone era. I love old classic stuff as well.

I am impressed by this skilled, knowledgeable and fearless work. Mostly done physically exactly the way I like to do things, except I'd take twice as long trying to preserve things that functionally don't matter. A pleasure to watch, and a pleasure to hear the narration as well.

Great job on the refurbish! Will you make a cabinet for it? Wes Montgomery, always a good choice. You quite possibly have the best looking fingernails in the Amp Repair category on KZfaq. 🎸😎👍💖

Great work as always!! Love the fingernails- much prettier than Uncle Doug’s 😁 I just scored an old Vega Commander made in ‘46, so I’m going to need to do pretty much the same.

Those knobs look like bakelite. I learned my lesson on having a lighter around bakelite. Lol. You are a wonderful teacher and more. Thank you!

Good work on the restoration; indeed a lot of patience is needed to get to all those tight spaces. Also, good detective work to find the source of the noise. I was thinking that the same detective work would have been useful to find the root cause of the tremolo damage, but with paper capacitors you are right on the money to simply replace them anyways. I would, however, have used a proper X cap across the mains and a Y cap to the chassis - this can help reduce the line noise coming from our modern gadgets (switching power supplies, dimmers, etc.). I would also have added thermal shrink plastic on the terminals of the switch and the fuse - this can help other technicians in the future to avoid being shocked in case they are servicing the unit. But that is mostly a personal preference, really. Big no-nos in my book, however, are leaving the vacuum tubes in place while doing the maintenance - not only the chassis can topple and break them, but soldering the sockets imposes thermal stress on the vaccuum tube pins and the glass surrounding them. This can create microscopic leaks that will reduce the lifespan of the tubes. Overall, great video.

I would like to know if you have had any instances when replacing the "death cap" with a proper "X-Y" rated cap has solved any noise or hum issues? And I do appreciate your sharing these repairs with us, and will be looking forward to more content. It is good to see a "qualified and experienced" person doing repair work and giving others insight into doing this work as well.

A female Uncle Doug?.... thankyou KZfaq algorithms.

I enjoyed this lots as a radio collector and restorer it's refreshing to see young ladies like you restoring vintage electronics you did a heck of a job getting in there with the capacitor replacements. New sub :)

All these repairs of classic amps are informative and, well, beautiful to watch. 👍 Would love seeing some DIY stuff also!