I got that Stratocaster in tiptop shape and somebody brought me this nice Jay Turser clone of a Gibson SG guitar.
I’ve never particularly lusted after those guitars, but I remembered that Frank Zappa switched from the Les Paul to the SG, and now I feel I know why, after playing both myself.
Also some new phonographs fell into my possession: a lovely but worthless low power Webcor Maestro for $20, and the powerful Newcomb TS-16 for $275.
The Webcor is going to give up it’s input, jack, rubber feet, carry handle and hardware for the Newcomb amp project.
The amplifier and speaker in this are not only very low power but they are a very strange design without a power transformer. It relies on the windings of the electric phonograph motor to provide current.
This might be fun to build a vacuum tube distortion screamer pedal.
Now the Newcomb 16” Transcription Phonograph Project is much more interesting. This has adjustable low and high gain input channels. It sounded great with a guitar right out of the box, either high output or low output pick ups.
It also has real tone controls, a 10 watt class AB amplifier, and a 12 inch speaker that still works great. It has a real old fashion power transformer from 1952.
It closes up into a neat suitcase. These were popular portable units for radio stations, bingo callers, square dance callers and people who needed to run a phonograph and a microphone at the same time.
It will actually power two of these speakers but I don’t have the extension speaker that you could purchase with it.
This has all been sitting around in an antique store for a long time, and it was very dirty but fortunately had no evidence of mice. At some point in its life it had been treated to all new capacitors and some new resistors as well.
Here is the amplifier all stripped out and cleaned up with a steel bottom and wood sides added to the chassis.
Now I just need to mount the handle and the rubber feet, and put a cage over the tubes.
