Epiphone Model 100
It doesn't get much simpler than these single ended low wattage vintage amplifiers. You know......the ones where they posted the schematic INSIDE THE ENCLOSURE! :)
Things were meant to be serviced back then. There were multiple things to be done to this one.
The customer wanted:
- Tame down the brightness of the amp. Give the tone control a bit wider range so that they can use this amp for both harp and guitar.
- Add a slave out so that the amp can be lined directly into the PA during shows. Once again.. for harp.
- Stiffen up the front panel. These amps have a thin L shape chassis with ZERO support. When plugging into the input, the entire face would bend in quite far. Adjusting the controls also showed off how flimsy this is.
This amp required a good mixture of both mechanical and electrical engineering. To solve the issue with the thin flimsy front control panel, I headed over to the 3d printer to make some brackets to install on the front panel to try and help stiffen it up. In addition to these 3d printed supports, I made some acrylic inserts on the laser which added to the rigidity of the whole panel. Working on old cars are much more enjoyable and simpler than the modern catastrophes the auto manufacturers are pushing out these days. Guitar amps are very (though not always) similar.
End Result
At the end of this project, this is what we ended up doing.
- Installation of the 3d printed brackets (As shown in photo) to stiffen up the front control panel.
- To tame the highs, we simply changed the value of the tone control which allowed for more high end to be rolled off then the previous value.
- A slave output was installed.