Belated NAD: c. '78 Musicman 112RD65
Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2022 2:33 pm
So this guy just came back today from a spa month at Rootbeer Audio in Philly (highly recommended for local folks), fully in fighting trip, so I'm going to count it as 'new' even though I actually picked it up in back in April.
It's a 78, dating by the 6CA7 tubes, MusicMan 112RD65, with a factory optional EV12L speaker.
I managed to convince a Sam Ash store in Tuscon to ship it another store in South Jersey and not charge me for that, so I was able to just swing by and pick it up. Somewhat amazingly, it survived the trip (though credit to the Sam Ash Tuscon guys, it was VERY well packed). Basically, it was working when I got it, and happily bopped along as an office amp for a couple months before Matt had space to go over it. It had what we figure were the original Sylvania 6CA7s, and all the original caps inside. The tubes were still good, but old, and these amps are hard to bias and it has to be done by someone who knows what's what, so it got new tubes. A bunch of the big caps were already bulging, and some others were old enough to be worrisome, so we did also did a pretty complete cap job on it, with new Spragues and F&Ts.
Result?: glorious. When I first got it, it sounded good, but things like the bright switch were just unsuable. Now, just clear, beautiful clean tone, a perfectly usable overdrive on the regular channel if you turn up the gain a bit (though I usually use pedals for that, and will with this). I haven't messed with the 'disortion' channel yet, but I was largely ignoring it before. If I get some late 70s post-punk solid state distortion weirdness out of it, I'll count that as a bonus, but I wanted this as a clean pedal platform and it's phenomenal for that -- especially with the EV.
The reverb is really quite nice too, so all in all I'm very happy especially as even with an extensive service, I still have less than a grand in it.
It's a 78, dating by the 6CA7 tubes, MusicMan 112RD65, with a factory optional EV12L speaker.
I managed to convince a Sam Ash store in Tuscon to ship it another store in South Jersey and not charge me for that, so I was able to just swing by and pick it up. Somewhat amazingly, it survived the trip (though credit to the Sam Ash Tuscon guys, it was VERY well packed). Basically, it was working when I got it, and happily bopped along as an office amp for a couple months before Matt had space to go over it. It had what we figure were the original Sylvania 6CA7s, and all the original caps inside. The tubes were still good, but old, and these amps are hard to bias and it has to be done by someone who knows what's what, so it got new tubes. A bunch of the big caps were already bulging, and some others were old enough to be worrisome, so we did also did a pretty complete cap job on it, with new Spragues and F&Ts.
Result?: glorious. When I first got it, it sounded good, but things like the bright switch were just unsuable. Now, just clear, beautiful clean tone, a perfectly usable overdrive on the regular channel if you turn up the gain a bit (though I usually use pedals for that, and will with this). I haven't messed with the 'disortion' channel yet, but I was largely ignoring it before. If I get some late 70s post-punk solid state distortion weirdness out of it, I'll count that as a bonus, but I wanted this as a clean pedal platform and it's phenomenal for that -- especially with the EV.
The reverb is really quite nice too, so all in all I'm very happy especially as even with an extensive service, I still have less than a grand in it.