Is the real guitar amplifier as such exctinct?

[cactuskeeb]

The fender deluxe reverb I'm not finished building has presented a problem that I think we need to consider: real guitar amplifiers haven't been produced in decades, having reached their end in the late sixties when economically driven production design and lack of further R&D or sound engineering practices became the absolute.  Clearly I want to argue that the real guitar amplifier is the one on the right, but then what is the one on the left, how does one describe the identity of the one on the left when, schematically speaking, they are the same (minus the minor mod I made to the vib channel, which doesn't change the basic fact that we're looking at two amps that share the same schematic)?



 

[Poster]

i think the big difference here is the intent of the builder. the production line amp is not intended to be played and loved, but reproduced to efficiently, and economically.  the amp your building all is tension free connections with extra soldered joints and hand picked components... there is not comparison ;0)



ps. cactus my PM messeges wont work?! click my avatar and send me an email so i can get your email address. i tried sending you an email to your listed email address but i havent heard back.

[cactuskeeb]

But I didn't hand pick the components; all I had to do was copy brand and production era from Tweed, brown, and blackface era fenders, except for a single case, the two .033 mustard colored capacitors -- mustard-colored molded caps are the British version of the USA made blue molded; hence earliest Marshall amps use them everywhere fender used a blue molded.  The same holds for the ceramic caps (circled 2s (sprague), circled d's (cornell dubilier).  The resistors I use are stackpole, AB, or IRC that were made before 1980. 

The only thing I changed was adding a few Japanese resistors to the phase inverter, for noise cancellation; these particular brands of Japanese resistors are known as the only non-vintage carbon composition resistor to actually sound nearly identical but without the latter's inherent noise factor.  And there are two brand new production SBE orange coupling caps (716P series is a new "orange drop," the first re-engineering of the orange drop to take place in nearly thirty years).
Edit: of course you have to use brand new electrolytics (polarized caps).  Notice that my filter caps are size equivalent to the originals.  They cost a fortune.  And the silver sprague premium hermetically sealed 25mfd-25v's I bought last week...well, I think they're even newer than the 716P mentioned above -- good thing I'm taking so long to build the f'ing thing, otherwise I would have had to compromise on something, which can't happen