As I've mentioned before in several threads, a month or two ago I modified my Peavey Vypyr and gave my Kalamazoo Model Two a sabbatical. Reason being that the original cab constructed from 50 year old particle board was falling apart, and the tolex coming off along with it. At first it was just a corner edge here and there. But then one of the feet tore away with a chunk of board still threaded around the screw.
Here's how she looked originally.
I dismantled her carefully, piece by piece, and stored all components, labeled and organized, into a large cushioned toolbox. Then I stripped the old tolex off the cabinet until I was left with this as a template.
I got a few good sized boards of 1/2" thick solid red oak, and after measuring out every piece of wood in the original cab, cut out the pieces to build my new cabinet. Here's the bottom three pieces.
I had to back-burner the project for a month or two. But this past weekend I got back to it. Got a few carpentry clamps from Harbor Freight, started glueing and screwing. (no innuendo intended) I drilled pilot holes of course, and spread Elmer's wood glue on both surfaces of each join. Then I used a 1/4" paddle bit to make round indentations for the screw heads to recess into the body. When she's finished, I'll fill the holes with either wood putty or wood hole caps.
Let her settle for a couple hours, took off the clamps, and attached most of the face pieces and the mounting strips for the back panels and the chassis.
This is as far as I've gotten, and it's here that I made my first real boo-boo. Before attaching the chassis mounts, I forgot to bore the holes through them for the chassis bolts. So now, I either have to take them back out and bore them (hoping to avoid that), or get my hands on a close-quarters drill to punch them in because my drill is too big to fit in the cab with nothing in the clamp let alone with the bit in it. I'm thinking the latter approach unless any of you advise me otherwise. :-)
My cab is going to be slightly different from the original. The baffle on the original cab angled back from the top just ever so slightly. Mine will not angle, and face directly forward instead. I have a piece of 1/2" thick oak plywood that will serve as my baffle. The original was about 3/8" thick, but I couldn't find any plywood I liked that was 3/8".
Anyways....that's where I'm at. Hopefully I'll get a little further along this week provided I can get a close-quarters drill. My idea that I'm most excited about on this is that I
Last Edited by on Jun 25, 2012 6:09 PM
Looking good. You are doing a nice job on your project.I built a K2 from scratch using the K2 I owned as the mother clone. It was my 1st tube amp build that was not a kit. I even built the chassis from a piece of flat sheet metal from OSH.
Last Edited by on May 29, 2012 4:46 PM
Hey MJ - are those switches on the front just on/off and tremelo switches instead of using switch pots? Or are there some cool features there.....? ---------- /Greg
If I had extra switches on the front, they'd be for dual pre-amp bias selection, and two different tremelo depths...... just for yucks. ---------- /Greg
MJ, that purple 'zoo looks very familiar. I had originally thought it was built by Jay Olsen (Jaybird on most forums.) There used to be a blog post on the build, but I can't find it online anymore. Long story short, I now own that purple Kalamazoo clone, through a mic trade with Brian Purdy.
I love that amp, and recently installed a NOS Amperex Holland EL84 in it..........wow, what an improvement over an already great tone. The Kalamazoos really seem to love a good NOS output tube. I'm still trying various preamp tubes in it, and will get around to a speaker swap.
General questions to Kalamazoo owners (and especially Greg,) what speakers have you tried, and what worked best for you? What's been your favorite preamp tube?
mine has the original brain in a snakeskin tolex piggyback set up. the head is shaped like a Matchless head and sits on a 2/12 cab w/ smoth coned Rola 12s.
i never thought the thing would work. it breaks a lot of rules. oddly enough, it totally rules! ---------- MP affordable reed replacement and repairs.
"making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time"
I've not tried any tube or speaker modifications with my 'Zoo. Truthfully, I've been more than happy with the results of the original CTS alnico and Raytheon 12AX7.
@Greg
Me likey the trem depth idea! Lemme know if you give it a try and what the results are!
@ALL
Got a little more work done on it last night. I've discovered that it's not going to be a perfect fit, but it'll be close enough that I can make it work very nicely and it'll look great when it's done.
Cut my baffle piece out last night and marked the speaker cutout and the screw mount positions.
Slid the chassis into position and marked where I need to bore the holes for the chassis bolts. Think I may have tracked down a guy with a close-quarters drill...hopefully I'll get those holes done tomorrow night.
Then I put the chassis and the baffle in together with the cutout markings facing outward to get a feel for where everything will be when she's done.
Like I said, not a perfect fit. About a 1/4" gap between the top of the control face and the top piece of the cab. Still mulling over ideas to remedy this.
---------- Hawkeye Kane
Last Edited by on Jun 25, 2012 6:11 PM
bloozefish, That is the same amp. I am the Jay Olson you refer to. I built it and sold it to Brian Purdy. The website went off line when I switched servers. It is good to know that the amp is still being used and taken care of. You might consider a 5751 preamp tube, it is %70 of a 12ax7. I have found that the Weber Feromax with smooth cone work great for harp, ceramic is my taste. I have fond memories of my time building that amp.
I've been seeing some discussion on TGP about Sano amps, some of which touching on the Sano-ette which Mojokane featured in a thread a while back. I've only found one hand-drawn schematic for the Sano-ette. Is it just me, or is it damned similar if not identical to the 'Zoo Deuce?
The standard Kalamazoo also has a gap at the top. First, it doesn't show, second, once the amp is covered, it doesn't show even more, and third - it probably aids in venting the heat. I wouldn't worry about it.
The sano circuit is indeed similar. One thing I notice is that its coupling caps are a little more than twice the value of the ones in the Zoo, which means it rolls off bass at a higher frequency. Perhaps because it had 8" speaker? Or just because. ---------- /Greg
Been a little outta touch over the weekend, so here's what's transpired.
Thursday after work, I took the new cab over to Hipbone's dad Pete's workshop. As it turned out, he had lent his close-quarters drill out to his daughter's boyfriend for a deck job, so we wound up removing the chassis mounts, drilling the holes on his drill press, and then reattaching them to the cabinet without much of a hitch.
I say "much of a hitch" because although Pete glued and screwed the mounts back to where all the glue marks aligned, it still made an imbalance between the two sides when I put the chassis in. The side with the preamp tube now rested lower.
So Saturday afternoon, even though I was fighting a hangover from my Friday night gig, and I was a bit worn out from running around with the missus to yard sales (where I managed to score a couple of cool old vinyls), I got to work in the basement.
I remedied the imbalance by placing a piece of folded paper the equivalent of about 12 sheets thick in between the chassis and the mount on the lower side. I was able to balance out the chassis by tightening and loosening the front mounting screw on the side with the paper. (Don't worry Greg. I tucked it far enough in that the preamp tube wouldn't set it on fire.)
Since this altered where the baffle would need to be mounted, I marked and drilled new holes in the baffle and the cab's face pieces. Then I took the baffle and managed to cut the speaker cutout with my jigsaw. (Not the best way to go about it I know, but no one makes a 9" hole saw, and I don't have a Roto-Zip.) It was here that I made my second boo-boo. I cut the hole unevenly with my trace of the circle, and this led to one of the speaker mounting bolts punching through the side of the cutout. The speaker still mounted to it just fine, but I don't like the way it looks. I'm gonna take a Mulligan on the baffle and cut a new one.
But I went ahead and put the baffle and speaker in the cab without a grill cloth. Still working on that detail. I gave Greg a call at this point because I couldn't remember the nominal speaker phase connection. He got me straightened out on that, and also jokingly asked me "Now do you see why I don't build cabinets?"
So after using my novice soldering skills to get the speaker reconnected, (which of course I will have to reverse yet again when I redo the baffle), I plugged the tubes back in, mounted the old cabinet's back panels into position, (those are getting replaced as well, I just havent gotten around to it yet)....
AAAAND......
WE HAVE A ROUGH DRAFT GENTLEMEN!!
I took her on a dry run at my gig Saturday night. Here she is on her stand.
I was having a bad night in other areas though. The cable went out on my Cherry Bomb bullet. Normally I have spare mics with me, but unfortunately, the only ones I had were low-Z. So I had to run home and get my backup hi-Z's. When I got back, I plugged my Ampex 1101 into my RP90 pedal. Then, to my dismay, one of the preset selection buttons on it stopped working.
I decided to go dry and just run the Ampex directly to the amp, no effects or v/c. I ran the amp's tone only slightly above the power-on position and the volume at 7.
IT....SOUNDED....AWESOME!!!
The hardwood creates so much better of a resonance than the particle board and tolex did.
Here's where the biggest disappointment of the evening made itself known...
My line-out was not registering any signal
Last Edited by on Jun 25, 2012 6:12 PM
Managed to get the baffle recut today. Looks much better now if I do say so myself. :-)
Also cut some new back pieces out of luan.
Now just hafta fill in the screw recessions with wood putty, sand her down, stain and shellac it, maybe put a signature mark on the back, and get the grillcloth. I'm almost there boys! ---------- Hawkeye Kane
Last Edited by on Jun 25, 2012 6:14 PM
I moved all my photobucket pictures from this thread into a different album to better organize it for myself over the weekend. I'm gonna go through and restore them so they're visible again.
I also wanted to share this though. Because my beautifiul bride Stephanie Leann bought me this amp as a sort of reaffirmation gift after a rough time in our life together, I wanted to commemorate it in the rebuild.
This is going to be burned pyrographically into the top back piece before I stain and shellac it. I took the lettering script from the faceplates of various blackface amps from throughout the years.
T = Fender Tremolux K = Kalamazoo Model Two
S = Fender Super Reverb L = Fender London Reverb K = Kalamazoo Model Two again
I got a steal of a quote from a local embroiderer on the grillcloth. With any luck, I should have a black piece of burlap with my improved logo in thread here in a week or two.
---------- Hawkeye Kane
Last Edited by on Jun 25, 2012 6:42 PM
I had the day off Wednesday, so I finally got around to filling the screw recessions with wood filler. I let it settle the rest of the day.
I dunno about the rest of you here Stateside, but in the Midwest, the heat has been heinous the last week or so. To make matters worse for me, my A/C pretty much died on me three weeks ago. So last night my wife and son spent the night at her mother's, and I stayed and watched the homestead. I took the opportunity to sand her completely down. And then I gave her a first coat of stain....
And now that she's dried overnight, I'm thinking it'll be the only coat. She looks just how I want as is. Only four things left to complete. Grillcloth, new back panels (because the luan ones turned out much darker with the stain than the body of the cabinet did), a leather handle, and feet. I'll probably just reattach the original feet tonight before my gig so that the amp has ONE original piece left on it. ---------- Hawkeye Kane
I was on vacation from work and the gig scene this past week, so I carped the diem and got the 'Zoo finished up. Handle, grillcloth, feet, another coat of stain, and a triple coat of polycrylic protectant. Eventually, I will still get my custom grill cloth and fashion my own back panels, but for now she's officially seaworthy.
Aloja, hawkeye! too cool, your clear coat and carpentry skills are beautiful...ready to gig!!nice job! For me, mic'n it with a Sennhieser 609e is best. Better for adjusting tone, using board effects, rather than pedals. Truth,for me... you can only get so much out of 5 watts. Using PA board effects allows greater value for any size room. Putting you upfront(mains), with the rest of the band. Yeah, the Sanoette has a little harsher tone..still good for harp, and still among my favorites. My rig of choice lately is my old stock Princeton (1972 w/10"). I also mic it with a 609e. The Echo Delay, Ibanez CD10 does fine. Using the echo sparingly, for certain songs, like the intro to "Help Me" (Rod Piazza's vers). Having it in the mix is cool. The board is more efficient for dialing in the tone, and removing any harshness, or kicking up the bottom, as in smaller amps like the Zoo's or Sanoettes. That's what Mark was using with Juke in previous post. A stock kalama Zoo One, thru 2X12's Rola smooth cones, and a Sennhieser 609e. Nothing else. And his mic has a great CR 99H, or something. I thought you could have used a tiny bit of reverb on Juke, bro. Next time. You sounded great nevertheless, as always.
Why is it that we all just can't get along?<
Last Edited by on Aug 27, 2012 4:31 PM
Yeah, I always run it through the PA, usually via mic. Don't have a Sen609 yet, but it's on my wishlist. Usually just use an SM57 or an Emerson M189 on a stand. Just gets the natural tones of the speaker across a lot better. But I use the line out on occaision too. Windy outdoor gigs that create roaring through the mains are a good example. So is a large hall setting where mic feedback due to louder amplifiers can become a risk.
I'm with you on board effects. Problem is my band uses a board that is not channel isolated when it comes to effects. You can select one effect, but then that applies to the whole of the board. And thus, the effect is usually dry, or with only a tinge of whatever effect my bandleader decides to assign to the vocals.
I just sold my RP90 pedal because it just couldn't deliver what I was looking for. I have a bead on a few different options to give me my own effects and extra tone control. One is the stompbox route. A few I could mention that have caught my eye are the Boss '59 Bassman and '63 Reverb pedals, the Lone Wolf Harp Attack, Harp Break, and Harp Tone, and the Danelectro Fish n' Chips 7 band EQ. Another route on the reverb is a standalone spring tank. I've got my eye on a Valve Jr. Hot Rod that can serve as one, and also give me another amp under my belt. ----------
Last Edited by on May 29, 2012 4:46 PM
