1970 Ampeg
Gemini-22 Restoration Project
Page 5
Speakers added
Well, the speakers needed to be replaced and there was a budget consideration because I planned to sell the amp when finished. I decided to use a speaker type that I like for this application. I had installed the Jensen MOD speakers in a Fender Super Six Reverb a few years back. Quite frankly I was expecting it to sound much less than average because the speakers were inexpensive and supposedly a "budget" type. Well, I was surprised to hear that they sounded pretty good. The more they broke in, the better they sounded. Very surprising to me and fairly accurate to the CTS Ceramics from that time. So, that is what I decided to install here. I uprated them to 70-watts each so that they would be nearly impossible to blow when cranking this thing up.
Finished
Here she is, complete and ready to ROCK! During testing I did have a couple of glitches with bad/noisy preamp tubes and one loose resistor in the trem section. Otherwise, this thing sounds GREAT! Total early 70's Rolling Stones tone when pushed and just a real good sounding amp overall. Having the ability to switch between optocoupler tremolo and tube vibrato (a-la Fender Brownface) is a nice feature. You can see I also sourced a repro knob for the bass pot on Channel Two.
Back View
The only thing I noticed when finishing her up was that the top backpanel had extra screw holes. The thickness and tolex are Ampeg for sure. Whether this panel belonged to this amp originally is up for debate, but it was as dirty and nasty as the other tolex. So I went ahead and mounted it up anyway. It turned out great.
Postscript
Well, this amp sat around for a month or so after finishing. I think the total man-hours spent on her was 44. One day a friend of mine was at the shop and he noticed her sitting there. He asked if she was for sale. I said of course. Well, after blasting her for about five-minutes with my '69 Strat, this amp landed a new home! It now belongs to a blues player here in SA and is being played almost daily. Scott actually put this thing on stage when he sat in with blues legend Charlie Musselwhite in Nov. 2009. How cool is that? From trash to treasure, saved from certain death, this Ampeg rocks again!
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