Welcome to gantamps vintage amp site.
This is a collection vintage amps I've acquired through the years. These represent the birth and growth of Rock "n" Roll music.
Finally, after 6 yrs, I've got a site back up. Garth went back on tour and brought me back. I'll add more brands models as time goes by. Thanks for your patience!
Baldwin
Baldwin C 2
Baldwin was one of many large musical instrument or electronics firms to jump on the amplifier bandwagon in the 60's. With the advent of the Beatles, everybody wanted to play in a band and companies like Fender and Vox couldn't make stuff fast enough. CBS bought Fender, Magnavox bought Ampeg, Sears had Danelectro build their amps, Wards used Valco. Baldwin had been making organs for years so they used some of that technology for guitar amps. This 65' C2 Baldwin is an early example 2-12" 40 watt transistor amp. The main reason to show this amp is it's most famous user, Willie Nelson. Willie still uses this amp, with "Trigger", his Martin acoustic. Trigger has a Baldwin pickup that matches this amp. If you've seen Willie, you know how good it sounds!
Standel
Standel Artist XV
Standel is the brainchild of Bob Crooks. Many consider Bob the trail blazer of guitar amps.
His initial line of tube amps in 53' is so revered, there is a registry of owners up to the present. Bob made great sounding amps from day 1, used the best of everything, including JBL D130 speakers. Chet Atkins was one of the early users, endorsers. In addition to JBLs, he was the first to experiment with hybrid amps (tube amp, transistor pre amp) and introduced the first successful transistor line of amps. This is the Flagship model from 66', the Super Artist XV. This a 140 watt transistor amp with 2-15" Stephens Truesonic speakers. Harvey Gerst changed speaker design the JBL D130 to accommodate Fender's higher powered amps to the D130f. Bob didn't like that speaker so he switched to Stephens trusonic, a high end HiFi speaker. Standel's demise came in the early 70s when he received a batch of bad circuit boards. He designed these where they were covered with epoxy so they could not be copied or serviced. If one tested bad, it was plug in play to repair. So many were defective he shut down Standel. He was hired by Norlin (Gibson) and designed the SG amp line. Hybrid amps with cool effects, like the Maestro Phaser, developed by Oberheim for Norlin.
Standel Studio
Another popular model, the Studio, 80 watt with 4-10" Jensen C10P speakers. This is a 67', the difference between this and a 66' is the logo moved and blue added. This is an example of over building, the Jensen P model was a higher powered speaker than the Q. It has the same power as the N series with a smaller voice coil. Leo Fender didn't use the P series although some have shown up in Vibrolux Reverbs. I put a C10P in my 6G2 Princeton, oh my, sounds amazing!
Standel Artist XV
Here's an interesting amp, this is the 1st line of Standel all transistor amps. This
65' Artist XV supposedly belonged to Chet Atkins. I've seen a promo picture with him playing this amp (or one like it). I got this from the estate of Dr Jim Coleman, who was a close friend of Chet's. I'm guessing Chet gave it to him, I found some of Chet's stationary in back of the amp. It is an 80 watt amp with 4 ohm JBL D130 in it. This is also the model Wes Montgomery used, whom Bob Crooks had made a Standel artist. Bruce Bouton used this on a Reba album after he lost his recording amp in the 2010 flood.
Silvertone 1485 amp
w/ 1465 6-10" cabinet
Here's a 65' Silvertone 1485 amp with a 1465 6-10" cabinet. The head was made by Danelectro and was rated at 110 watts. The way they achived the power was use 2 separate amps, each amp was driving 3-10" speakers with 2 6L6 GC power tubes using the 2.6 ohm tap off the output transformer. The speaker cable was hard wired and was stereo.
The amp head fit in back of the cabinet so they weren't separated. I bought the head by itself and used it with a Gretsch 2-12" cabinet with the same wiring design. The 1465 was the next version of 6-10 amp Sears released and used a150 watt transistor amp. The speakers were wired parallel-series so it had a 4 ohm load to match the head. Jon Davidson rewired it for me with a stereo jack to use with the 1485 head. My first amp was the 1465 Transistor amp. I found it at a Sears in Shawnee, Ok. It had been repossessed and was on sale for $140. I convinced my father he could use it on his gigs so he bought it. I know where I get my bargain hunting gene!
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