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| Another low-wattage (probably about 5 pure class-A watts from the single-ended 6BQ5 - or EL-84 - valve) vintage Aussie valve (tube) amp that defines the word tone. Fi-Sonic amps were all hand-made in Phil Dreoni's workshop in Marrickville, Sydney. This one probably dates to around 1962. Valve-rectified (6X4 Mullard), and still with its original 12AX7 Mullard pre-amp valve, this thing sounds as cool and genuine as it looks. The original Mullard 6BQ5 output valve was very tired when the amp came to us, and had very little gain. Even winding the amp up to full, it stayed clean. However, replacing the output valve with one of my favourite vintage Russian replacements (I bought a stack of these when I was gigging a hand-built Vox AC-15 clone, as they sounded fantastic and were incredibly reliable) saw this little champ of an amp come roaring back to its former self. While the chassis was out, it was fully serviced and checked, as well as photographed (see the 'more pictures' link below), and needed very little work. The output transformer needed new rivets, as it was about to depart from the chassis, and some of the mains voltage solder joints needed re-soldering, but other than a clean and de-oxidisation of the valve bases and pots, the amp needed nothing else doing. The filter caps have been replaced at an earlier stage and are still good, while the all-critical coupling caps are still the original 'mustard' caps that contribute so much to the great tone of these vintage amps. All point-to-point hand wired, and still has the original MSP (Sydney-made) 8" speaker. These are a very simple and 'pure' circuit, so much so that they don't even have an on/off switch! We sold a Fi-Sonic amp with a similar circuit to a Melbourne blues harp player way back when Grouse Guitars first began, and that can be seen here. Very collectable, very usable, very cool! The amp measures 41cm(W) x 32cm(H) x 19cm(D) and weighs 6kg. Shipped size and weight will be higher due to packing. Click here for Australia-wide shipping quote - just add your postcode, select whether you want the security of signing for the delivery, and click the 'Calculate Postage' button! $995AUD (plus shipping)
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