PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Weirdest, most bizarre guitar amp you ever owned.

So ... in another post, I got to thinking about the old amps and gear I have owned.... and figured... if I've had some weird stuff, goofy stuff, ugly stuff, stuff that makes you wonder what you were thinking at the time..... I'll just bet others have too.

So... dig back in the memories and tell that story about the most bizarre piece of gear you have ever owned....

My story: I bought a Baldwin Exterminator Guitar Amp. I forget where... I forget what I paid....



It had a warning sticker on the back about possible hearing damage if the amp was turned up too loud... aside from the really tacky but colorful push buttons for additional tone control... this amp had two 15" speakers, two 12" speakers, and two 7" speakers in it. And it put out an ear crushing 250w of solid state power into those speakers. The 15's and the 12's were fused. The fuses were automotive turn signal light bulbs. So as I played, the louder I played, (and yeah I played loud) the "fuses" would get brighter as I played louder. Those suckers would shine out the back of the cabinet, since the cabinet was open at the bottom. As I played, I could see the light behind the amp and knew everything was working fine. If it got dark back there and the sound dropped out.... time to stick in some new light bulbs.

I also believe it was a 2 channel amp... one very basic channel for "rhythm" and the other channel with lots of tone knobs and of course, the push buttons for the lead.

That thing was a monster too. Heavy and very large. I had removed the back seat in my car so I could carry it to jam sessions and gigs.



It was sure enough ugly with the blue Naugahyde on the sides.... but I thought that amp was the coooooolest thing at the time.

A bought a Carvin FR 1200 amp in 1973. This powerful amp had a 1x15", 4x10" and a horn for speakers. I had to turn the horn off, as it was too harsh of a sound for me. I don't think that I ever put the volume knob past 3!

I used to put my Dynocord echocord tape echo S65 on the top of this amp. Together this unit was almost as tall than I was.

Together with my 1972 Carvin Double neck guitar
I was in heaven.

Remember this was a long time ago and I could carry equipment like that!

Here are a couple of pics of yours truly with that equipment way back then:



Note the customary bottle of beer on the amp!

That's the first thing this old Irishman noticed! (Chuckling)

Reminds me of the jam sessions we had in Germany with a fabulous guitarist from Duluth. The breweries would deliver. We didn't know our true BA% until he stood up to crawl home!

My first real guitar was a pre-CBS Fender Stratocaster and Fender Vibrolux Amplifier. That was about 1958 and the combination at that time was about $700. The guitar alone would fetch $thousand today.

Donny

Herb,

I had a Baldwin Exterminator too! Yeah, all of your observations are dead on!

After I got married I wasn't playing it much.. so I lent it to a friend... and he sold it!! (and kept the money!)

Those were the days...

So guys, what years were those Baldwin Exterminators new, 60's, 70's?

Trying to get a feel for how vintage they are.

I had a KMD 100W combo amp that said it had an insert section, but in reality, it was just another input. It was before the preamp, so needless to say, any use of the amp with effects after the pre-amp was not possible. It was the GV100D amp in this catalog:
http://www.ovationtribute.com/Catalogues/Kaman%20KMD%20Amps%20Catalog/Kaman%20KMD%20Amps%20Catalog.html

KMD was from Kaman, the manufacturer of Ovation guitars at that time.

here's an ad from 1969
http://www.vintageguitarandbass.com/adDetails/81

I had mine in about 71

Not sure when they were first introduced

I don't recall when they were made... but I bought mine when I was still in high school. I graduated in 1972.... so the late 60's sounds reasonable.

Some information is here:
http://www.vintageguitar.com/1917/baldwin-guitars-and-amplifiers/

Some more information is here:
https://www.google.de/search?q=Baldwin+Exterminator+Guitar+Amp&oq=Baldwin+Exterminator+Guitar+Amp&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.670j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

It seems to date back to somewhere around the mid-60s.

I should probably include the "rest of the story"...

It was the 70s, and I.. uh.. didn't notice that the guy never returned my amp. Hard to imagine that a person could just lose track of an amp, but I did. Need I say more about that? ;-)

Anyway, about 25 years later a mutual friend asked me whatever happened to the exterminator (he already knew.. he was just testing to see if I did)

When I floundered around and had to admit that I didn't remember ever selling it, and I had frankly no idea what happened to it... he told me that the other guy had sold it years earlier.

Now to bring this story 360 and relate it to the BIAB forum, I discovered last year on my road trip that one of the people I visited knows the guy who sold my amp! He even used to play in a band with him! Small small world!

And that (as Paul Harvey used to say)... is the rest of the story

As far as weird gear, in the late 1970s I had a no-name 100W solid-state guitar amp. "No name" is not an expression; I couldn't find the mfr's name anywhere. It was relatively tall as the two 12" speakers were in a diagonal configuration. Underneath the controls, at the top of the slanted speaker panel, were three Christmas tree bulbs. These were not fuses, just decoration. The speakers were unprotected; there was no grill cloth or anything. I eventually cut circles of expanded mesh and screwed them down, then sold it for two or three times what I paid.

With it I had a no-name wah/fuzz pedal. (There was a name, but it was probably Acme or Nippon Gakki or some such.) The wah was okay, but the fuzz was awful. I used it anyway, though. I don't recall where I got the amp or pedal or what I paid; I'd guess $50/$10, respectively.

In the small world department, my first amp was a blond Fender Super amp (which someone had painted dark brown) into which I plugged two low-end Shure Hi-Z mics for voice and acoustic guitar, which actually worked pretty well. In 1972, just after I joined the Army, I traded the amp, mics, stands, guitar, and $500 for my "forever" acoustic, an Alvarez Yairi Model 5060, which I still have. It's a very nice impression (not a copy by any stretch) of a Martin D-41.

When I was discharged two years later, I returned home. I was cruising music stores one day and came across my old Super amp. It was rough, though. A sales guy told me it had been in a plane crash in Alaska. It looked like it had come apart and been nailed back together. I have never seen or heard of a Super amp since, nor do I understand why someone before me had painted it.

R.

Another amp I had was more of a science experiment.

At the time.... this was after the exterminator ... I was a poor musician with no real guitar amp at the time.... looking back I should have just bought one second hand from someone and saved myself a ton of grief in the process.

Since I was enrolled in a college tech course for electronics, and we were studying tube theory, I figured I would build an amp. In the music store, I saw a Marshall with it's paperwork and in that packet was a schematic with all the values and part numbers.....

Have you figured out where this story is going?

Well I spoke to the sales guy, and managed to get a copy of the schematic. I ordered the transformers for under a hundred bucks.... and started scrounging the resistors and caps until I had all the necessary parts.

Since I wasn't a metal worker nor did I have the aluminum or tools to make a chassis, I decided to build this amp on a sheet of plywood and then once finished, add the sides, top and front. I had a thin piece of aluminum kickplate from the door shop where I worked at the time, that I used to hold the jacks.... in and out... as well as the knobs and switches. The tube sockets were connected to stand-offs and in reality, the amp looked like aa experiment gone wrong from Dr Frankenstien's lab.

The output tube plates had around 450vdc on them and those connections were out there floating in the breeze. To say it was dangerous would be an understatement. On the positive side... I did actually have a circuit breaker installed in the circuit.

So... I took my old speaker cab and hooked that amp up. Turned it on....and plugged in my guitar. Quite impressive.... good and loud.... nice tone.... But..... hey... what's that smell... oh crap...smoke!!!!

Apparently the bias voltage was a bit off, and the output tubes went viral.... glowing like the rear end of a jet's afterburner..... next thing that happened was the majic smoke was released from several of the components and ...well....eventually, Long story short....I ended up buying an amp that worked rather than to try to electrocute myself and burn the house down.

I still have the transformers and the tubes in a box... and every now and then I get the urge to "build it" again.... but common sense and sound reason prevail... for now anyway.

If we're talking "Home Brew", I made a small practice amp similar to the famous "Pig Nose". I used 2 - 5 Watt Audio Amp ICs from Radio Shack. (I wish I had taken pictures.) I connected them in bridge configuration for 10 Watts total.

I was experimenting with the WM-063T Electret Microphone Element that Greg Mackie used in his Room Equalizer. I had imported thousands of them for Greg when he owned Audio Control Corporation.

The concept is now quite common in high-end guitars. Greg was there first, friends.

Anyway, my little amp was a screamer!

Greg was experimenting with Bi-aural Sound, claiming: "Well Don, that's how we humans hear!"

Don

Those sliders on the Exterminator brought back some memories. A friend of mine used to let my band borrow his Baldwin C1 amp with Supersound. We used it for our PA. It was really loud. This was 1966. Man I'm getting old!

Guitar Hacker—now we know how you got your name!

The first Apple computer was built on a wooden board and looked as primitive as you describe. I saw it on display at a Fry's Electronics store in Santa Clara, California.

R.

That's the year I was born. Dad, is that you?!?