CHAMP ELECTRONICS -" THE VINTAGE VALVE AMP HOSPITAL"
NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND
SERVICING A SOUND CITY GT80 AMPLIFIER HEAD
OK, this is the first time I have seen and worked on one of these! To the best of my knowledge, and with
the information the owner (John) has provided, apparently this is quite a rare amp! He also tells me that he has only ever been able to find two more of them….in the world!
Although she was pretty tidy, there had been a lot of modifications done and this was
making her pretty noisy! No problem though. After two days on the workbench I got her all back to rights.
This involved the removal of all the modifications, and
the replacement of most of the smoothing caps too.
From what I can gather, there were not many of these
made, and they were actually originally a combo amp. However, this one is actually a head! The chassis has been
nickel-plated, which is not normal for Sound Cities. It is the same chassis as the LB120 head (that uses 6 x EL34's), the output transformer is the normal Partridge 100 unit, but the power transformer is the same Partridge transformer that was used on the LB120! It is of no wonder that this amp makes about 112 watts RMS from just the four EL34's! Why the title of GT80, I don't really
know. There is also a master volume control but no pilot lamp! My gut feeling is that this amp was probably a prototype
version, with the intention of making it a current model that didn't
materialize.......apart from maybe just a few examples like this one?
