Hi! There seems to be a big trend,
nowadays with guitarists, to go for combo amplifiers
of around 5 watts which are very portable. This is a particular
tendency for both amateur and semi-pro guitarists, who do a lot of
"bedroom playing" and
small local gigs. Most of these small amps seem to be WEM Clubman's,
Fender Champ's, Gibson Skylark's and a few other similar 4 - 5
watter's. The choice of which one seems to be very "personal", and as I
have always found most guitarists "finicky",
that doesn't surprise me in the least! Nevertheless, such a small amp
can sound really cool at low volume, and when overdriven also sound
great; especially for studio work or "miked-up" situations through a
big PA
rig.
About 3 months ago I received a phone call from a fairly regular customer of mine
(Karl - Gosh....he'll think he's famous now that I've mentioned his name!!) asking about having an
amp, won again on EBay, sent to me straight from the the big USA for me to check and sort
out. This has occurred a few times before with other customers and I don't
have a problem with this. In-fact it makes a lot of sense to do so with gear of 30 or more years old!
Although this was a Gibson Skylark (a model that I have come across before - please check out
this article), this time it was the Kalamazoo
version. Now, the story goes that Gibson, at some point back there in
the sixties, farmed-out
some of their work to Kalamazoo. It is also suggested that this was
basically Gibson's "budget
range", but, what I can tell you is this: having done a couple of
Gibson Skylarks in the past and now this so called "budget version", I
can not see any difference
whatsoever! All the components are of the same quality and from the
same
manufacturers; all the workmanship quality was identical; and even the
wooden cases were the same,
complete with dovetail jointed too (please see photo below). You don't
find this nowadays on guitar
combos! In my eyes, they are as good as each other and I certainly
wouldn't use the term "budget!!" (See bottom of this page also for
further information recently received on this subject.)
One of the main reasons for Karl to have the amp sent straight to me
was the fact that these early sixties USA versions were only equipped
for 120 volts use (American mains supply voltage). I have done a good
few modifications on this score, and whilst the power transformer would
almost certainly have
been operating correctly at 120v, I had to remove it and rewind to our
British 240 volts.
When Karl first won the amp, he was already aware that there was no back panel and
that the speaker was missing too. However, on arrival three of the tubes were smashed,
not having been very well packed. Replacing the tubes was no problem as I have all these in stock.
Once I had rewound and fitted the power transformer, plus installing a
new set of tubes,
the old amp came back to life absolutely perfectly! Someone had already
changed
or added the main smoothing capacitors, and this had been carried
out fine. There were
hardly any other component changes needed and in-fact I had to remove
just one
component. As these early amps had no earth (two core cable), it was
always a trend to fit a capacitor from the +AC mains to ground
(sometimes two capacitors, one from the -AC too) This/these would then
reflect as a "virtual ground". Not a
"done-thing" nowadays, so this cap was removed and a proper three core
power cord has been
provided to ensure a "real ground (earth)".
I remembered that a while ago I had done a "V-fronted" stereo Gibson amp (please
check out HERE) and this too required no component changes! Not a bad
testimony for old Gibson amps!!
Finally, it was time to deal with the missing speaker. I left this to
an old friend of mine who always "comes up trumps" when I'm stuck,
and hey, just look at what he came up with! This 8 ohm, 10" unit
was perfect for the job, not only in looks but sound too! We don't
really know if it is a Jenson, JBL, or what the hell it is really but,
what the heck, it looks the part and sounds really good too!
The other good thing about this Kalamazoo Skylark is the fact that it
uses a pair of output tubes (rather than
being single-ended like most of its competitors) and this AB1, with out
a feedback type of circuit (rather like a Vox AC30, but at only about 6
watts or so) always sounds better than SE (single-ended) Class A!!
This amp ended up sounding superb all round. In-fact, I'll let Karl's testimonial e-mail
below tell the rest!
Thanks for your interest, John.
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Hi John, Just to say how pleased I am with the work you have done rescuing the Kalamazoo Skylark. It did look as though there was a great amp waiting to emerge from what arrived from the USA, incomplete as it was. The work you have done exceeds all my expectations particularly as the amp has not been modified or changed in any way other than for safety. The amp looks great and sounds stunning I imagine just as it did when it was bought in 1964, if not better? Why these amps haven't got the kudos and collectability of Fender Champs is a mystery and lets keep it that way. Cheers again for your painstaking work. Karl
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Incidentally another curious point about Gibson amps is that they
rarely match published schematics. The Skylark is probably the exception, but on
the larger amps it seems that they were constantly experimenting.
You
can probably tell I share your enthusiasm for old amps...
Best
regards, Peter Simpson ."