olwprem weltan kapena
Gwenda Gronert
Reluctantly for sale is my amazing 1963 Ampeg B15N. I bought this in the USA in 2005 from its original owner, who at that point was elderly and hadn't used it for many years. It was working but needed a full service. I had the speaker replaced, and all the caps replaced, and the 'death cap' mod to a three lead mains plug done. The tubes are the original Ampeg/Sylvania tubes and all of them measured within range so none were replaced. As you can imagine this amp sounds amazing with that rich ooey gooey Ampeg tube goodness you only find on these vintage combos.
As you can see from the pictures it is in pretty good original and unmolested condition. I chose not to repair the small tolex tears, thinking it was better to keep it as original as possible. There is no dolly. the handle on the top is a non standard replacement from some time in the past. It retains the weird octal plug for the speaker connection that was used for a year or two around 1963. Everything about this dates it correctly to mid 63. Serial number and circuit diagram are correct, and the pots all date to late 62/early 63. Ampeg used the Random Navy Flair until early 63 then switched to the Blue Diamond during the year. It is still a 117V head. I use it with a step-down transformer and all works perfectly. You can buy a 240V power transformer from Fliptops in the US if that bothers you, but as I said I preferred to keep it as original as possible. Comes with a cover, which is a little tatty on the corners.
These days I gig mostly pubs, so this will probably never see another live gig with me, although I did gig it several times when I lived in the USA, in smaller settings. Of course it mics up beautifully for FoH if necessary. I also have an early 60's SB12 and can't really justify them both right now, since neither are really being used. Regarding the pricing - I have priced it high since I am not desperate to sell, and to be quite honest if y'all think the price is too high and it doesn't sell then I am OK with that. The price is the only thing that might lessen the inevitable sellers remorse I will feel if and when she goes. I have looked online and these are getting harder and harder to find and no doubt prices will go up over time. I saw a later 1966 B15 today on Reverb for 3600 which I think is a bit steep, but hey, someone will buy it.
Oh man, this amp. I owned one before I moved to the UK. Just wonderful tone and response. Worked in any room. Unfortunately, it was one of many items I had to sell before making the move. I preferred it to my Demeter rig but was always so nervous about taking it out I often just went with the Demeter. This amp deserves to be heard. GLWTS
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I've been blowing harp through a mic and amplifier for almost as long as I've been playing harmonica--more than thirty years at this point. I currently own a handful of terrific amps, including the following. (Note: These vintage amps are NOT for sale! Scroll down the page for some new amps that are.):
Over the years I've owned a range of other amps, including a pair of blackface Fender Super Reverbs, an Ampeg Rocket (the original 12" speaker had been replaced with a 15" speaker), an Ampeg Gemini, a small hybrid Peavey of some sort (horrible!)...I've lost track. I've made mistakes. But slowly, over time, I've learned what works for me. (Hint: you'll notice that most of the amps in the list above use 8" speakers.)
Since the late 1980s, I've played all my gigs and recording sessions through the same mic: a Shure PE5-H, which is a hi-impedance vocal mic that I picked up at Matt Umanov Guitars, a store in Greenwich Village. Personally, I like the sound of a clean, powerful vocal mic (rather than a "harp mic") through a small, overdriven tube amp.
For the last twenty years, I have also used one specific footpedal: a Boss DD-3 digital delay. (I used a DD-2 before that.) I set it for a fairly long delay time, about 500 milliseconds (half a second), and I use just enough to give the sound a little fullness. It's easy to overuse effects pedals; it takes time and experimentation to come up with a sound that really works for you. The pedal below is set at the 12 o'clock position on all four knobs. I turn knobs 1 and 2 ("E. LEVEL" and "F. BACK") down to roughly the 9 o'clock position, turn knob 3 to 11 o'clock, and set knob 4 at top dead center. I've learned to tweak the settings slightly in different contexts. Here's the pedal, if you're interested in buying one. Click on the icon and it'll take you to the relevant page at Musician's Friend:
One unusual element of my sound is the fact that I always use TWO amps when I play. I plug a passive signal splitter--a so-called Y-cable--into the 1/4" output jack of my digital delay, and I run the two outputs into two different amps. The Y-cable that I use is no longer available, but if I needed to replace mine, the item below is what I'd use. (Click on the icon and you'll be able to buy it at Musician's Friend. It's cheap. You'll also need to purchase a pair of guitar cables to run from the Y-cable into your two amps.):
Before I go any further, I should let you know that I do offer a video called "Amping the Harp" in which I show off my amps, talk about each of them in detail, and explain the principles that will help you get the best possible sound out of whatever amp you use. Here's a link: www.tradebit.com/filedetail.php/3837014-amping-the-blues-harp-zip
Many beginners ask me to recommend a good harp amp and mic. I've resisted doing so, in part because my own experience is somewhat limited and idiosyncratic--I've been using one specific, hard-to-find mic for two decades, through a range of amps--and in part because I think the amp/mic thing is a very personal decision. My decades of experience have taught me one thing: if you're willing to keep looking, keep spending money, keep making mistakes and learning from your mistakes, and keep on looking for the magic combination that will give you YOUR sound in various performance situations, you WILL eventually find an amp/mic combo that works beautifully.
If you've got a bit more money to play with and you want the cream of the crop in a smaller amp, then I recommend the HarpGear HG2. It costs around $700 and $800 if shipped overseas. It's worth every penny. Brian Purdy hand-makes these things in Florida. He's a self-taught master of harp-amp design. He's constantly figuring out little tweaks that make a perfect amp even more perfect. The HarpGear HG2 is far and away the loudest and best-sounding amp of this size I've heard--loud enough for many gigs, in fact. Here's a link to the website. Just below the link, check out the video of me playing through one. If that sound doesn't make you go "S--t!!," amplified harp isn't your thing. (And please note: Brian hasn't paid me a penny to make this pitch. I can't be bought. I just like to rave about stuff that I like):
If you'd like somewhat more power than the HG2 for only slightly more money, you can't go wrong with the Fender Princeton Reverb reissue, an all-tube replica of the 1965 model. It has 15 watts and one 10" speaker, and it was THE standout stock amp of this size when I asked folks on the Modern Blues Harmonica forum which amp they would recommend. Amazon has it for just under thousand bucks. (Nobody said the blues harmonica habit was cheap, but once you're hooked, you might as well go for the good stuff):
If you go with a smaller amp, like those I've just described, you will probably want to mic it through the house P.A. system on all but the smallest coffee-shop gigs. It turns out that somebody HAS built the better harp-amp mic. It's called the Sennheiser Evolution e906 dynamic guitar amp mic. It's not cheap: about $190. I own two. It's designed to pull a warm rich sound out of an overdriven amp, and it doesn't get tweaky, even at very high sound pressure levels. Because of its flattened shape, it dangles beautifully down onto the grill cloth of whatever amp you've got, laying flat and staying where you put it. I can't say enough about it. It's just THAT GOOD. Click on the photo and read about it:
Despite the availability of a wide range of great new harp amps, many professional players use old tube (valve) amps. This is simply a fact. They do this because they're seeking a "traditional" amplified sound, and they know that one way of getting such a sound is to use the sort of amps that were actually used on the recordings--amps manufactured, for the most part, from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Even those like me, who aren't trying for a traditional sound, know that old amps have a kind of character that new amps often lack. They are responsive. They have tone.
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