One step back, one step sideways

"I collect molds, spores, and other fungus." -- Egon Spengler

I haven't posted for a while, since I haven't done anything with the amp for a while. Work has been very hectic, I haven't even picked up a guitar for several weeks, and when I have picked one up, it's been the acoustic.

The champ has been sitting there on the table next to my computer at home, staring at me, saying "why don't you play me? why don't you fix me?" and I've been ignoring it, with some guilty feelings.

I've also been smelling it. Yes, smelling it. When it arrived (as I wrote previously) "It smells like the wettest, mustiest basement you've ever been in." And to my surprise, that hasn't improved. It has continued to smell terrible. When is this thing going to dry out?

Today, while waiting for something on the computer I was idly poking at the front grille, when I realized that the grille is attached to a piece of wood that is separate from the speaker baffle. In fact, it's attached by Velcro. So I pulled at it, it came off, and lo and behold -- mold! Fluffy white mold, growing in between the grille and the speaker baffle!

I took out the electronics and speaker and took the frame down to the basement, thinking I might be able to sand it off, then wipe down the wood with Clorox to keep the mold away. I started to carefully remove the fabric from the grille, then I noticed that the mold had grown under the fabric.

"OK, I'll have to replace the fabric."

I pulled all of the staples holding the fabric to the grille, and the grille started to come apart in chunks. The wood (some sort of pressboard) had gotten soaked at some point and had rotted.

"OK, I'll have to replace the grille."

So I started in on the frame itself, and pretty quickly determined that the mold had gotten under the Toulex (the black vinyl stuff on the outside of amps). I started to peel up the Toulex (which was coming loose) and saw that the mold had gotten into the wood.

"OK, I'll just have to replace the whole thing."

I ripped off the rest of the Toulex so I could see how the thing was constructed. It's not very complicated joinery, and I think if I had to I could cut pieces of the same shape and size and assemble a replacement box. (Before that I'd probably ask a friend who has a wood shop in his basement to help out... something I wasn't looking forward to doing, but if I got stuck I'd do it.)

So I came back upstairs and noticed the not-as-old Champion 110 sitting under the table. I bought the Champion 110 six months ago, off Craigslist, for $15. It's a mid-1990s solid state amp that I thought I might be able to fix. I sent away to Fender for the schematic, resoldered the loose parts, but couldn't get it working. I kept the dead amp (and its 10" 8 ohm speaker) around in case I got involved in some other project that called for a speaker cabinet.

Well here I was, with working electronics from a 1973 silverface (tube) Champ, and with a reasonable cabinet for a 1993 (solid state) Champion 110. I thought hey, let's see how much space is left over in the Champion 110 cabinet if I put the Champ electronics in.

And lo and behold, the cases are the same size! It must be like the old legend about railroad gauges and Roman roads -- once you've got an assembly line set up to build Champs, you re-use the stuff you have, even if none of the parts are the same any more. Different electronics, different-sized speaker, different construction methods, but still the same dimensions.

All I need to do is to drill some mounting holes for the electronics and I can pop the '73 champ into the '93 cabinet, and I'll be moving forward. I've got to do something about the speaker -- it's an 8 ohm speaker, the Champ is designed to drive 4 ohms, and I'd rather use the Weber speaker anyway, but the hole is the wrong size. So that may take some work. But in comparison to building an entirely new cabinet, it's nothing.