Friday, January 8, 2010

1950's National Amplifier

Here's a rare one. A Valco made National brand amplifier. The Two 8" speakers are the original Jensen Alnico's.





The cabinet is in pretty good shape considering the age of the amp. The top and sides have some water damage from sitting in an attic for years.




Here's the chassis unloaded from the cabinet. You can see the really small output transformer as compared to the power trannie. That's a 5Y3G rectifier next to the PT. Lots of squashy tone there. There is an added master volume ( not really needed and I didn't do that, it was already done when I got it) and extension speaker jack. That black thing with the metal cap is actually a tube. It's a 6J7 and is the gain stage for the amp. The tube behind that is a 6SL7G and does the phase inversion. Two big bottle 6L6G's for output. I didn't pull the control panel out and a friend of mine has a suspicion there's another tube hiding up in there.



Here's the money shot. You can see the old waxed paper in oil caps. It's had a cap job done and the two prong cord has been replaced with a three prong. Which is necessary if you don't want to suddenly die of electrocution.



And the original RCA branded tubes. Still going strong after all these years.

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