Vintage Univox U-1086 head

[Luke51411]

New (Vintage) Univox amp head day! Complete with reverb unit manufactured by Beautiful Girls in climate controlled atmosphere conditions  It's kind of rusty and a couple of the knobs are missing. Anybody have an idea where I can get similar knobs?

It needs a 3 prong plug installed and cleaning, probably recap. According to the listing its working as is but I haven't fired it up yet.

The transformers are MASSIVE and this is a heavy beast.

[mth5044]

Nice! Never heard one. That's a lot of inputs!

Check out Davies 8000, 8005, 8010. Not sure if they come in white, but they look similar

http://www.daviesmolding.com/standard-products/plastic-knobs/pointer-control/default.html

[Luke51411]

Nice! Never heard one. That's a lot of inputs!

Check out Davies 8000, 8005, 8010. Not sure if they come in white, but they look similar

http://www.daviesmolding.com/standard-products/plastic-knobs/pointer-control/default.html

Yeah its actually a PA head I think. Thanks for the link.

[vigilante397]

...manufactured by Beautiful Girls in climate controlled atmosphere conditions [/img]

Congratulations on making me laugh out loud in the middle of class

Sweet looking amp though. I've played a few Univox guitars that were AMAZING but frankly never even knew they made amps. Huge score for you there!

[Luke51411]

...manufactured by Beautiful Girls in climate controlled atmosphere conditions [/img]

Congratulations on making me laugh out loud in the middle of class

Sweet looking amp though. I've played a few Univox guitars that were AMAZING but frankly never even knew they made amps. Huge score for you there!

Thank Folded Line of Milton Wisconsin for that, the first time I saw one of their reverb units I cracked up. The amp has a reputation for being a very clean amp I'm excited to try it out.

[vigilante397]

My day has officially been made.

[wavley]

That reverb tank makes me smile every time I open a space echo that has reverb in it.  I pretty regularly tinker with my RE-501, sometimes out of boredom and it makes me happy to think of all those beautiful girls making lovely reverbs just for me to turn around and make crazy noises with them.

Congrats on the awesome amp.

PA amps can make awesome guitar amps, but sometimes the input sections need a little tweaking, I was just looking at the schematic for my drummer's Fender PA100 last night and we decided that we had a lot of Fendering to do to the input sections, actually, he's leaving two of the inputs the same because his keyboards play nice with it the way it is, but the other two are getting regular Fender guitar amp values.

[Luke51411]

here is a schematic I found

[wavley]

That schematic looks like it sounds great just the way it is, you could probably just leave it alone and have years of happiness.

I'm a tinkerer so, personally I'd leave channels 1 and 2 stock and do the 4 input Bassman/Marshall/Traynor jumper thing because I love the way that sounds.  But on 3 and 4 I would split the cathodes on the input valve and play around with resistor and bypass cap values, it would be like having the input stages of three different amps to have fun with AND totally reversible, it's just a couple of resistors and caps.

[wavley]

somehow this was a double post where I quoted myself

[digi2t]

In my Ampeg G212...



Didn't Univox collaborate with Marshall at some point? I think I read that somewhere.

[Luke51411]

Yeah I believe they were under the same umbrella at one point. I think univox influenced marshall to use bigger transformers.

[Luke51411]

Also I just realized I could somewhat use this as a platform to A/B tubes.

[Rich_S]

For knobs, look at Electronic Hardware Corporation http://www.ehcknobs.com/, model numbers MS91528-1P2_ or MS91528-1K2_.  EHC makes MIL SPEC stuff.  If you get their catalog, follow all the footnotes, and fill in that final space with a "G" you can spec out gray knobs, but there's probably a minimum order of 10,000 units or something.  I compromised and chose the black versions which were in stock at Mouser at the time.

You could do black and then segregate them on the panel - say, black for volume knobs and gray for tone or whatever works out numerically.  Or you could spray-paint some black ones gray.  Or who knows?  You might get lucky and convince Mouser to sell you some gray ones (if you do, let me know... I might want to get in on that action).

I know all this because about ten years ago, I set out to build myself the Univox Group B amp that Univox never built, an 18 Watter with the two-tone blue cosmetics.  All the Group B amps were monsters, 60 or 100 (or more) watts and WAY more than I needed.  Still, you can't argue with their cool factor, so I build this combo:



Note the nearly-correct pointer knobs.

Edit:  P.S. - I just looked at Mouser's site, and it appears they don't carry EHC knobs any more.  Allied Electronics does, though.  Lookee here.

[Luke51411]

Thanks! I knew that I had seen similar knobs before (I work in aviation) I found a few potential options. Thanks! Your build looks great!

[Luke51411]

And... It doesn't work. All I get is static. I guess it's more of a project than I thought. Eh shoulda figured. That's what I get for ebaying this stuff.

[Cozybuilder]

And... It doesn't work. All I get is static. I guess it's more of a project than I thought.

Are you talking about my ex-wife?

[Luke51411]

And... It doesn't work. All I get is static. I guess it's more of a project than I thought.

Are you talking about my ex-wife?

Nope, mine 

[Luke51411]

Well, it had a bad preamp tube and is now passing signal, the beautiful girls aren't singing though.

[mth5044]

What's that jack looking doohickey in the schematic after that connects to all the input tube stages but before the Tonestack and reverb driver? Is that a line input or something? I only see the four sets of jacks on the front.