Airline 9035A

[RicharD]

Back in February, we had a family get together for my mom's 85th birthday.  Somehow the topic of my amp obsession came up.  My oldest brother informed me he still had a Monkey Wards amp he had gotten for Christmas back when he was in high school.  He said it was headed for the Goodwill but he'd rather give it to me if I wanted it.  It arrived today.


It is a 62-9035A.  It appears to be the same as the Gretsch 6152.  It's a 6V6 single ended amplifier with tremelo and reverb.  My oldest brother went on to be a Rhodes Scholar.  Check out his headphone (and cabinet) mod he did when he was 16.


After a short (pun intended) ride on the lamp limiter, the amp came up under it's own power.  Hum was not as bad as I would have expected for an amp that has been sitting this long.  Pots are super scratchy and the tremelo does not work.  My daughter is home sick so I only got to idle it in the driveway.  Hopefully I can drive it around the block tomorrow before I give it a tune up (cap job, grounded cord, major cleaning).

I don't think it has a whole lot of collector's value.  I think I'm gonna hotrod it and keep it in the family.

[billcreller]

So who built those for wards?  Did they build their own amps ( and radios)??  Lots of radios were sold by them when I was a kid.

[RicharD]

Reeks of Valco to me.

[RicharD]

The Monky Wards geetar arrived today.   

[RicharD]

Ok... so the guitar is almost unplayable.  It appears to be a Teisco made for M. Wards.  It has a body crack right where the neck mounts.  Heck... it's an SG knock off so it seems appropriate.  Years of neglect have left the neck fairly warped.  It's fun to warm up on because when you switch to a real guitar, playing becomes much more effortless.

The amp was simply begging for modification.  I did the usual cap job grounded cord thang.  I got rid of all the ceramic caps in the signal path except for the reverb because I really liked the brittle sound it has.  The Tremelo was flat out unusable.  It had a speed control but no intensity and was very extremely choppy.  I never use tremelo anyway so "off with it's head".  I yanked the entire circuit and added an EF86 front end.  While in there I revamped the input circuit and added a DPDT switch so I can go between a 12AX7 front end and the EF86.  The EF86 channel ended up with dual tone controls by accident.  I did these mods on the fly w/o schematic and it just sorta happened that way.  I like it so I'm keeping it.  I had to adjust the cathode resistor of the 6V6.  The original value was 330 ohms and that put the idle current at 52mA (as measured).  Somewhere along the way, the original speaker gave up the ghost.  It still works but squeaks.  Probably the lacquer on the voice coil was dry rotted and didn't like the reawakening all these decades later.

I'm really liking this amp.  It's really nasty sounding which suits me.  It's a little loud for around the house (5ish watts) but my neighbors are cool.  Here's the schematic and a gut shot.

-Richard
 

[P Batty]

The guitar looks  like a Kingston, probably made by Kawai, the Teisco stuff was a little better quality. Those PUs might have some interesting microphonics.

[RicharD]

A friend of mine who is no expert thought it was a Teisco.  I'm leaning towards (at the moment) Guyatone or Dyko based on a picture from this site

http://kingofkays.com/japan.aspx

2nd picture.  As my luck would have it, he ain't certain either.  Pickups look the same, tail piece looks the same, head stock is similar.

[bigdaddy]

Those guitars make great slide guitars. No need to get it really playable. It's almost like a lap steel with the action really high. Nice amp too, that's an old style blues slide players dream setup... , you can get some serious organic natural but raunchy slide stuff with those 2.

[P Batty]

Definitely a Kawai made guitar: http://www.myrareguitars.com/1960guitars.html

Above site has pictures of a four pickup version- same body, pickups, tailpiece, knobs and headstock, could have been sold under any one of a variety of names, usually Kingston. Those Japanese guitars can be a lot of fun, if you don't take them too seriously.

[RicharD]

>Definitely a Kawai made guitar
OK I'm convinced.  Here's the 4 pickup version of the same geetar.

>Those Japanese guitars can be a lot of fun, if you don't take them too seriously.
It's a ton of fun to play.  I put really light strings on it and it walks all over the place.  I am anything but a serious guitar player.  I'm in it for fun.  At 46, it's safe to say "rock god" can be scratched off my list of thing to do.   

[drew]

The amp was simply begging for modification. 

Do whatever you want to the guts; just don't touch that grill cloth!

[RicharD]

That grill cloth rules!  Wouldn't dream of messing with it.

[Rev D]

 Yes it does, love that grill clothe, psychedelic looking! +1 for the teisco making a smashing bottle neck guitar. Through a nasty amp and you can get your hound dog Taylor on.

 Your Frankin Wards amp sounds like it'll be really cool!

Regards,

D.