Haynes Jazz King II

[plexi50]

Anyone have any info on this amp? I believe it is 1963 or 65. Im going to pick it up right now. I need another piece of cool looking furniture. Back in a bit with more details. It looks pretty near mint to me. If it has gremanium transistors i may be screwed. I hear it is a real clean sounding amp.

[plexi50]

Going through all the module boards that plugin. 5 small boards total. This amp is a breeze to work on. Most of the electrolyics are saturated. Replace a 25uf-25V that was shorted and the amp came to life. Reverb is wonderful as is the Vibrato. Nice CTS speakers that sound great. I need a power switch which is obsolete so it may take a while to find one. If not i will just solder a smaller push SPST inside of the original power switch housing and snap the red lens over it and back in place. And of all the things i never ever thought i would find were the schematics. I emailed a person from a 2003 thread on the electronic music forum using there AOL email address. Now it's one thing to find that thread. But the freakyest part of this is the AOL address is still in use and he sent me all of the Catolog info,sales brochures,preamp and power amp schematics etc. I will make all of these schematic and info available to Doug and on my website as well. Too cool!

[plexi50]

Boards. Checkout the high end brass photo cell/

[echuta13]

OK... I know it's transistorized, but I likes me some amp porn, and I don't care!!!

It's a really interesting amp from the cab to the guts. 

[Willabe]

Replace a 25uf-25V that was shorted and the amp came to life. Reverb is wonderful as is the Vibrato. Nice CTS speakers that sound great.

Very nice!     

Ok, so how many watts does it say it's supposed to be? Is it a dark sounding amp for jazz guitar?

Looks like PSU in the bottom left of cab, but what's on the bottom right? Some kind of relay or a couple of power R's? I can't see it clearly.

Looks like the outside of the amp is in great shape.


                  Brad     

   

[plexi50]

This PDF best explains the sound. Jazz and Rock EQ settings. Nice n jazzy or rock

[Willabe]

Yeah, I see they say "set bass on 10 and treb. on 0."   

Now that's old style jazz guitar.


             Brad     

[plexi50]

More freaky news. I just found the power switch. There were 10 of them. I bought all of them. They are white but i can remedy that. Plus these have a 120V lamp instead of the 12V lamp. The red lens i have on my old one just snaps in place over the white push button. I quess it was ment to be?

[plexi50]

All boards completely recapped. Man this amp sounds great! Reverb is full and smooth. The vibrato is exceptionally nice. This amp has a real tube tone to it. Im glad i bought it. And yeah it does breakup but not until 9-10 on the volume 

[smackoj]

Cool ride man...Kinda like a '65 impala convertible....Like you said Plexi, some things are just meant to be....put a white switch in it....who could possibly know?

[plexi50]

For sure. Just like a 65 Impala. The cream white color of the switch will look cool without making it look black like the original. I get them monday. I love this old sh*t. I should just glue a tube to the cab. It sounds no different than a tube amp. The early 60's SS amps really had there own unique tone. A lot of experimenting back then. The reverb and vibrato boards have trimmer pots on them to set the clarity and density of the reverb or vibrato which is really cool. Bias is what it is and being able to dial in that sweet spot is to cool. The 70's SS were mostly crap sounding and sterile. Ive come to realize that there is nothing wrong with a good SS amp. This is one of them. I thought about gluing a tube to the chassis to keep this amp in the tube amp section. Ha! But it is that cool of an amp and i think the info in general is so lacking on the web about it that this is good and is specific. Specifics are very lacking today on what is real and hype

[plexi50]

I got the switches in today. Snaped red lense in place from the old switch. Im having trouble figuring out how to get the light to come on when engaing the switch. The light itself is on the center two terminals of the switch. The switch power to the amp is the two outer terminals. This is a 120V AC lamp instead of the original 12V lamp so i have to do some figuring when my brain starts working again. Good quality NOS switches

[smackoj]

I am curious if any of the "mod squad" on this blog have used, owned or worked on the Roland Jazz amp? I think it's called the 120 chorus or jazz chorus?  I see a lot of them for sale and wondered if they have any likers in the crowd?

[Stankfut]

Funny thing.....everyone thinks jazz tone is super clean. That may have been their goal....but I think they pretty much failed. if you listen to jazz guitar from the fifties and sixtes there is quite a bit of distortion is happening. Wes montgomey comes to mind as does Grant Greene. They do perfer a darker tone though.

As far as the JC 120 from roland......i don't own one but I like them, good clean tone and an excellent chorus effect. I believe metallica uses them for clean tones...also I think andy summers from the police. Ido think it is probably the best ss amp for guitar, which is ironic because it was designed by a keyboard company.

[plexi50]

The Roland is a good amp. I see them for sale on CL at times and pretty low priced in these times. This Haynes is the Sh*t man.  So full and lucious. The reverb and vibrato both are killer. You wouldnt know it wasnt a tube amp if you didnt look. I threw it up on my site more than anything else for info so maybe others will know and have info to rebuild theres. Probably not many of them left that are working and not gutted.  I feel so good about this amp i have a new pic of it.  Just a joke and does not reflect the inners of this amp. Halloween is coming up so here is it's outfit
http://triodeamplification.com/JazzKingII.html

[Stankfut]

Sorry, no offense intended , I should have said"in my experience,"since I've never heard you amp....

[plexi50]

Sorry, no offense intended , I should have said"in my experience,"since I've never heard you amp....

I never heard my amp either when i bought it. It wasnt working. The power switch was bad. No offense taken. 

[smackoj]

senor Plexi50. I would be interested in more historical and mechanical info on this Haynes amp if you have found some. i.e. where it was made, company's hx etc.....maybe any drawings, schems and data if you found any in your search for such?   

gracias, Jack D

[plexi50]

smackoj the link below has all the info on the Jazz King II that i have. Enjoy!
http://triodeamplification.com/HaynesJK.html

[rml714]

Plexi 50,

I'm the guy that posted all of the Haynes amp info on a tech site way back and sent it to you. My dad worked for Merson Music in the '60s and '70's and they were the US distributors for Haynes, Marshall, Univox, Hagstrom and Giannini Guitars. I recently took over as national sales manager for Giannini so its like coming full circle. Anyhow, I just did a random search for Haynes Jazz King and found the EL34 site. My Haynes still works but we both turned gray. Have a good one.

Bob Landis