Magnatone M10 cabinet rebuild

[BenSykora]

Hello all, this is my first post on Hoffman amps.  I've been an amp hobbyist for years and have done a couple of the ax84 projects.  The grapevine says someone here has restored a Magnatone M10 and suggested I come here for some advice.

I picked up an M10 off craigslist, but it requires significant restoration.  The previous owner tried converting it from a combo to a head, but the conversion was pretty bad.  Also the faceplate is missing, one of the "M10" logos is missing and the plastic top is warped near the light bulb from overheating.  The good news is it's fully functional and the circuit apears unmodified.

As for the cabinet:  I'd like to restore it to a combo amp, which means building a replica cabinet.  I'm undecided between keeping it as original as possible (i.e. 8" + tweeter) or building an M10A cab with 12" speaker.  Any advice?  I've never played through an 8" speaker, but I can tell you I much prefer 12s over 10s.  I'm guessing a the 12" speaker M10A cab would be more useful to me.

As for the faceplates and "M10" logo.  I was planning on having BNP lasers make a faceplate for me (I'll have to draft it).  But I'm stuck on the "M10" logo.  Any suggestions?

thanks
Ben

[sluckey]

I restored a M10A... http://home.comcast.net/~seluckey/magnatone/magnatone.htm

I think you will like the 12" speaker better.

I bought my M10A from eBay and it was a mess due to poor packing. Looked like Humpty Dumpty! I was able to put it back together again. My faceplate was mostly illegible but I was able to find another complete top case on eBay. It looked much better than my original. I changed out the top case and sold my old case on eBay and even made a profit. Go figure! So, watch eBay for all things 'Magnatone'. Be patient and you'll find the M10 logo badges. The M10 and M10A use the same top case and logo badges. They have a different faceplate, but the top case has a lot of holes in it so it can be used for either amp by just changing the faceplate. I suspect the same top case is probably used on all of the Mxx suitcase series amps.

Good luck with the project and be sure to post your progress. We like that stuff!  

[BenSykora]

sluckey,

Thanks for the tips.  I will keep an eye on ebay and maybe get lucky like you!  Just for fun, I'm attaching a picture of the starting point (if the attachment thing works).

Could you describe the construction details of your 12" cab?  I know the 8" speaker cab is divided into 2 sections: the bottom houses the power supply and the speaker, the top houses the amp and reverb tank.  There is a small port between the two sections, but I don't think its for accoustic reasons, rather for running the power harness up to the amp chassis.  Is the 12" cab the same?  Could you supply me some dimensions to build from?  Really all I need is the height of each section because I can get width and depth from the half a cabinet I've got now.

cheers
Ben

[sluckey]

The cab is all plywood construction. The front and rear are 3/4" and the two sides, bottom, and partition are 1/2". The hole in the partition is only for the power supply harness and speaker wires. Here are some more cab details. Hope this helps.

[BenSykora]

Here's a photo of the rebuilt M10 cabinet.  Many, many thanks to slucky for the detailed cabinet plans!

I'm very happy with the results, even though there are a couple of goofs.  After carefully cutting the most perfect speaker hole in my life, I noticed it was on the wrong side (bottom right instead of bottom left).  Rather than cut the hole again, I just flipped the back board - moving the power supply over to allow room for the speaker.  Hopefully I don't end up with hum issues...

The local guitar tech had a scrap of ampeg blue / silver grill cloth that fit perfectly (sold it to me for $3!).  The hardest part was the side trim pieces.  I ended up just using a thin strip of oak, which turned out quite apealing.

Next steps are to mount the speaker and find a faceplate.  I'm planning on replicating one and sending it off for laser engraving.

Thanks again for the help!
Ben

[sluckey]

That looks good Ben! There was a guy making knobs for these Maggies over on Yahoo/Magnatone forum. The forum was not very technically oriented but some good info just the same. It was useful to me when I rebuilt my maggie. You have to join to access the message base or files.

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Magnatone-Valco/

...Steve