So, I had this amp lying around in my father’s basement for a while now. 13 years to be precise: It was my first practice amp back when I bought my first electric guitar. The circuit wasn’t half bad, had a cool gritty marshally sound with an analogical spring reverb, but unfortunately the speaker was trash.
30 watts RMS are hard to handle for an 8 inches cheap speaker, so one morning, after an intense early '00s punk rock rehersal it simply went BZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz… and it was gone.
And finding a new speaker that wouldn’t blow up again, expecially one with such required specifications, was something I couldn’t achieve 13 years ago. So eventually I gave up searching for spares and I bought a new amp.
Fast forward to a couple months ago, I need a small practice amp to carry around, now that I have a new band after a log time.
I remembered the existence of this relic from the past, went to my dad’s house and I was surprised he didn’t throw it away after all of this time.
I started to look for spares immediately and thanks to the power of today’s internet, I was able to find that the Celestion TF0818, even tho it’s not a speaker intended for guitar amps in the first place, had all the specifications I needed: 8 inches, 8 ohms, able to withstand up to 100 watts of power.
The delivery took a while to get to my house (I ordered it via a local website) but once it arrived I put it straight in.
With new guts, my old friend is back in action: the 0818 has a good response to mid-low frequencies which gives a lovely round and dark tone to the gain channel, while still being able to work with high frequencies due the small sizes.
I’m always happy to bring new life to old music equipment, it reminds us that we don’t need the latest gizmos (and create unnecessary waste) if we take care of our stuff. Also, the swap was super easy, no joke I just needed a scewdriver and 10 minutes, so if you have and old amp lying around you could totally give it a shot, the results might surprise you.
That’s awesome. It’s great to hear that a piece of equipment didn’t make it’s way to a landfill and is back in use!
My former employer, for… reasons… had a bunch of old guitars, mostly acoustic, in various states of disrepair that they were literally about to throw in a dumpster. Some were actually quite nice, a Breedlove and two Alvarez’s, but there were cracked headstocks, chips, body cracks and other issues. I was able to convince them to give them to me and so far I’ve rehabilitated the Breedlove, and I’m still testing one of the Alvarez’s (headstock was cracked between two of the tuning peg holes) with a little glue and some love. I plan on donating them all once I get through them, as I’m an electric player and really have no room for 8 more guitars, but I couldn’t stand the thought of them just being tossed in the trash
Awesome job breathing new life into old gear! 🤘
