TK's Guitar and Amp Repair

05/06/2026

29/05/2026

Tin whiskers, cat hair, aliens? Too small for me to clearly make out with a loupe, these tiny bits were causing absolute grief for the owner of this amp, causing the sound to cut in and out randomly. It really is the smallest thing sometimes!

17/05/2026

This old Goldentone is slowly coming back to life. Spent the afternoon cleaning the front panel and k***s - they’d been painted over and the front panel had superglue globules and smears all over the front for whatever reason. The cabinet also needs to be recovered. I might be crazy, but think that Fawn tolex with an Oxblood grille would look really good - better than what it originally would have had, even. Open to ideas there though - last 2 pics show a mockup of what that might look like

15/05/2026

Installed some turrets to the bias resistor of this little amp. Got 3 birds with one stone here - it means the board won’t have to be removed to adjust its value, and it also keeps the heat away from the fragile circuit board traces. Mounting the resistor off-set also allows more air between the bypass capacitor, so it won’t fail prematurely. There are a lot of other small details that went into restoring this one, but this was the most aesthetically pleasing bit to me. Turrets were also added to replace a burnt-out and not fit for purpose heater wiring connector, new output valve sockets, all valves replaced, a recap, install IEC connector to chassis. How does it sound? Yes.

12/05/2026

Danelectro Hornet pt 2: it lives. And also has a fully functional “super hard on” boost circuit built in. The overdrive you can hear in the last clip is the front end of a blues junior being fed about 9vac of guitar signal with the gain control of the amp set about 3 😅. Also was converted to a hardtail bridge, which required half-plugging the original tremolo cavity, and new stainless frets. A battery compartment was also installed on the rear

29/04/2026

Built in the heart of Bavaria. Jury-rigged in the kidneys of Preston

10/04/2026

Resurrecting a Danelectro Hornet pt 1: making a new aluminium jack plate to replace the broken acrylic area. A nice bit of relaxing Friday crafternoon. Next up, rewiring, new frets and converting to hardtail bridge

07/04/2026

Fitting a small surface mount chip to an adapter board, to replace the existing dead and obsolete one. This main board is from a Moog Etherwave theremin

07/04/2026

Hughes and Kettner Trilogy with multiple flashovers between b+, heaters, screen and heaters, screen and cathode. Mostly correct fuse values installed (F1A in HT slot instead of T630mA), no fuses blown, no apparent faults with output valves on tester at 400vdc, stable plate dissipation at idle.

Previously replaced screen dropper is open, screen grid resistors in spec with no signs of heat. Fault occurred within minutes of power up, with no previous signs of trouble - but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a slowly developing issue that led up to it.

What do you think caused this to happen?

03/04/2026

Here’s yet another argument for recapping your vintage gear.
This still in-progress Roland JC160 is getting a full recap and service - if it had been done around 20 years ago, it would still be due for another one, but with much less labour involved. The original caps have physically leaked and caused damage to not only the pads, but also the pcb substrate itself in some places, which needs to be throughly cleaned and repaired- I enjoy this kind of work but it takes a lot longer to carry out, so will cost a lot more. These lilac coloured jobbies are well known to leak, and there are over 60 of them in this amp with at least half of them showing the issues shown in these photos