Thursday, October 29, 2009

Vintage Amp Aquisition

I've come into possession of a new amplifier. (Sorry Mom)

Its a cheap amp from 1966, a Sears Silvertone 1484. Most people have no idea what it is or how good it sounds. It looks cheap, it was cheap, and gets beat up easily. So most people write it off as a crap amp.

That is - until Jack White started using Silvertone 1485s in the White Stripes to get his gigantic, crunchy, blow-the-top-of-your-head-off sound. Suddenly, the market for Silvertone amps exploded and more than just the amp junkies realized that the Silvertone amps WERE cheap, but also had KILLER tone. They just don't look like much. Now - its tough to find a Sears Silvertone in decent condition. I've wanted one for a few years now - been looking at craigslist about once a week. A long story very short - a friend of mine found one and then realized he didn't really need it.

It also gave me a good reason to finally sell off all the random guitars and parts of guitars I had laying around not getting used which would more than pay for the amp. (Yes mother, I'll put the extra $$ left over into savings.) I'd like to end up with just two eletrics - a strat and a my epiphone - and one acoustic.

Anyways - I don't have any good pictures of it yet, but here's what a Sears Silvertone 1484 "Twin Twelve" looks like. This one is a little bit cleaner than mine, but I'll eventually get mine cleaned up and checked out by an amp tech.

1 comment:

homebase said...

holy cow, looks big--will you blow the neighbors out the windows?/