Bill Roberts Musical Instrument and Electronic Repair
16742 84a Ave V4N4W2 Surrey, BC, Canada

In the process of building a new piece of test gear. Circuit board etched and components being populated. A lot of 603 size resistors, that’s my pinky finger next to one to get an idea of scale. About the size of a large grain of sand.

Finished up today one of Dave Martone’s Parker Flys. Had a problem with the preamp so out with the old and in with the new. Dave didn’t use the MIDI function so removed all the MIDI boards. Created a custom wiring circuit that included a single Master Volume to control the Magnet pickups and Piezo pickups. Mag pickup bypass and Mid Dark switch for the Acoustisonic preamp. Was a challenge to figure out how to fit everything into such a thin control cavity. Special shout to the guys from Graphtech for hooking Dave up with the new Ghost Acoustisonic Plus Pre-amp and Piezo Saddles.

Restoration continues on 1957 Gretsch 6166 amp. Before and after.

On the bench today Dave Martone’s Ernie Ball Majesty 7 string. Out with the old and in with the new. Complete removal and upgrade to new version 2 electronics. The new board is much cleaner without the rats nests of wires that made it prone to problems. Also a big shout out to the guys at Ernie Ball/Musicman. Stellar customer support and service.

Just finished restoration on this nearly mint 67/68 Harmony Sovereign Acoustic H1265. Probably the most sought after Harmony acoustic judging by the astronomical prices these are currently selling for. This is by far one of the cleanest examples you can find. Both upper and lower pickguards had warped and come unglued from the top of the guitar. Had to remove all the old hide glue from the pickguard material as well as the top of the guitar. Heat press the pickguard to flatten them, then resurface and polish to match the original patina. Reinstalled with a modern 3M pickguard adhesive. Full setup and this baby now plays as good as it looks.

Here is a couple of beauties that came through the shop. On the left a mint 1976 Fender Champ. On the right a 1978 Fender Champ.

Epiphone BB King Lucille. Lots of fret issues on this near new beauty. Surprised to find a hollow plastic nut on this guitar seeing as they are over $1k new. Also very cheap electronics although the pickups themselves sound pretty good the pots and jacks are about as cheap as you can get. Considering a new Gibson Lucille is over 6 grand I’ll make this play as good as an original.

This was a complete restoration of a 1967 Fender Bassman amp. This is actually a transition amp using the AB165 circuit from the earlier Blackface models. Lots of challenges as this amp was stored in a shed for nearly 20 years so almost every resistor was out of tolerance. The customer wanted this to be returned to original factory spec using the highest quality components. Also wanted the original 2 prong plug replaced with a 3 prong grounded plug and removal of the death cap which is no longer necessary. I also utilized the now unused polarity switch and wired a negative feedback on off circuit.

Today’s Tech tip. In the process of restoring a 1977 Fender Champ the picture shows the speaker cable from the amp. At sometime in its past someone thought to use an old RCA audio cable to make a new speaker cable. At first glance seems like a easy way to fix a problem. But here’s the issue. The RCA cable is using shielded wire ( center wire with an outer wire around it). Shielded cable has a high capacitance value which messes with frequency response and potentially ca...n destroy an output transformer. This is why you should never use a guitar cable as a speaker cable which I have seen to many times to count. Also the center wire is usually of very small gauge which the speaker has relatively high AC voltage not a good mix. Speaker cables should be wires of the same gauge and parallel, do not twist the wires. The new cable is done how Fender did it back in ‘77. See more

Very happy with my new acquisition. I have been wanting my own tube tester for a longtime now. Good ones tend to be hard to find and expensive. Having to go out to test tubes is so time consuming and the testers I had access to only test certain tubes and not all perimeters like Grid Leakage for instance. I am now the proud owner of a BK 606 Dyna Jet next to maybe a Sencore Mighty Mite the BK is very sought after. It’s going to be great being able to assess the condition of tubes in an amp on the spot. If anyone needs tubes tested hit me up. And a special shout out to my friend Gordon Sauck and Innovative Audio for the great deal.

Well this beautiful vintage Hofner Galaxie is ready to go home. It now plays as good as it looks. I did find the headstock plastic veneer was separating and had to fix that.

This 1963 Harmony Bass amp was left in a barn as evidence by the mix of what ever that is on the bottom. Alas while I would of been up to the challenge of restoring this little diamond in the rough the customer is holding off for another day.

This is definitely share worthy. 1963 first year production all original near mint condition of a fairly rare color two-tone sunburst Hofner Galaxie. Checkout all the bling. It has more knobs and levers than the Starship Enterprise. I’ll let you know how this turns out.

Another restoration on an 1964 Ampeg Reverberocket complete. This amp had quite a story, the customer brought the amp to me because it would start to make this crackling sound after it was on for 5-10 min. It was apparently recapped about 7/8 years ago and then started to have this problem. It was taken to and worked on by a number of techs over the years but the problem persisted. No one could seem to be able to solve the issue. Well there was some real questionable w...ork that I could rant on and on about and incorrect component substitution that had me shaking my head. Sometimes you just got to start again so all electrolytic caps replaced, all film caps tested and replaced as needed. Several resistors had also drifted out of tolerance as well and were replaced. We had a bit of fun auditioning 4 different brands of Capacitors for the tone stack. We were both surprised that the different brands all sounded different. We auditioned caps from Illinois Capacitor, Mallory, Orange Drop and SoZo. Each one sounded great for different reasons but ultimately it was a toss up between the Orange Drops and the SoZos. I liked the Oranged Drops, he liked the SoZos so SoZos went in. Idle hum is almost nonexistent now. That mysterious crackly disappeared and this amp sounds wonderful. Should be good now for another 50 years. See more

Last week I posted a picture of the circuit board I created. Here is the final project completed. I created the graphics for the box myself and transferred them to the box.

This was a 4 month project that finally completed. A complete restoration of a 1979 Musicman HD130 Reverb. The cabinet is a 1978 Garnet GS412G. These Musicman amps were favoured by Eric Clapton during this time period. Ridiculously loud 130 watts early hybrid solid state preamp 6CA7 tube power section. Every component pulled and tested, complete rebuild of the power supply section and power amp driver board. This had so many hands in it in the past with questionable repair work spent more than a day just deciphering the modifications that were done in the past. This is completely returned to stock as it would of been when new.

Made my own PC board today for the first time. This is for a new Carlson Low Voltage Capacitor Leakage Tester. Very happy with the outcome after a couple of hiccups along the way. I am looking forward to adding this to my diagnostic toolbox once it is completed. This is also my first foray into building a totally SMD component board. It is ready for populating the components.

Thank-you Glen Pearson.