Standel Custom 15. Restoration in progress

[Ken Fox]

This was in a whole repair shop for over 20 or 30 I was told. I inherited it for some repair work for a friend. The power section was blown and the JBL was open. Working on the power board now replaced all the caps.
The bias line was open due to a bad wirewound 100 ohm trimmer. Got the trimmer ordered and another transistor that I needed. I’ve got a JBL recone kit ordered and working on the pre-amp section as well. About every electrolytic cap in the amp was bad. The amps dates back to May 28, 1971.
With any hope I’ll have it going in a few weeks. Wish me luck.

[Ken Fox]

More pictures

[Ken Fox]

No schematic found for the power amp section. Got one that was close to this board.

[Ken Fox]

Got parts coming for the power amp section. Replaced defective caps in the preamp section. Powered it up on a variac. Ran the signal into a powered pa speaker. Got the tremolo working. Had dirty contacts on the footswitch jack

As Frank Parrish said on the Standel Forum the reverb is very weak. The springs rattle thru good. Return circuit ok. Plenty of signal to the tanks input. Just a weak tank

Also got rid of the ungrounded power cord. And a 17 amp circuit breaker. Installed a real fuse folder with a 5 amp ceramic fuse

Ordered an outboard tank that should match up well to the circuit. Will mount it in the bottom of the cabinet

So far so good

[David Wren]

Ken, I had one of these (but 2-12s) I put EV SROs in as replacements.... wow, what a sound. I know this is a lot of work, but I bet you love it when it's done!

Thanks for the pix!

[Ken Fox]

Thanks for the info. I’m looking forward to hearing it when complete.

[Larry Dering]

Great project Ken. Thanks for the close up pictures. I bet it sings when you're done.

[Ken Fox]

I’m going to replace the built in and defective tank with a new tank put into a bag and mounted in the bottom of the amp

Also considering using a Stewart power amp that puts out 100 watts into 8 ohms in lieu of the Standel power amp module

[Tim Whitlock]

I had the Artist 2x12 version of this amp that I used for a while. It sounded good but I eventually went back to my Twin Reverb. I found the cabinet to be quite heavy so I built separate head and speaker cabinets out of pine, which was more resonant and helped with the weight. Looking forward to more updates!

[Ken Fox]

Progress. Got the JBL reconed. Sounds great
Took out the defective reverb pan, added chassis isolated RCA female jacks to the chassis for a tank to be located in the amp bottom. Added a chassis isolated 1/4” female jack for the preamp out signal

[Lee Rider]

I've got the exact same amp, came with an Altec 418B. Amp is real bright so I ended up putting a Sica 15 in it which helped with the brightness and weight. Would be interested in doing what you are doing with the reverb tank. I'm not much of an amp tech, but would like to know the parameters on adding a tank to the bottom of the amp.

Thanks

Lee Rider

[Ken Fox]

The Gibbs tank in my amp was not working at all. I ran a 1000 hz signal to check for a reverb drive signal with my oscilloscope. The drive signal was good. The return circuit was also good.

The Gibbs tank impedances cannot be duplicated with current tanks. The closest I could find was an 8EB2C1B.

I used shielded wire to extend the send and return to the isolated jacks. That prevent double grounding

Use these in my Fox Tube Reverb builds as well. They are available on eBay

[Lee Rider]

Thanks Ken. My reverb still works but is funky. I might see if relocating it to the bottom of the cabinet makes a difference.