The
Hedgehog started life as an Alamo guitar amplifier manufactured in Amarillo
Texas. As an Alamo amp, Hedgehog had a pair of 6V6 output tubes with
a solid-state pre-amplifier and two ten inch ceramic speakers. When
I rescued Hedgehog from the pawnshop, she sounded weak and frail.
But she was cheap!
Back
at the lab, I stripped her bare to the chassis and cabinet. I gave
her output transformer to a friend and threw everything else away.
To further my recycling efforts, I pulled the transformers from an RCA
console that was sporting a pair of EL84's.
The original
Alamo circuit was 90% solid state which meant the chassis was not
punched for pre-amp or rectifier tubes, leaving me a nice clean chassis
to design on. I created a damped tube mezzanine to be mounted inside
the amplifier chassis for the purpose of isolating speaker vibrations to
the tubes.
The chassis
was stripped to bare metal and coated with primer and enamel. The
speakers were replaced by a single 10" Fane Alnico speaker.
I gave the
cabinet to Kariba for a blue plaid wool covering with hemp grill cloth
for an English feel. She also crafted a leather handle for the Hedgehog
and added rubber feet.
The solid copper face plate is
chemically etched with a Mill Hill logo.
More
information will be available in the near future regarding the circuit.
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