A few years ago I picked up this little gem of an amp at a gun show for a paltry 25 bucks.  Not a bad snag!

It worked great, except the volume knob didn’t seem to do much… it always sounded like it was on full blast.  So, I brought it down to Skullspace to tinker with it.

Aside from the potentiometer not really changing the volume, it was also quite scratchy when changing volumes.  This is usually a sign of a worn-out potentiometer, so I ripped out the old one and temporary wired up a replacement off ebay.

I carefully tested the amplifier (you really dont want to touch the high-voltage tube supply wires in there when it’s powered…) and it sounded way better than before!  I deemed it a success and installed the new potentiometer, still with test connections:

Everything seemed to work alright, so I soldered everything in place:

The only issue I faced was that the old wires did not really wick up the solder so well.  I suspect there are some poor connections because of this, but for now it works… maybe some proper flux paste would work better than rosin-core solder?

 

Stay tuned for an audio clip!