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Originally Posted by MooWahmBah
...My favorite is my 1966 Ampeg Gemini VI but no way it leaves the house because it's so heavy and bulky...
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Those Gemini combos were
the go-to amps for in-the-trenches NYC musicians in the '60s; the "Key Club" (NYC's A-list answer to the Funk Brothers/Wrecking Crew) set up a batch of them in the NYC studios - along with B-15's for the bassists and B12-XT's for the keyboard players (and the occasional guitarist who wanted a fatter Twin-style tone) - whose on/off switch was replaced with a tubular lock (hence the name), and keys only available to select players through AFM 802. Used a few of those Gemini I/II combos back then myself, and an organist buddy used to run his Farfisa Compact Duo through a B-12XT (complete with personalized Portaflex nameplate); shame Ampeg never promoted the -XT - if you ever have the chance to play through a good one you'll never be satisfied with a blackface Twin again...
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I have a Sano 2 x 7591 head...in search for a lighter Ampeg sound...
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FYI there's a certain amount of common DNA (Gregg Hopkins' book
Ampeg: The Story Behind the Sound covers it in more detail), and while not in common use among other guitar amp manufacturers some of the early hi-fi guys (Fisher in particular) used them with some regularity in their low/mid-powered power/integrated amps - which leads me to:
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I have a feeling that those power tubes are a big part of the Ampeg sound that I love.
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They are - especially with the octal preamp tubes used in the pre-1965 small combos, including the top-panel/no 'verb Rocket R-12A I bought brand-new in 1964 (Ampeg guru Dennis Kager checked it out shortly before his passing, and said it was one of the very first ones he worked on when he joined the Linden operation); a lot of guys made the mistake of converting to 6V6 (actually used in the first-edition Rockets - the "A": used 7591's) or 6L6 when NOS 7591's became difficult to find - fortunately they've been re-sourced through the former Soviet-bloc tube manufacturers, so they can be restored to spec...
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AND...I commissioned an FYD Town & Country...2 x KT88 with octal pre...
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This sounds interesting - I played through a 200W Marshal Major with KT88's about 40 years ago, and unless you've strapped into a dragster and hammered the throttle (I have) there's nothing that compares to the experience. Wonder if Dan Lurie can build you an octal preamp stage with a Baxandall-type Gemini tone stack - a little bit of Linden-era tonal mojo with SVT-style "big clean" grunt should make for great headroom for a jazz-oriented amp...
