Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I have a Kustom 4 channel amp; 2 for guitar, and 2 for bass. The bass channels work, but the guitar channels don't. It has a separate head and cabinet. And it sounds like the speakers may be blown. I am thinking about having the thing repaired replacing the speakers.

Then I got to wondering if the thing could be rebuilt into a stereo guitar amp. Is that possible?

It may be a tube amp. It's old enough that the head has a two prong electrical plug. That in and of itself doesn't mean a thing, but it may give readers an idea of its age. Unfortunately, I can't find a model name, or any other sort of identifying mark on it except that it says on the head face "Kustom by Ross Mfg."

JimK

If it is the old Kustom amps with the tuck and roll cabinet covering, then it is a solid state amp and similar to what CCR used. With a lot of old solid state amps, the transistors used in them are no longer made, so a non-functioning one is hard to repair.

Oh, but those purple jeweled pilot lights on those early-70s Kustom heads were SO cool!

I have seen some NOS clearinghouses on the Web for those old Jedec part numbers, and if you can accurately Google-search for the correct part numbers, you can still find the old early TO-3 large-package NPN power transistors out there for sale in quantity. The oldest designs suffered from failed (or changed-over-time-value) 0.33 ohm 10 and 25 watt Ohmite Sandohm power resistors, so replacing those will preserve the life of any good remaining output transistors.

Greg,
Yeah, that pretty well describes what the rig looks like. All that naugahyde... I wonder if I can still find some of these in pawn shops around here. Might be worth a look.

PS, And Elys, it has a red jeweled pilot light right smack amidships on the head face.

JimK

I saw several colors used across a number of years, not sure what they all meant. Two heads I saw were purple, one was red, two were green, one blue, and two orange. All were jewelled (multifaceted) lenses, right in the middle of the head front panel, and you knew in a dark bar what kind of head it was before you ever got close enough to make out the tuck-and-roll naugahyde

James, there is a reasonably good vintage Kustom fan site:

http://www.broadwaymusicco.com/kustom1.htm

Yours is an early one (thus the lack of model number), and the head could be the "Frankenstein" style.

BTW, the current incarnation of Kustom is making some darn nice all-tube amps now. I absolutely love my 36 Coupe!

Oh, good news! I've been playing around with the idea of hunting up pawn shops seeing if I could scare up one or two real reasonably for parts to fix up the one I have. Who knows? I may still do that. What could it hurt?

JimK

Sounds like a good plan, Jim.