1958 Voice of Music 162
As they said in Monty Python, Now For Something Completely Different!
This is a 1958 Voice of Music 162 I got off Ebay for twenty bucks. Originally it was an extension HiFi amp/speaker. I guess you ran a cable from a line out on a HiFi console to this thing for music in another room, or maybe the same room, I dunno. This was all before stereo was in vogue.
I've converted it into a guitar amp. The job was to get more gain, as it had very little. I converted the input to a 33k/1meg guitar style input, disconnected the tone control, changed a .047 coupling cap to .1, and bumped a 1meg grid leak resistor to 2.2 meg. I also added bypass caps: A 25/25 on the 6AU6 preamp tube, and a 50/25 on the 6AQ5 power tube. The .1 coupling cap and the 25mf on the preamp tube made the most difference, but this ain't no Mesa Boogie, trust me. At best it's about 3-4 watts. To get any kind of heavy distortion you have to push it hard with an overdrive pedal.
Still, it turned out pretty good. The speakers in it were crap, the tweeter was blown which is fine as I wasn't going to use it, and I replaced the woofer with an 8 inch Eminence guitar speaker I had laying around. That made a big difference as well. Even though the new speaker was the same size as the old, I had to take a saber saw and trim the top and bottom to squeeze it in. For an input I installed a 1/4" shorting jack in place of the old RCA jack, and also installed an external speaker jack that disconnects the internal speaker when used. With the mods it ended up sounding ok, and I have to say this amp sounds pretty damn good through a JBL D130!!!
The only schematic I had was a faded one pasted inside the cabinet, I couldn't find one online. It was a good little project. I'll use it for practicing, jamming with CD's, maybe recording. See below for links to a couple of clips I did to demo it.
It terms of looks, this thing just drips cool, the VM logo lights up via the pilot light when you fire it up!!!
Tubes:
This is a 1958 Voice of Music 162 I got off Ebay for twenty bucks. Originally it was an extension HiFi amp/speaker. I guess you ran a cable from a line out on a HiFi console to this thing for music in another room, or maybe the same room, I dunno. This was all before stereo was in vogue.
I've converted it into a guitar amp. The job was to get more gain, as it had very little. I converted the input to a 33k/1meg guitar style input, disconnected the tone control, changed a .047 coupling cap to .1, and bumped a 1meg grid leak resistor to 2.2 meg. I also added bypass caps: A 25/25 on the 6AU6 preamp tube, and a 50/25 on the 6AQ5 power tube. The .1 coupling cap and the 25mf on the preamp tube made the most difference, but this ain't no Mesa Boogie, trust me. At best it's about 3-4 watts. To get any kind of heavy distortion you have to push it hard with an overdrive pedal.
Still, it turned out pretty good. The speakers in it were crap, the tweeter was blown which is fine as I wasn't going to use it, and I replaced the woofer with an 8 inch Eminence guitar speaker I had laying around. That made a big difference as well. Even though the new speaker was the same size as the old, I had to take a saber saw and trim the top and bottom to squeeze it in. For an input I installed a 1/4" shorting jack in place of the old RCA jack, and also installed an external speaker jack that disconnects the internal speaker when used. With the mods it ended up sounding ok, and I have to say this amp sounds pretty damn good through a JBL D130!!!
The only schematic I had was a faded one pasted inside the cabinet, I couldn't find one online. It was a good little project. I'll use it for practicing, jamming with CD's, maybe recording. See below for links to a couple of clips I did to demo it.
It terms of looks, this thing just drips cool, the VM logo lights up via the pilot light when you fire it up!!!
Tubes:
- 6AU6 preamp
- 6X4 rectifier
- 6AQ5 power
- .047 to .1 coupling cap
- 1 meg to 2.2 meg grid leak on power tubes
- 25/25 on pre cathode
- 50/50 on power cathode
- 33k/1 meg input resistors
- 120 pf hardwired bright cap
- Shorting input jack
- External speaker jack
- New speaker wire
- Replacement Eminence speaker
- Grounded AC cord
Here it is with the back off. You can see the schematic pasted on the bottom of the cab. It was a bit of a chore to study while doing the mods. I twisted new speaker wire, and changed out the input cable to give some slack for when I removed the back. The cardboard is a shield for the pilot light. See where I chopped off the top of the speaker?
Here are a couple of clips of my modded VOM 162.
Clip 1: Chord stuff with the Strat: Bridge/Middle click position, switching to Neck pickup. Clip 2: Lead stuff with the Strat: Neck pickup straight, Neck pickup with SD-1, Bridge pickup with SD-1