Saving customers from themselves?

I've been getting some amp tech business by word of mouth lately (note to self: make those business cards Kiira!) and one of the jobs I've gotten is going through an old 7591 Class A Sano, getting it working right etc. It's an odd little beastie, cute though with the Jetson's grill cloth and sweet tremolo. It's cathode biased. Here's a page about the Sano amps http://www.larryjohnmcnally.com/sano_amps.html and here's the schematic for the amp itself http://www.larryjohnmcnally.com/sano3.pdf

The 7591s have about 320 volts on the plate... you can pull one of the two power tubes and the sound hardly changes.

The problem is the customer won't let me replace the two wire AC cord and cap to ground with a three wire cord. :shock: Like, why the hell not? He says he's been playing for 45 years and his friend Roy Buchanon didn't have his 2 wire AC cord replaced (Roy is playing this guys gold top on the cover of one of his albums). etc etc. :?

He loves Deluxe Reverbs and wanted me to put 6V6s in his Ampeg Gemini II (anotheer 7591 amp) but I told him forget it... if he wants a DR then I'll build him a DR but I won't waste my time and his money trying to make a Gemini II ( a great amp for what it does) into something it isn't. I'm also fixing up his Epiphone Comet (Gibson GA-15RVT - 6BQ5 outputs))

Kiira

Sounds like one of those customers you want, but hate to have. He's obviously got projects for you (and money to pay for them), but is a hard-headed old cuss. Could be worse!

Two wires baaaaaad, three wires goooooooood! Tell him about the dude(s) who died after getting a nice zap from ungrounded, reverse polarity equipment. Tell him you'd like for him to continue being a customer...

On the 6v6 amp thing--I agree with you. I've seen a couple of web pages of people who bought a DRRI and replaced the nasty PCB guts with a turret board/eyelet board ala BF/SF. Lots of work, but you get the cab, chassis, and transformers from the donor (upgrades possible, of course). Maybe you can talk him into something like that. If he doesn't want the Gemini, I'm sure he could sell it to buy a more appropriate donor amp. Maybe you can help hook him up with a buyer for it.

Good luck!

A P

German electrical security code forbids to use this ungrounded stuff. If you work on it and don´t change the mainswiring to grounded YOU - THE REPAIRTECH - is responsible for all accidents which happen. I don´t know how this is dealt with in USofA but I have the strong feeling that our security code makes sense. Personally I would not work on this amp as long as the owner doesn´t allow me to change the wiring according todays security code.

How about finding a ground fault interrupting accessory that could be deployed. You could call it a power conditioner without having your nose grow too long....

I confess to being amazed when PRR et al. explained what those really did---I couldn't believe they had managed to make something that worked. Of course they are also the source of much nuisance tripping, so hardly an unalloyed blessing.