DuKane 2A40A Tube mixer-amplifier

[Emperor-TK]

I just won this on eeevil-bay. Anyone know anything about these? I basically bid what I consisdered the sum of the parts to be worth, and maybe use it to house a few slowblow pres (unless it kicks butt as-is).

Dukane mixer/pre

-Chris

 

[solder_city]

$228 for a dukane mixer! were you drunk? :razz:

i used to see these at flea markets for $5 and $10. its 'school cafeteria' grade PA stuff. this guy just made himself a huge, huge profit considering his cost was probably somewhere bet. $0 and $20.

dont you love how the seller pulled the EF86 tubes and is 'willing' to sell them to you for extra $? what a douchebag... as if putting a dukane up at a starting bid of $100 wasnt arrogant enough.

my advice: clean it up, replace power cord and filter caps, put some good working tubes in there and put it back on ebay listed as VINTAGE TUBE MIXER LANGEVIN API NEVE WESTERN ELECTRIC PROTOOLS with a starting bid of $300 :razz:

'this is just what you need to warm up your protools mixes. we have used this to record vocals and guitars on gold and platinum albums by major artists at our fully equipped studio and we would love to hold on to it but must sell. our loss is your gain. dont let this great opportunity to own this very rare VINTAGE TUBE MIXER pass you by, you wont see many of these for sale on ebay or anywhere else'

 

[Emperor-TK]

Nice one. Thanks for the insulting reply.

 

[CJ]

I think the input transformers alone will pay for the box. I have had good luck with those DuKane inputs. I think I see three of those on there.

 

[skipwave]

Yeah, the same webpage that made the Altec transformers ridiculously overpriced mentions the Dukanes. I bet they sound great, and if they don't you can part them out for a profit.

A little anecdote; When I was 14 years old and working in a private country club, the owner of Dukane Industries was a member. He was an ornery old f*cker and yelled at waitresses. I still think it's really cool that so many of the great transformer companies were Chicago-based. My aunt's father even had a small shop called Ogden Coil and Transformer.

 

[Gus]

solder_city

Here in NJ the days of $10.00 for an old PA etc are gone. The last time I found a record player 6v6 SE amp for $10.00 at a guitar show etc. was about 5 years ago. Ebay and the web seem to have driven the prices up. Ham fests were good for tubes and stuff but I have not heard of one in my area for some time.

 

[sismofyt]

we're a little late here in euro land, but now i'm starting to see all kinds of toob/vintage/plain trash being sold at unbelievable prices. no more can i find cheap B&O ribbon mics (and make a killing, hehe), hell i saw a beat up Revox G36 go for like 600USD. Roland tape delas can fetch a thousand dollars

if i was a scam artist i'd be rich. instead people come crying to me and want me to 'fix/mod' that toob/vintage/trash thing, urghh fuck off

Lord Ketchup, it's a peice of trash, but it might be the best trash since sliced bread. if it makes your records sound amazing, it's worth as much as an SSL 9K. beaf it up and rock

hey, i'm hungry

don't do a SlowBlow, mod it into something kick ass instead, i'd love to help ya

the seller should have his nuts connected to B+ plus for yanking the EF86 tubes

 

[Emperor-TK]

<rant on>
Man, we got some bugs up our ass about this one don't we? I actually know the seller and he is a good guy. I also had some off line conversations with him about it. He took the tubes out that he wanted and was very up front about it. He wanted the tubes, I wanted the chasis. What's the big freaking deal? He didn't buy it and isn't even the one getting the money. It belongs to his church. The inputs are still labled pastor, pulpit, etc.

I had no illusions that I was getting some long forgotten RCA or custom BBC pre that is magic the moment I plug it in. He never suggested that. He would have been an a-hole if he did. BTW, How much does a hammond chassis with a steel cage cost? Add a power transformer, tube sockets, knobs, input xformers...

What I wanted was some constructive opinions on what may or may not be worth keeping. I appreciate the positive comments that I got. That was useful info. But how the frick is this a bad deal, when a plywood box covered in tolex for an amp head sells for $150? I don't really give a rat's ass about how many of these things you guys saw at fleamarkets and garage sales over the last 20 years. That means nothing to me. Wake up, the internet has killed the fleamarket and the garage sale. I'd have to go to fleamarkets for the next six months to score something like this, and then add up the cost of my time spent wading through piles of shit until I found the POS that I wanted. And what would happen when I did find it at a fleamarket? There'd be some dumbass selling baby clothes telling me that "Robert Neve" designed it and trying to charge me $500. No thanks. I once bought a tube echoplex at a fleamarket for $5. BFD. That doesn't make people who sell them now for $500 criminals. Quit bitching about the good old days. They are gone.

<rant off> Had to vent.

 

[Scodiddly]

That looks a lot like an old DuKane that I converted to a guitar amp many moons ago. Mine didn't have the meter, though. Probably a slightly newer version of the same thing.

Anyway, it had a pair of 6L6's, a rectifier tube, and plenty of 9-pin sockets. I ended up pretty much gutting it and starting over with a Marshall/Fender 50-watt design, pretty close to stock for the old Marshall 50-watt combo and Fender Bassman. The outputs were mostly cathode biased, so I had to add a bit more voltage to the bias supply by way of a spare 6v filament transformer I had lying around. 500 vdc for the output plate voltage, I think. I reused a lot of the existing parts to build up the tone circuits and such.

Still in use with a friend of mine, and according to him pretty much blows anything else out of the water. Of course that's coming from probably the best "tone in the fingers" player I've ever met, so I tend to discount his praise a bit.

 

[BYacey]

What do you want to know? I probably have a schematic someplace for this. If you are just using it for parts, it's pretty standard tube stuff. Input xfrmrs are probably the standard 150 ohm to 30K, unless you have the ones with the 50 ohm primary. None of Dukane stuff was stellar, even though they thought they were "pro audio" in the 60's.

 

[goldstache]

Sorry for the resurrection of this old thread, but alas, I'm in need of schematics. 

Anyone game for sending me some?

 

[Quayhog]

Here is the Dukane schematic.  I have a pair that have been messed with too.

 

[Quayhog]

Looking at the 2A40 Dukane schematic I just posted how do you connect a 600 Ω  XLR output jack to it?  Am I correct to assume this is a 600 Ω output transformer or is this intended to be connected to a home stereo level or phono level?

These are next up on my bench.

 

[PRR]

It shows a VU meter. This will be a 600 Ohm output winding.

 

[mjrippe]

Screw terminal "S" to XLR pin 2, screw terminal "R" to XLR pin 3, Ground to XLR pin 1