Here's a question for the Kustom Amp experts: I have a 1969 Kustom 200A Guitar Amp with 15 " Jensens. I realized recently that one of the 15 inch speakers was not functioning. When I opened up the amp, I found that mice had gotten into the amplifier during the ownership of the previous owner and chewed through two of the wires going to the coil of one of the speakers. So I had the wires re-soldered at a speaker shop. Can anyone tell me what the capacitor that is attached to the cabinet was used for and whether it's necessary to be hooked up? It was not hooked up when I opened the cabinet, but I figure there's a purpose for it. It appears to be original to the cabinet.
pleat Messages: 1452 Registered: June 2004 Location: Belding, Mi
Senior Member
It sounds like your cabinet was shipped from the factory with the 15" siren horn that would have either the 4MFD or 10MFD crossover capacitor to filter out low frequencies from the horn. Some one replaced the siren horn for the 15" speaker to make it a 2x15 speaker cabinet. I would suggest you check both speakers and check to see that both speakers are 16 ohms each and wired in parallel for a total of 8 ohms to the amp. The K200 series amps want to see a total of 4 ohms for the 100 watts RMS.
The original speaker should be Jensen P15 16 ohms.
The mice made a nest in the bottom of the amp. I removed the fluff pile and pulled the top speaker for repair and took it to a shop. They noticed droppings in between the cone and the frame and that the wires had been chewed. This was repaired and the speaker sounds great.
The capacitor was attached with a plate between the speakers on the cabinet. It was not hooked up when I opened the cab to address the dead speaker issue. It is still not hooked up. I could attach a picture, but can't find a way to do it.
Both speakers are gold and brown labeled Jensens made a few weeks apart and ore C15Ls.I was thinking that Kustom only used the horns in the 3 speaker cabinets, (two being speakers with a horn)
stevem Messages: 4739 Registered: June 2004 Location: NY
Senior Member
Nope! Those tall cabinets could be had for Bass usage with CTS. altec or JBL drivers, or for guitar with 3 of the C15L drivers or for keyboards and PA usage with a siren Round horn and whatever driver up grades you want.
Once late 1970 came about these cabinets where no longer tapered top to bottom and they came fitted with a Altec cast Aluminum sectoral horn and a Altec driver opposed to the a university driver used on the siren set up.
You could even get a cabinet with 2-15s and 2-10" drivers or a rare 3-12" cabinet.
You should go look at this site's literature section.
A original 3-15" cabinet would have had all the 16 ohm driver wired in parallel for a 5.3 ohm total load and inturn some 28 more watts of clean power.