There is a Red Frankie head on eBay that is in really nice shape, but it's different than any Frankie head that I've ever seen. The front panel is marked By Ross Mfg. The two channels are marked Guitar and Bass and the two front panel fuses are rated 2 Amp for the ac line and 4 Amp for the speaker.
Most Frankie heads are marked with high and low inputs and have 3 Amp ac fuses and 5 Amp speaker fuses.
Another thing is that the power transistors on the back panel look like they are Germanium transistor rather than the normal Silicon types. In fact they look a lot like the outputs from the original Lot-O-Tone heads.
Anybody here know anything about these heads?
I can't get the link to work, but here the address.
stevem Messages: 4733 Registered: June 2004 Location: NY
Senior Member
Ok , I found it !
Yup, must be a very early model, wonder how many where made and what the date code is on its pots and power transformer?
It must only be at best a 75 watt output stage with that 4 amp speaker fuse unless it's a slow blow type, ,but I think not!
thedqmanfla Messages: 22 Registered: December 2015 Location: Florida
Junior Member
Well the head arrived and boy is it different!
The Pots and Transformer date to 10/64
I sent pictures to Bud as the amp has NO BIG CAPACITORS!
Its not as if they were taken out , as there are no holes EVER for mounting brackets or screws.
Bud Thinks Maybe they were experimenting with trying to get sound without the big capacitors!
Whatever they did the amp sound Killer!
and Quiet!
Id be curious to see if anyone had an earlier model!
Mike
Sounds like it's a great amp. I would think that the lack of the big filter caps would just be the fact that they hadn't decided to use the higher quality caps yet. I'm sure that there are smaller axial filter caps in there just like all the other companies were using at the time.
Kustom was the first of the companies to go "high tech" and spec higher quality parts than were normal to guitar amplifiers at the time. If you look at most amps from that time period, every manufacturer was using consumer grade parts. Kustom started using the big computer grade filter caps and tantalum signal caps, along with metal film resistors, all of which were very cutting edge for guitar amps. And more expensive as well. The quality of the sound and the product was seemingly more important than the bottom line.