VintageKustom.com: Comment Board » Year of manufacture of 1-18-B Kustom bass cabinet?

Re: Year of manufacture of 1-18-B Kustom bass cabinet? [message #8044 is a reply to message #8036]

Tue, 16 January 2007 14:17

BassPlayer
Messages: 2
Registered: January 2007

Junior Member

Steve, thanks for the information. I took off the back cover to discover no cement inside, only one giant speaker facing rear-ward and some heavy duty plywood construction. Also, some very dense particle board or whatever you want to call it, and another set of screws holding the wooden fixture that the speaker is mounted to. I did not take that thing apart because it looks like somebody might have glued and also screwed this thing down to prevent vibrations inside. There was no module or preamp or whatever inside this cabinet that I could find unless it is behind where the speaker is, so this makes me think that this was part of the matched set that probably is long gone by now because I have had this speaker box for over 11 years (that's recent to me). I'm kind of behind the times, or in slow motion, but at least I keep checking all around the local used amp and guitar places in my area and sometimes a Kustom will be hidden in the back, kind of like an old car that has seen better days, but still runs fine. I would definitely be interested to find out where to get that head or an earlier style 400 series head or another entire speaker cabinet so I can rattle the rafters the way they once did. At least it gives me something to do when you hear a car go by that thinks they are playing something loud.
I'm sorry to keep writing things, but my lifelong quest is to also find out who Bruce is, what happened to the Bruce company (Englewood, Colorado) that made amps from 1968 until we think 1972 in limited quantities. I have 3 of these amps, but at the present time only 1 of them is working. There are unique parts inside the amplifier section of the Bruce amps that nobody seems to know about or be able to repair or replace other than use just the speaker cabinets with another head, such as a Kustom or a Fender Showman, which really could make a lot of noise for bass or guitar. I'm sorry to keep dreaming over here, but it was such a fun time being a teenager in the 1960s with these type things on "10" playing some cool songs and becoming weightlifters at the end of the gig at 3 o'clock in the morning. Also, you needed a U-Haul to carry all of this stuff around with you. If you ever wonder what a Bruce amp is, get a copy of the Three Dog Night "Naturally" album with the members of the band set up inside a swimming pool with no water in it, of course, with the Joe Shermi (spelling?), god rest his soul, that had 3 Bruces that he was sitting on and the other 2 or 3 were on the other side. If you look close, you can see the Bruce insignia on the furthest bottom part of the amp speaker column. These had two 15-inch JBL D140F base speakers and two air holes in the front to cool down the amp that was inside the speaker cabinet. When I first bought the amp in 1968, I was unable to drive so my father brought me to get it. With this amp on "2", it drowned out our whole band that was using Fender Twin Reverbs and a Hammond B3 back in the day. I never became famous, only in my own mind, so I got a real day job, and I could always think of those times. Hope I didn't bore you too much about Bruce amps and bygone eras and mysteries of now obsolete, what they call transistor dinosaurs. Thanks again.

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