VintageKustom.com: Repairing Kustom Amps

Wed, 01 March 2017 16:10

Drjones1106
Messages: 19
Registered: March 2017
Location: Seattle

Junior Member

Hello all, I'm new to this great place and have some questions about a Kustom K200 B5 pa head that I lucked into.

The First question is about output. It isn't stated on the back of the amp, and the speakers were not included. From what I found here they should be 4ohms, but I saw something about 8ohm in parallel? There are two output jacks, but the schematic just show them as tip to tip. Would someone clarify for me please? I have a 8ohm bass cab or a 412 stereo @ 8ohm/channel or 16ohm mono. Can I just run both jacks to the stereo cab inputs? Should I pick up a new cab?

The second question gets into the nitty gritty. The reverb is not functioning at all and channel 2 is dead. On the reveb side I've looked over the tank thoroughly, no broken wires, continuity tests show nothing open. So I moved to transistors on the board. one is completely dead. I also tested the trannies on the channel two board, finding one faulty reading. So replacement time! Both broken transistors are the pet8002 or se4002. I saw here about replacement with 2n3904 or 3906 or possibly 5088/89? I have plenty of both as well as many other types, so give me a recommendation, what works/sounds best in your opinion?

Question the third. I intend to use this as a guitar or bass amp. Ideally I'd like to mod one channel to be more suited to bass. I've seen some comments about switching input caps, but no values mentioned. Should I just be working harder and using a R-C calculator? anything worked well for you?

Q4: I've also seen on here comments about not overloading the preamps with a high gain signal, like overdrives/fuzzes/etc. I build effects and was hoping to use this amp as a clean amp specifically for pedals. Is that a bad idea? Its sounded great when I tried it out with some stomp boxes.

Q5: I also would like a master volume. It couldn't be as easy as wiring a pot to the output wire with lug 1 to ground, right? That'd be crazy.
I'll also be replacing the two prong cable for a grounded one, but that's old hat.

Thanks for any help. I'm really glad to have found this forum. It's already been an invaluable help to me.

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