Description
Okay, ignore the pea green cab. It’s what’s inside that counts. What we have here is a very old hand-wired Mullard 5-10 amp, which was a very popular circuit in England as soon as it was published in “Practical Wireless” magazine in 1954 and, in fact, this same amp is being built today. Mullard created this circuit and published it as a means to sell their vacuum tubes (“If you build it they will come….”) as well as the recommended Partridge transformers. The amplifier featured five tubes and an output of 10 watts – hence the model name “5-10”. Of those tubes, one was a diode-rectifier (an EZ80), one was a pre-amplifier pentode EF86 and one a double-triode ECC83 as phase-splitter. The power amplification was handled by a pair of EL84 working in push-pull configuration. Mullard also had a variation, 5-20, which was a 20-watter that substituted EL34’s for the increased power. There is a lot of info on this amp on the web in various UK usegroups. Click here for the best site I found with a blow-up of the original magazine pages which introduced the amp and another useful link is here. Although countless numbers of these were built as DIY projects, this one was produced by “Electric Audio Reproducers Ltd” aka E.A.R. It is a quality made piece with a steel chassis and attractive gold paint including a bottom plate to seal in the circuit. Controls, Bakelite knobs of course, are an input selector switch, bass, treble, and volume. The power input jack is in the back and is the typical 2-post UK type (I probably have one around here somewhere). On the left side of the unit is another power input which I am guessing was to plug in a record player or radio tuner (there’s an antenna jack mounted to the chassis) – and small plate with two widely spaced pin holes which I believe was the UK standard for speaker jacks, to be used if you wanted to hook up an extension speaker. The power transformer is tappable with a jumper to select your required power. Unfortunately, it’s wired or 220V, 230V, 240V, and 250V, so you’ll need a step-down transformer to use it. Since they are painted, I don’t know if these trannies are Partridge but chances are many of these component will work on early Vox amps and other UK gear or if you’re an audio collector, it’s a pretty cool find, especially in the USA. In my search I found that some of the later models had circuit boards, rather than this point-to-point soldering. Personally, I think it would be a pretty cool project to transform it into a guitar amp. Because I don’t have a way to test it, it’s being sold “as is” but I will offer a refund, less shipping, if you’re not happy with it. I’ll mention though that this came from my old “UK-connection” and a few dozen other pieces, all guitar amps, I got from him all worked fine. This unit is in very tidy condition for its age, even the old Wharfedale speaker looks clean, although there is a little dark gunk around the trannies that probably needs some goo-gone to remove. $499 for this prize.
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