--- In ham_amplifiers@..., 1800 Toll Free
<TollFree1800@...> wrote:
When Calvin started pumpin money into the place, they went to
3CX3000s and
3CX350s for drivers.
I'd say that Mr. Powers was pumping more parts into the place then
greenbacks. Calvin worked for Maco on and off for years. Dick fired
him once over stealing, but hired him back. I bought a bag of 500
slug type tuning coils (the ones in the Maco amps used for the input-
SWR tuning) for $50 off my friend in Missippi. I was going to buy
them from Maco since they ordered extra for me. My friend said he had
500 that were "similar" so I bought them for 1/10 the price. After I
got them in, they were the same coils. I made a quick call and found
he got them from Calvin. Hmmm, where do you think they come from?
They was hot as a firecracker I was told.
When Dick moved the amp manufacturing part out of the main building
down the street, after the big bust, that was when the big rip off
occured. They opened the shop one morning and was cleaned out in a
lot of parts. I wouldn't doubt that a lot of the steel and large
glass tubes came from Maco that were used in these amps. Melvin and
Pete bought the parts from Dick for around $20,000 I heard. Dick had
the balls to ask me $150,000 for the same parts at the time, and I
said Hell NO!
Tenessee Walker is the "brand name", but you're pretty much
correct, on
the 'Experts' on the playing field.
We might have met somewhere, sometime :)
--Toll_Free
On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:01:46 -0800, craxd <craxd@...> wrote:
The guys making these are ex-Maco employees down in Memphis, TN.
Melvin and Sneaky Pete is who I know them by. They bought out what
was left of the Maco amp parts back when Dick Orgal and myself
quit
building amps when the tubes ran out around 89 or 90. Their
problem
is they don't build with the quality components we used, nor
really
know how to design them. Their major problems were under-sized
power
supplies, very noisy blowers, and shoddy workmanship. One can see
in
this one that the layout is terrible. The power supply is a mess.
The
cabinets look like the ones built by another friend on mine (Mark
Davis) down in Olive Branch, Mississippi just across the state
line
from Memphis. If so, this is one of their older amps since Mark
quit
a few years back when his wife bacame ill (unless Marks boy built
them). Mark (now around 75-80 years old or so) used to build my
cabinets and wind my transformers. Plus, he did build some decent
amps himself. He also worked with Maco for a short while when I
was
associated with them back in the early 80's. I can't tell what
tubes
are in this one, but they were mostly built with 4CX250B's. These
look to be a larger tube. 10 kW though, ehhhh I highly doubt that.
Best,
Will
