1960s Teisco Melody Model 61 Tube Amp

It's little. It's light. It gets gritty early and easily. It's clean. It's red.

This Melody-branded, Japan-made, Teisco product is a cute little thing. It has only two tubes and probably rates around 2 or 3 watts. It doesn't get very loud but it records easily and breaks-up at volume levels your acoustic-toting friends would even be happy with when you sit-in on your Telecaster.

It's also red.

A local consignor has owned this for a while but -- as he has so much gear -- it's mostly hung around. He's been cleaning things out and so this one arrived here for sale. He had an amp repairman do a little work on it in the past and after pulling the back panel I could see that the old electrolytic capacitors had been replaced at some point with newer equivalents -- so that must've been the work done. The rest of the components all have Japanese branding on them and must be original.

It works as Lord Teisco intended and gets a great, thick-sounding, chugging/crunchy tone with the volume knob turned all the way up. The speaker has an Alnico magnet, the circuit is simple, and...

It's red.