1960s Ampeg G-12 Gemini I 22w 1x12" Tube Amp

Ampeg amps are pretty spiffy lookers, no? This amp has a larger cab but has a lower, 22w output and single 1x12" inside. It's clearly been played a bunch and the tolex has been run ragged here and there as it's been bumped-around stages and storage areas its whole life.

It arrived here with a broken handle, original 2-prong power cord, and a nice layer of crusty dust all over it. I've since cleaned it up, repaired the original handle with some wire reinforcement (it will die eventually, but not today), 3-pronged the cable, and have it running nicely.

It breaks-up a little earlier than I'd expect and so if you're after a cleaner tone with it at higher volume I expect a fresh, tighter set of power tubes may be in order or possibly a swapout of preamp tubes to lower-gain types. All tubes appear to be working as they should. I even ordered a backup reverb tank driver tube.

So the good of this amp is that it's safe to use, now, and works mostly as-intended. The bad of it is that I haven't got the reverb working. Its receiver-side tube and "knock on the tank" check work just fine but something is keeping the driver side of the signal out of the tank. I will leave that to the next fella to sort-out.

It has its original footswitch, too, which is hardwired to the amp.

One quirk on this amp is that if you leave the volume up on an unplugged channel, it will hum from that volume being up. For instance -- if you are using both channels on the amp and leave both volumes on at some point on their dials, but swap the cable from channel 1 to channel 2 and leave channel 1's volume up, channel 1 will give you an annoying background hum. So -- if switching channels without leaving something connected -- turn down the volume on the channel you're not playing in! Easy-peasy.

As you can see in the photos, there's tarnish and pitting on all of the hardware and panels. Oh well!