ROBERTLATHAM1

bummer bout the brakes vintage 30's great speakers. i bet they really bring out the tone of the amp.

i had mine at 16ohms and it sounded like crap ! thats why i say impedence is everything on these amps. i am running mine at 4ohms basicly the same way you are. a 4x12 wired for stereo. i use g12m-70 celestions and i get really good mid range sound the highs are a bit crisp and the lows are real punchy. another thing was speakers! they all have very different sound through different amps so you may want to look in that direction as well. p.s. also polarity on the speakers is very important. if the polarity is reversed one 1 speaker it will cause it to fight the other.(when 1 is pushing the other is pulling so they kinda cancel each other out and really screw up db levels) peace robert latham

i have the 8100 valvestate and impeadence is everything with these amps if you dont match your mains rateing it will sound like a tiny tinker toy. you can type in "marshall valvestate 8100 scheamatic" and hit enter on msn and the first site that is listed will have your amp asnd many more scheamtics. i dont really know but i think the guys are stearing you in the right direction.

thanks i misprinted the resisitor values in my post i do have 2- 100ohm resistors in place. and yes i agree about the china tubes would really prefer the sylvainia 6L6GC much more! dont know where to get them though? i am wondering if it might have also poped the 30/450 capacitor on the 370V leg of the tube circuit? i have been told that this would make a dramatic loss in volume level as well. thanx again for your help just a ignorant electrician trying to save money here robert latham

thanks i misprinted the resisitor values in my post i do have 2- 100ohm resistors in place. and yes i agree about the china tubes would really prefer the sylvainia 6L6GC much more! dont know where to get them though? i am wondering if it might have also poped the 30/450 capacitor on the 370V leg of the tube circuit? i have been told that this would make a dramatic loss in volume level as well. thanx again for your help just a ignorant electrician trying to save money here robert latham

well you know it's called a fourm for a reason and if you are not hear to learn or be open minded about people who are trying to learn, this is not the site for you. i felt it would be RUDE to pm a person without thier consent and i also find the "YO, Lovekraft, Bail me out!" comment very RUDE! so please try to have a little more respect for DONATING members (paying if you dont understand what donating is!) thank you robert latham

i have uploaded a pic of the harmony 535 scheamatic in the gallery if you could please take a look at it and mabey it will help answer some of the questions i have had. thanx again your help is really appriciated robert latham

does anyone know where i might find a scematic to a harmony 535 amplifier

no havent found scheamatic. so if i lost say one of the resistors in series would this give me back my power or would this burn my tube? if anyone know where to get a schematic for a harmony 535 i would love to know where my brother is a electronics tech and he said that a cap might have went bad also but the only caps i can see are on a different pin than the resistors not knowing tubes i wonder if this is a possability?

lovekraft i dont know if you remember but you helped me fix my harmony 535. it is working. i replaced the power tubes with 2 mesa boogie 6L6GC's and had to replace the resistor going to ground from the tubes#8 pin. i replaced a 100ohm 7watt resistor with 2- 50ohm 10watt resistors in series. this worked and the amp is working, but it has had a very large drop in "power" or volume! it does not get as loud as it did before the tube and resistor repair. could you shed some light on whats happing hear. the resistence is the same, just higher current capacity with the use of 2- 10watt resisitors in stead of 1- 7watt 100ohm. would the circuit actualy go to "hot" and cause the tubes to saturate early and produce more distortion in less volume because of the high current capacity? thanx robert latham

They are OK guitars, but nothing like the real one! No matter how good they are and how many mods you do to it! It will always be an Epi. Mine sound great! after countless mods, but the Les Paul or any guitar similary build will (or should I say "should") sound better than any Epi, unless it is the Elitist (Elite) series, the wood on this ones are of a better quality than the regular ones. ← the wood is mahagany/maple top and the p/u are p-90. true epi is epi, but i still get tone and playability thats in fact better than "some" gibson pauls that i have played. as far as the elite series goes i dont know musicians friend is selling one just like it and the call it some kinda speacial release or something like that? anyways im pleased with it and thats what is really most important.

its actualy only pushed in around the two tone knobs. if done carefully i think the knobs them self would cover the hair lines . the paint has not chiped. seems like a lot of to-do for an epi but this particular one is the only one i have ever played that actualy played and sounded like a true les paul. i guess this particular one fell in the right jigs at the right time!

thanx guys those both sound like realy good ideas

hi guys hey i am getting a epi lp (gold top) the wood at the knob cavity has been pushed in. it is not completly caved in but it is bad enough that the wood is splintered and depressed into the cavity. if i could just push it back out from the back side of the guiatr it all would come back togather with a little attention to where pressure was applied. then a new paint job would hide the damaged area. is there any real fix for this or is this my only way?

yeah that was what i was thinking too. rp-3 infront and quad in loop. im also trading my old speakers for a epi gold top lp with the p-90 p/u. i have played the guitar many times and it sounds good and plays very well but the wood around the volume and tone control knobs has been caved in. how would i go about fixing that?

i have just finished e-baying my butt off and have aquired a set of celestion g12m-70's and an alesis quadraverb plus. i own a digitech rp-3 which has been agood unit. i really like the overdrive when put in front of my marshall 8100 and harmony 535 (which i have repaired! thanx lovekraft! for the info) but i see a lot of folks using the effects loops on thier rigs. when i use the loop on my rig. it gives me a sound like being in a barrel. am i the only one this happens too or is there something that can be done to bring the sound out of the barrel if you will? at any rate i cant wait to get the g12's in so i can tweak with them and did i say quadraverb?! god i love those units had on back in the 80's. it was great!

sorry lovekraft i searched and could not find it again i should have booked marked it! anyways it was all about dateing vintage gear you might do a search under valco harmony amplifiers and see what comes up. i believe it might have been on another page i was surfing quite a bit that day.

t was in one of those links that are pinned at the top of the fourm actualy i think it was a link inside of one of those ! anyways thats what they said, "that valco made many amps for many different manufacture brand names in the early days" now if this is to be true or not i have no idea, as i do not claim to be a technition, but the section on dating an amps production date is where i got the pot#'s from and mine matched what they say where early valco made fender amp pots. dont know! you know much more about this topic than i. i would however would like to know who really did manufacture the harmony 535

it was in one of those links that are pinned at the top of the fourm actualy i think it was a link inside of one of those ! anyways thats what they said, "that valco made many amps for many different manufacture brand names in the early days" now if this is to be true or not i have no idea, as i do not claim to be a technition, but the section on dating an amps production date is where i got the pot#'s from and mine matched what they say where early valco made fender amp pots. dont know! you know much more about this topic than i. i would however would like to know who really did manufacture the harmony 535!

hey guys alright i had to get a little creative but it worked as radio shack only had 100 ohm 10w resistors. so i used 2 in series to get my 200ohms for biasing my amp it worked and the mesa 6l6gc's are awsome. bueatiful tone really warm and smooth. ok next task i want to add a gian stage to this harmony 535 as it has only volume no gain stage guitar-------tube----eq circuits----volume-----mid stage-----power stage----speaker this is the prefered structure guitar------gain stage------eq------volume------etc......... can i just ad any particular gain cicuit directly to the input(tip of tip and ring) and drive the existing pre tube into saturation and if so what would be a good circuit for that jcm type distortion from the mild to the gain pot at 11 lol! thanx guys robert latham

still tring to find schematic. i think this amp might have really been made by valco rather than harmony! its pots all have the matching serial numbers which are used in early fenders that were made by valco #1376647

if you seen the photos of the 2 amps togather you would swear the only difference is the name but as far as architecture goes i have no idea, but yes i would love to have a good schematic. if anyone could help that would be great.

bingo in fact that is the very same schematic i have but as ansil said it has had some mods done to it. i have but 5 preamp tubes they are all 12ax7a the reverb and tremlo section does not have the tube shown in this drawing (silvertone 1484) my amp is a harmony 535 but looks identical just harmony in place of silvertone name. yes its fixed bias. i took pin 8 straight to ground lost the resistor it worked but the 6L6's(sylvania=original..mesa=replacements) got very very hot! much hotter than the 12ax7a's which the cathode also go to ground via a 200 ohm resistor. i assume this is the biasing and the resistor value here controls how much positive voltage or current that will be bled off the tube, if you will parden my laymens terms. after i fix this problem i would like to ad a gain stage and presence to this amp but first things first is this amp a copy of major brand design. i was told that the silvertone/harmony/truetone did alot of design coping back in those days?

yes it worked fine. i checked all resistors last night and found 1-200ohm 7watt that was reading open and it just so happens to be comming off of pin#8 of the tube that flamed (6L6GC tube) and the other side goes to chasis ground no other paths tapped off of this leg. pin# 8----- resistor------grnd so im going to replace it and see what happens. do you think there might be other damage as well? thanx for the help