Analog Audio Repair

This is a funny little solid state amp I bought from a fellow on Craig’s List.  I bought it “as-is” and it hummed and made noise but passed no signal.  At first I thought it was Japanese, but when I took off the back panel there was a tiny schematic marked “Paris Corp. Salina, Kansas”!  I replaced the first transistor which took care of the noise and lack of signal, but the tremolo wasn’t working.  I rebuilt that section with some new caps and a resistor and dug up a vintage footswitch to turn it on and off.  The power supply filter cap had already been replaced so I can only think that the amp has always had some hum (it was certainly not high-end when new).  Adding a second stage of filtering killed the hum and made this into something that could actually be used.  Honestly it was more work than the amp is probably worth, but a fun project nonetheless!

Zim Gar Front

Zim Gar Panel

Zim Gar Panel

Zim Gar Schematic

Zim-Gar Guts

This entry was posted on May 4, 2013 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Modded, Repaired, Restored with tags amplifier, discrete transistor, guitar, guitar amp, solid-state, tremolo, vintage, Zim-Gar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.