Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

[Nostalgic Distortion]

So today was my birthday and I actually got a great gift! My dad bought me a new reverb tank for my AC-15C2 Twin which was exactly what I wanted & quite surprising because he knows absolutely nothing about guitar, gear, or amps! Unlike almost every other amp in the world this AC-15 will only take this exact reverb tank, there's no cheaper MOD tanks or anything that would work?

So I'm all excited to get it in after we got home from dinner? In order to do so I had to pull out the left speaker to get at the tank, all went well and I got the new tank in with no problems bu as I was putting the last screw in the speaker when I was reassembling it the speaker's magnet pulled the screw driver over and now I've got a .22 cal. hole in the stupid thing! I did have another Greenback to put in its place for now but I'm going to have to either fix or replace this one sometime soon. If anyone has any ideas on how I might salvage the speaker please leave your input, it would be greatly appreciated!!!

On a brighter note, the reverb sounds amazing now, even better than my AC-30's! The tank broke when it was being delivered & since neither UPS or the seller wanted to claim responsibility I got stuck with no verb, at least none that didn't come from a pedal anyway? Having the actual Spring Tank working is great and I really can't say enough good things about it but the whole speaker thing (no pun intended) really ruined a otherwise awesome day?

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

A small hole patched with construction paper and wood glue will pretty much restore it like new. You wont notice any difference. It only has to keep the rip from spreading.

You sound like a real Vox fan, having both a 30 and 15. Is your dad a fan of bands that used Vox amps?

[Shooter.556]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

Happy birthday! Today is my birthday too..

[zzmoore]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

A small hole patched with construction paper and wood glue will pretty much restore it like new. You wont notice any difference. It only has to keep the rip from spreading.

You sound like a real Vox fan, having both a 30 and 15. Is your dad a fan of bands that used Vox amps?

Yeah, short of Tar Paper, just about anything will work.....especially for that small of a hole. I use Paper Towel.

[Rich_S]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

First, lay the torn edges back into the hole to fill it up as much as possible. Don't remove any cone material if you can help it. Then patch over both sides with paper towel or coffee filter paper, torn into shape rather than cut with scissors, to provide a feathered edge.

I use plain old Elmer's glue, but yellow wood glue will work, too. I thin the glue a little bit with water and brush it on with a little paint brush from a kids' watercolor set. As long as I was raiding the paint set for the brush, I also used a bit of black water color to stain the glue gray so it blends in a little better.

The Celestion in my #1 amp has a way bigger patch than yours, and it's been working fine for years. I got the speaker cheap on eBay because it had a torn cone, but after a half-hour's work, it's as good as new. You can see the patch at the top left of the speaker in the photo below, and ya gotta admit, it fits in the ghetto aesthetic of the amp. Beauty is only skin deep on this one.

[Nostalgic Distortion]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

A small hole patched with construction paper and wood glue will pretty much restore it like new. You wont notice any difference. It only has to keep the rip from spreading.

You sound like a real Vox fan, having both a 30 and 15. Is your dad a fan of bands that used Vox amps?

I'm a huge VOX & Orange fan! I had a VOX NT50 G1 and a VT-20 as well but one got sold & I gave the other to my girl's dad because I have 9 very nice amps and he was rocking a $40 Fender Champ?

Umm, growing up my Da always had me listening to Classic Rock & Blues bands, everything from The Beatles, Cream, & The Yardbirds to Zeppelin, Sabbath, Pink Folyd, & Queen so whether he knows it or not he had a great influence on me and the stuff that I play today! He's British so he tended to lean towards a lot of the British Rock from that era but pretty much all Classic Rock and Blues and there was always music playing in our house!

So yeah, he's definitely a fan of bands that were known to use VOX amps! I told him jokingly that it was his God given duty as an Englishman to make sure that my AC's were in perfect working order! He just said "that's a low blow", LOL!!!

Still, he was able to find out where & how to get his hands on one with absolutely no real buying experience of musical equipment or even the code on the back of the tank! He just knew that I needed a AC-30 tank for a AC-15 which made no sense to him but I'm guessing the guy from Parts is Parts helped him along explaining what a AC-15 Twin was? Anyway,was pretty impressed & I haven't stopped playing with it since last night!

I did the paper patch repair that you suggested with a bit of my own twist & I think it's going to be fine, at least for now? I gave it almost 24 hours and just pushed it as hard as possible, it sounds absolutely great in my 2X12 cab & I had it moving some serious air! I'll probably replace it eventually anyway but if it could hold off for a few months or a year I'd be elated! The AC-15C2 Twin has two fully functional Greenbacks in it & for now I'm just going to leave the one with the hole in my 2X12 for my TS15. If the hole changed my tone any it was for the best, that thing just screams! Still when it happened it was like someone ripped out my heart but having real spring verb in it again is awesome, it was kinda the whole point of going with the twin instead of just a regular AC-15, plus the extra speaker is nice to?

[Nostalgic Distortion]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

Thanks for all the advice guys! It was a pretty grim moment at the time & just the possibility of being able to fix it made me feel a lot better about the whole thing! My patch is made out of a very small pice of thicker coffee filter & I used wood glue instead of Elmer's paper glue because that's what I had on hand?

Before doing any of that I'd taken the torn pice speaker cone fiber, put it back in place as best as I could, and used a tiny drop of silicon to glue it back in place? After about 12 hours I put the paper patch over it and as long as I think it's going to hold up for a while I'll probably just use a permanent marker to match the color a little better. We'll see what happens I guess???

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

I appreciated your answer because I almost envisioned it when I asked it. Glad to see you got the speaker sorted out, since these things are usually pretty easy for someone with basic handiman skills.

[Nostalgic Distortion]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!


So far so good! I dropped it into my 1x12 & have been torture testing it. I've been running my 15W tube head full bore plus I have my E.Q. pedal pushing it over the top as well? It sounds great & the hole doesn't seem to have had any adverse impact on it at all? I'm also pretty sure that my patch is now the strongest part of the entire cone so as long as it keeps doing what its doing this speaker should last years to come...

[IM4Tone]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

Great thread....learn something new every day!
And BTW, belated

[Myaccount876]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

Wait, your age says 82, and your dad is alive (and listens to rock)? That'd be badass, but I'm going to take a wild guess and say "82" is inaccurate haha.

Happy birthday.

[Demanic]

Re: Happy Birthday, I've Got Reverb & a Hole in my Greenback!!!

Dude, you always seem to be facing a new challenge! Glad it worked out all right and belated happy B-Day to boot.