Anyone remember Mitchell amps?

[Kosh Naranek]

Anyone remember, back around 1979 or '80, when the Mark 1 Mesa Boogie combos and heads were becoming hugely popular, a company named Mitchell selling amps with a kind of similar look and layout?

I have an old Mitchell amp head that I got probably back in '85, that has been sitting in my old room at my parents' house for many years. A couple of days ago I stopped over there and picked it up and took it to my condo. It's a 60/100 watt all tube head with 6L6's (no tubes in it at the moment), with two preamp gain knobs, bass/middle/treble, presence in back, bright switch and gain boost switch.

Some previous owner had put a linear taper volume pot in instead of audio taper so the volume jumps sharply in one spot. Something I'll hafta replace. The screws to fasten the chassis in the head were out because I'd had it open years ago, trying to figure out what to do about that. I looked inside and it's all point-to point wired!

I'm gonna try to score a quad of 6L6's cheap, get this amp up and running and see how it compares to my SuperSonic and Genz Benz El Diablo 60. If it works and sounds decent, I'll try to figure out what value audio taper pot to get for that gain or volume knob that someone had replaced.

 

[devastone]

Re: Anyone remember Mitchell amps?

Yeah, I remember them. A guy named John Clouse set up shop in our little TN town for a while (I don't know why). Apparently he was a hot shot amp/guitar guy from CA, he showed me a small Fender amp that he was supposedly working on for Clapton, and he had a killer 60's Strat with '57 pickups. I bought my first electric from him, one of the first Kramers with the aluminum necks. He didn't stick around our little corner of the woods long though, I'm guessing it wasn't the best place for an amp guy.

Anway, he carried Mitchell amps but I don't remember what they sounded like other than a couple of the hot shot local guys were using them, but that was many, many moons ago.