Teisco 10 Tube Amp

Teisco 10 Tube Amp
1960's?
Made in Japan, 100V

Tube complement: 1 x 7189 power tube, 1 x 6x4 rectifier, 1 x 12ax7 preamp, 1 x 12ax7 for tremolo and spring reverb effects

Speaker: 1 x 10in. Alnico, Teisco branded





This is a 5 watt single-ended tube amp with a 10" Alnico speaker. It has tube-based Tremolo and Reverb effects. The reverb uses one triode of a 12AX7 and a small single spring transducer so it can't compare to a Fender amp reverb.

The power tube is a 7189. In this particular amp, this can be replaced with an EL84 with no need for modification.

There are two 12AX7 tubes in this amp; one is used in the preamp section and the other is used for the Tremolo and Reverb effects.

The amp is in relatively clean and unmolested condition when i acquired it. It did power up and has sound output but not at 100%.

The obvious suspects are the electrolytic caps which are all still the original ones. The oil-in-paper caps which were used in many '60s Japan-made tube amps are known to get bad and cause these type of problem.

The chassis gets abnormally hot when the amp is turned on for some minutes, again pointing to possible leaky cap/s.

Teisco marketed their amps domestically in Japan and also sold them overseas. I surmise that they designated different model names for one amp depending on where they are being marketed. So this amp (Teisco 10) is the same as the Teisco Checkmate 17 tube amp and Teisco 5 tube amp.

To add to this chaos, Teisco also made SS amps which they named Teisco 10 and Checkmate 17. They seemed to ran out of model-name ideas back then, or they took it for granted that domestic models will not stray off abroad.

In '60s Japan, it is not only Teisco who ran out of ideas in tube amp making. I've seen models from Guyatone and from Ace Tone which looked like clones of Teisco amp. I'm not sure though who copied from who.

The amp is wired point-to-point which some would like.