I came across a vintage tube amplifier on a local Facebook trading group, that piqued my interest. An ELK (Echo) Pro-Sonic EB-103 from 1969. The trader had been holding on to it, despite it missing both speakers (it’s a 2 x 10), all of its tubes, and someone even took the potentiometer knobs. I gave him a bottle of whiskey for it and did some research.
This amp was made in Japan, and has a modern cult-following among surf rock fans. Here’s the strange bit, this excerpt from a Japanese catalog clearly states that this amp runs on 7189 (EL84) tubes, however the unit I have has octal sockets for it’s power stage…
After some probing with a multimeter, this amp runs on EL34s, not EL84s, making this the only EL34 EB-103 that I can find on the internet.
I installed a full tube-complement, and powered it on, only to be heartbroken. More work is needed.
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